THE BIG GRILLES WE ACTUALLY LIKE

01 Audi RS6 Avant

Defies design logic, the new RS6. It’s brash, it’s ultra-aggressive, it’s festooned with slashes and lines, and the grille is straight from Audi’s XXL wardrobe. And yet – while you’d struggle to brand the 592bhp bruiser ‘elegant’, it’s a fabulous-looking, stance-tastic bit of kit.

02 Ford F-150 Raptor

FORD. Top Gear fun fact: that actually stands for Fiendishly Oversized Radiator Douchebag. Somehow, on a Yank-spec truck, having size-100 typeface and a massive tunnel bang in the face of your 4x4 just works.

03 Jaguar XJ Series I

The original XJ Jag is a classically current ‘three-box’ saloon design. Four circle headlights, and another rectangle between them. It could’ve been designed by a child with only a ruler and some coins to trace a pen around, and yet it’s a masterpiece.

04 Aston Martin DBS

The cynics will tell you the latest DBS Superleggera needs its mahoosive grille so you and Ican tellit apart from the slower, cheaper DB11. Aston Martin will protest that the mega-mouth is necessary to cool the 715bhp, 5.2-litre bi-turbo V12 that lurks within.

05 All classic Americana

We’re talking pretty much all late Fifties and early-to-mid-Sixties American tin. This is straight from an age when no fin was too lethal, no colour was too lurid, and no grille was too toothy, chromed, and menacing.

06 Lexus LC

The spindle grille is intricate. It’s in yer face. And yet, Lexus has honed it into a signature feature, nowhere better than on the gloriously manga and esoteric LC. Except in the UK, where it’s somewhat spoiled by having to fit a pesky front numberplate slap bang in the middle.

07 Mercedes-AMG GT R

The Panamericana grille is a nod to the 300SL racing cars Mercedes campaigned in longdistance races through the Fifties. It’s a fudge to make that heritage work on a posh A-Class, but the V8 GT R supercar does a much better job of wearing its road-going Hannibal mask.

08 Bentley Flying Spur

There’s something statesmanlike about a luxury limo – particularly a British luxury limo – with a Parthenon out front between the headlamps, what-what? The latest, greatest Bentley Flying Spur is a fine example of what we’re on about. However, it’s not the definitive one, so long as...

09 Rolls-Royce Phantom

..the big Phant is around. A top-spec Roller simply wouldn’t look correct if it didn’t boast a grille modelled on the life-size gates to a stately home. We live in hope that BMW, which owns Rolls-Royce, decides that it only needs one brand with big grilles on its books.