Canadian Car of the Year awards were announced Tuesday and there are a few surprises! Let’s go through them quickly.
Best New Economy Car … Obvious … Honda Civic
Best New Family Car Under $35k … Obvious … Hyundai Sonata
Best New Family Car over $35k Surprise! The Hyundai Azera beat a lot of the competition. Audi A3/A4, BMW 3 series, wow that is pretty impressive, a shocker for sure.
Best New Luxury/Prestige Car … Not a huge surprise but this was a tough category, BMW 530xi won this one beating out such cars as the Audi A6, Infinity M45 (excellent car IMO) and Merc R-Class
Best New Sports Sedan … Again not a huge surprise here, the BMW 330i has been the journalists #1 pick for sports sedans for years. Lexus had a valid chance with the IS 350 but not providing a manual transmission gave them a huge disadvantage.
Best New Sports/Performance Car HUGE competition in this category from almost every manufacturer, it’s a great time to be looking for a sport or performance car! Honda Civic SI wins this one beating out the Chevrolet Cobalt SS, Chevrolet Corvette Z06, Mazda MX-5, Mitsubishi Eclipse, Pontiac G6 GTP coupe & Pontiac Solstice. Can you believe the Civic beat the Z06???? Price was a factor in this one.
Best New Sport Utility Vehicle Another surprise in my opinion the Mercedes ML350, although I’m sure a great car, it is out of most Canadians budgets. The Suzuki Grand Vitara is an excellent contender in this class and it was a close result.
Best New Mult-purpose Family Vehicle Not a huge surprise here, Mazda has been on a role with their new model introductions as of late.
Best New Pick Up Well whether you believe it is a REAL pick-up truck or not the Honda Ridgeline won this category, it had the usual contender from Dodge and and the new Lincoln Mark LT but the Honda is just an all around great vehicle for any family truck duty.
Best New Modern Muscle Car Gotta have a Hemi! Another interesting category, I think this may be a new category from last year ….. not sure on that. Dodge SRT8 Magnum pulls this one out beating the MazdaSpeed 6 and Caddy STS-V.
Most Coveted Vehicle Award This IS a new category (created by AJAC) and I guess they had to stick something in there, so they picked the Corvette Z06 …….. I have to agree with that one.
To see the entire list check out CanadianDriver News
To see the voting results are available here
to our site.
December 7th, 2005 at 4:58 pm
The Civic Si beat out itself, eh? LOL.
The Azera is a surprise, not sure if I entirely agree with that one. Otherwise, fine picks. I imagine part of the Civic’s winning over the Z06 is the fact that you can push it to its limits somewhat more responsibly than the Corvette… nice numbers, but you’ll never be able to use it to its fullest potential short of a race track. The Civic is a different story…
December 7th, 2005 at 8:49 pm
COTY awards point system is askew IMO, as the amount of points given for styling/appearance etc are much too high for something that is a just a perception of ones opinion over anothers, which has no bearing whether a car is good or not good.
But the cargo space and interior marks do not seem to have as much priority scoring wise, as the point threshold is much lower.
When you read the statitics of how many people are influenced by this organizations testing ” 64.8% of all buyers* were influenced to purchase the car because it was the “Canadian Car of the Yearâ€?.
47.5% of those buyers who were aware of the Canadian Car of the Year award said its purchase influence was “strong to extremely strong�. I would think this organization could do a much better job evaluating cars on functionality, rather then styling and appearance.
December 9th, 2005 at 10:16 pm
What makes a great car ?
December 17th, 2005 at 11:03 pm
Hi James.
For that Modern Muscle category it is not fair to say the SRT-8 beat out the Caddy, as GM was unable to build one in time to get it to TestFest, so it was not evaluated.
:)