The high and lows of COTY – Thank Frankel it’s Friday

I’m not going to dwell on this year’s nominees because most are cars for consumers rather than the rabid enthusiasts who populate this site, though I’ll mention now how pleased I am the Land Rover Defender made the cut. Instead, I hope to provide at least a moment’s fleeting entertainment by looking at some of the more unpredictable winners from the last 57 years, and those that somehow managed to join them on the podium.

The first winner was David Bache’s Rover P6, with the Mercedes-Benz ‘Grosse’ 600 in second and Hillman Imp third, which I call setting the standard pretty high. The Mercedes’ performance is interesting because these days true luxury cars always struggle to make an impression on the jury. This year’s Mercedes S-Class didn’t trouble the shortlist and I think you have to look back to 1987 when the BMW 7 Series came third to find one that did, yet in 1966 the Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow damn near won it outright.

It’s fair to say that some winners have withstood the test of time better than others. I’m not sure, for instance, that 1965 will be remembered as one of the award’s finest hours: the victor was the Austin 1800 ‘Landcrab’ with the Autobianchi Primula second, pushing of all things the Ford Mustang down into third place. But there were some superb winners in those early years too, from 1968 the winners went chronologically: NSU Ro 80, Peugeot 504, Fiat 128, Citroën GS, Fiat 127, Audi 80 and Mercedes-Benz 450SE. Of them all, I’d question only the Audi’s crown.

There’s been plenty of eclectic stuff on the podium too, though these days the requirement for cars to be mainstream production models and for a majority of jurors to have driven them limits such possibilities. Looking back however I note with great approval that the Oldsmobile Toronado was adjudged the third best car of 1966 with the four-wheel-drive Jensen FF occupying the same position the following year. The Fiat X1/9 came second in 1974 too.

But so too have there been some whose presence in the charts seems almost inexplicable to the hindsight-enhanced view of the modern eye, especially considering some of the cars the winners actually beat. How, for instance, did the Simca 1307 beat the BMW 3 Series in 1976, or the lamentable MkIII Ford Escort manage to put one over the both Fiat Panda and Austin Metro in 1981, both of which were important, innovative cars, while the Escort was just slickly marketed mediocrity? I bet the Fiat Uno beating the Peugeot 205 in 1984 raised a few eyebrows too. A little more recently the Citroën XM was adjudged a better car than the Mercedes-Benz SL in 1990, while the only Golf to win in the 20^th century was the MkIII in 1992, far and away the worst model in the history of the breed. Since I’ve been on the jury there have been plenty of winners I’d not rank first myself, but I think there’s only one that made me wonder what we’d done: that was 2014 when the Peugeot 308 claimed the prize ahead of both the BMW i3 and Tesla Model S. Still wonder a bit about that one. As for the least deserving winner, I’ll take a lot of persuading that title doesn’t lodge firmly with the Renault 9 of 1982.

But there have been some cracking decisions too, many in comparatively recent years. Surely no one could deny the right to be considered Car Of The Year to the Fords Mondeo (1994), Focus (1999) or S-Max (2007)? Since I’ve been involved we’ve recognised the importance of the world’s first massed produced mainstream electric car when we gave the prize to the Nissan Leaf in 2011, and the brilliance of the 2013 Volkswagen Golf when it won with by the equal biggest margin in the history of the award (shared with the superb Peugeot 405 in 1988). I was delighted the Volvo XC40 walked away with it in 2018 for it remains by far the best car of its kind, but the best year by far was 2019 when the Alpine A110 and Jaguar I-Pace pulled off the first dead heat in the history of the award, victory only going to the Jag once the number of jurors who’d placed each car first was taken into account.

The winner of the 2021 Car Of The Year award will be announced in March.