Here are the finalists for best car, utility vehicle
Put through their paces, one in each segment pulled ahead and finished on top
The Canadian Car and Utility Vehicle of the Year competition is one of the longest-running and most thorough evaluations of its kind in the world.
Cars and utility vehicles (pickup trucks, SUVs, crossovers) compete in various categories on the theory that a $12,000 economy car doesn’t have much in common with a $100,000 luxury sedan except, perhaps, four wheels.
Members of the Automobile Journalists Association of Canada, who regularly test vehicles and who have evaluated all the contenders, reduced the fields to three contenders in each category, presented here in alphabetical order. The winners of Car of the Year and Utility Vehicle of the Year can be found on the front page of this section.
CARS Mazda3 The winner in the Best Small Car category has been a perennial favourite of auto journalists pretty much the world over.
Its best characteristic is its fun-todrive quotient, which is common to all Mazdas. Internally they call this “zoom zoom,” and most Mazda owners understand what that means.
Despite being a few years old in this basic form, it’s still a handsome, sporty-looking car.
Interior trim quality looks and feels of a much higher quality than you have any right to expect at this price point.
Negatives? Not many, although rear-seat room isn’t as good as some others in the class. And overall reliability hasn’t typically been quite as stellar as the other major contenders in this category.
But if you’re looking for some driving pleasure while saving some bucks on gasoline, this is your ride.
Honda Accord Accord won the Best Large Car category, and is also fresh from winning the North American Car of the Year prize.
Not without reason. The new Accord is larger inside where size matters, marginally smaller outside where it doesn’t.
It also shaves a few kilograms off the curb weight, which is never a bad idea for cars (or their drivers). It feels a bit odd to see an Accord win a Best “Large” Car award, but it’s so roomy inside that no other words suffice.
Honda’s interior designers seem to have started down the road away from push-button everything, which is all to the good — you simply cannot operate a myriad of push buttons safely in a car while you’re driving in today’s crazy traffic.
As have most Accords been, this one is an excellent all-rounder.
Will it be enough to drag people away from their SUVs?
We can only hope.
Volvo S90 sedan/V90 Wagon These two were paired as a single entry in the Best Large Premium Car Category. Given that it/they won its/ their category and have made it to the final three, that seems to have been a good move. The big Volvos are handsome beasts, inside and out.
Famous for decades for seats, the thrones in the S/V90 do not disappoint. And there’s plenty of room everywhere.
As with most modern cars, you should spend a couple of evenings with the owner’s manual, figuring out how various systems work. They are controlled by a variety of swipes and flicks on the massive multi-page touchscreen.
As a long-time wagon owner, the wagon version (V90) would be my choice. As I always say, you’re buying the footprint; you might as well get the air space for free. To me, it’s also an even better-looking vehicle than the S90 sedan.
Good to have Volvo back in a big way.
UTILITY VEHICLES (Pickups, minivans and SUVs/CUVs) Chrysler Pacifica Pacifica won the Best Minivan category. Not so many years ago, this would have been a much bigger deal than it has become, because the minivan is by far the most practical large vehicle type ever invented.
But somewhere along the line minivans got a bad reputation as being mommies’ cars — and since when did being a mommy become a bad thing?
It’s by far the nicest Chrysler minivan ever, and maybe the best minivan from any manufacturer. Chrysler has made huge strides in interior design and execution in recent years; this is both a handsome and highquality place to spend some time.
The seats flip, fold and can be removed in a number of ways, giving you myriad options for whatever it is you need to haul.
Pacifica is available as a regular car, and as a hybrid for the greenies among you. The hybrid is actually pretty well worked out, but it still takes a long recharge time to get about 50 kilometres of battery-only range.
Chrysler effectively created this market segment, and still dominates it. The Pacifica probably won’t be enough to return the segment to its former glory, but it remains the best vehicle in the class.
Mazda CX-5 The CX-5 is sort of the Goldilocks crossover — not too big, not too small, just right for most customers. It took the Best Small Utility Vehicle class.
There’s a sense that all the systems — engine, suspension, transmission, brakes — are nicely calibrated and work together to deliver a nice drive.
You probably will not notice slight reductions in engine output in certain types of cornering manoeuvres, other than maybe thinking the vehicle feels more stable and controlled than most. But this is what Mazda does. As usual, Mazda is answering questions that nobody else is even asking.
CX-5 recently went through a major facelift, which made it look better and uprated the interior an order of magnitude. The rear seats are adjustable and fold flatter for easier cargo storage.
Modifications to the suspension have improved ride and handling, and attention to detail make it quieter, too.
The new CX-5 shares at least one other Mazda characteristic, not good news in this case. Yes, you guessed it, I’m talking the touchscreen.
Despite having spent several sessions with this system in a variety of Mazdas, I have never really become comfortable flipping through the various screens trying to do simple things.
In sum, the CX-5 is popular for a whole bunch of reasons. Mazda CX-9 This vehicle completed the double for Mazda, taking the Best Large Utility Vehicle prize, as well as the Best Small Utility class win by the CX-5.
Pretty much everything I said about the CX-5 — the mostly positive (ride, handling, handsome styling, interior trim quality) and the one negative (that touchscreen) — applies equally to the larger three-row CX-9.
The slick styling does compromise the interior space a tick — compared to boxier competitors, the third-row seats will pretty much be kiddiesonly. But aren’t they pretty much always thus?
The driving dynamics are also compromised slightly by the very heft of the vehicle, but for a vehicle its size, it still performs well.
Unlike most Mazda engines, it doesn’t really love to rev to the red line, but in a vehicle like this you’re probably pretty much done by 4,000 rpm anyway.
The CX-9 is a testament to Mazda’s corporate mandate to deliver as much “zoom-zoom” as it can into every vehicle it makes. Doing this in a three-row SUV is a lot tougher than it is in a sports sedan, but it seems Mazda doesn’t know any other way to do it.
Good for Mazda.