Award winners
Kia Stinger and Jaguar I-Pace chosen as this year’s best by Canadian automotive journalists
The Kia Stinger and Jaguar I-Pace were the big winners at the Canadian Car/Utility Vehicle of the Year Awards for 2019, which were announced at the official opening of the Canadian International AutoShow yesterday.
The Kia Stinger (which had taken the Best Large Car category award) won the Car of the Year title over its stablemate Kia Forte (Best Small Car) and Volvo V90 R Design (Best Large Premium Car).
Michael Kopke, director of marketing for Kia Canada, said accepting the award was “really exciting” for Kia, which is celebrating 20 years in Canada. He said that for “… Stinger, the halo of our brand to be recognized by the journalists here in Canada is a real honour.”
Jaguar’s I-Pace (Best New Premium Utility Vehicle) was chosen as the Utility Vehicle of the Year, over Mazda CX-5 (Best New Mid-Size Utility Vehicle) and the Hyundai KONA (Best New Small Utility Vehicle).
John Lindo, public relations manager for Jaguar Land Rover Canada, said it was a huge honour for his company, not only because it was the first electric vehicle to win an Automobile Journalists Association of Canada ( AJAC) award, but it was the first time a Jaguar had taken an AJAC top prize.
A new voting system was instituted this year. Previously, eligible AJAC members (i.e., those who conduct regular road tests for their various media outlets) were required to test all vehicles in a given category on a “same roads, same day, same conditions” formula, which involved bringing all the eligible vehicles to a central location at an event know as Test Fest.
This event was held last fall at Mosport Park near Bowmanville, Ont. But due to the far-flung nature of our country, it was getting increasingly difficult to get all eligible AJAC members to convene for a given three- or four-day period, which was required to conduct this testing.
So this year, ballots could also be cast by eligible AJAC members following testing in their home markets.
Also, the category winners from the previous year were invited to attend Test Fest, so journalists could see how much progress had really been made.
Twelve category winners were announced last month at the Montreal Auto Show.
A second round of voting by journalists narrowed that list down to three finalists in each vehicle class which provided the candidates for today’s announcements.
More than 1,500 individual ballots were cast this year, from nearly 70 AJAC voters. The ballots were tabulated by the international accounting firm KPMG.
No one except KPMG representative Daniel Ferman knew the winners until the envelopes were handed Oscar-style to AJAC president Mark Richardson (Car of the Year) and AJAC vice-president Stephanie Wallcraft (Utility Vehicle of the Year) for the announcements.
The AJAC awards date back to 1985 and are considered among the most comprehensive and well-respected such programs in the world.
Market research studies over the years have indicated that these awards rank right up there with “recommendations from friends and family” and “previous experience with the brand” (and, notably, ahead of “advertising”), when buyers were asked what influenced their decision to purchase a particular vehicle.