Car of the Year Awards surprisingly influential
Car of the Year Awards — does anybody really care?
The Automobile Journalists Association of Canada (henceforth, AJAC) has been running a Car of the Year program for more than 30 years.
Some years back we decided to try and find out the answer to the above question.
A couple of times over a span of a few years, we hired a market research firm to ask people who had bought the Canadian Car of the Year what, if any, impact the award had on their decision.
To our great surprise and massive satisfaction, they concluded that the Canadian Car of the Year award was second only to “recommendations from friends and family” in influence, notably, well ahead of “advertising.”
You’d think, given how much faith car companies place on market research, that they would be pressing rubies into our ears to participate in these events. Yeah, you’d think... The North American Car/ Truck/Utility of the Year program (henceforth, NACTOY) started well after the AJAC event. NACTOY is a self-appointed group of just more than 50 journos from the U.S. and Canada (yes, including yours truly as a charter member). NACTOY has not to my knowledge conducted similar research about the impact of their awards, but the fact that the car companies who win pay big bucks to use the NACTOY logo in their advertising suggests that they too value them. The AJAC event has come to be known as “Test Fest.” Originally, eligible journalists, i.e., those who road test vehicles on a regular basis for their respective print, broadcast and internet outlets, would come from coast to coast to a central location (currently, Mosport) and drive the vehicles on public roads (and on tracks or offroad, depending on the vehicle) to assess their respective merits.
The only other similar program in the world of which we were aware was that conducted by the Guild of Motoring Writers in South Africa, which in fact was the model for the Canadian event.
True, most of us had driven most of the vehicles before. But it was felt that back-to-back testing — same day, same roads, same conditions — provided the best way to make rational comparisons.
Although this was immensely valuable, it became immensely expensive for the carmakers — bringing in three or four examples of each eligible vehicle to give every journo a shot at it; paying for support crews; tying up Public Relations and other staffers for a week; hotel and restaurant bills, etc.
Easy enough to justify if you won something; not so much if you didn’t.
So for the past couple of years, Test Fest has become just a part of most journos’ testing protocol. Still the best way to do it, but if you can’t make it or can’t drive all the eligible vehicles, your votes can still count.
This also takes some of the financial pressure off the carmakers, because they don’t need such a big investment to make a showing.
NACTOY initially didn’t have any testing program at all. But influenced at least partially by the Canadians on that jury, an optional event was organized some years ago in the aptlynamed town of Hell, Mich.
No, I’m not kidding; you could look it up. The now-annual NACTOY event concluded last week in Michigan, not far from that original location.
It’s actually kind of interesting how the AJAC and NACTOY testing programs have become more aligned over the years.
AJACs used to be very formal; NACTOYs as noted initially didn’t even exist, and eventually became a less stringent program than AJACs.
And now, AJACs has since become more like NACTOYs.
John Lamm, the veteran journalist and photographer from Road and Track, mentioned to me last week how valuable he found the back-to-back testing event in Michigan. “You forget!” he said. Exactly. AJAC has also always used Test Fest as the opportunity to conduct the Annual General Meeting required by law for non-profit organizations.
NACTOY did that for the first time last week.
As Alanis Morrisette sang, “You live; you learn.”
One thing we always learn at these testing events is that there will be surprises.
The biggest for me last week in Michigan was the Buick Regal Tour X. Yes, a station wagon. In the Excited States of America, you can’t throw a station wagon off a building onto unsuspecting customers because they just make way too much sense.
I mean, the Regal Tour X is gorgeous, practical, goes and handles like a champ, and is reasonably affordable. Come on, General Motors — what were you thinking? Who would want a car like that?
If it garners any votes from the NACTOY jurors other than mine, I’ll be surprised.
If they sell more than four of them down there, I’ll be even more surprised. To me, it’s the Car of the Year. The fact that it was one of two station wagons on the NACTOY short list (Volvo’s V60 was the other) gives me a glimmer of hope for our Stateside friends.
The Buick is interesting for a whole bunch of reasons other than that it is fantastic to look at and to drive. GM sold the Opel brand to Peugeot about a year ago, so this car is sort of a throwback to the days when Buick dealers sold a variety of Opelbranded products — some of them Japanese-built Isuzus!
Apparently, the France-based Peugeot group, now the second-largest carmaker in the world after Volkswagen, has some sort of a three-year agreement to sell existing Opel products in a variety of worldwide markets. The Regal Tour X is one of them. Not in Canada though. Pity. Watch this space in the coming months for further news from both Canadian and North American Car/Truck of the Year events.