Women vote for their top cars
FOR THE female motoring journalists who bestow the accolade of Women’s World Car of the Year it’s not about the colour of the vehicle, nor is it about power-to-weight ratios or torque curves.
New Zealand motoring writer Sandy Myhre founded the awards after a 2009 conversation with colleagues, all of them shocked that there was not a single female judge on the panel of the New York-based World Car of the Year awards.
Myhre, who manages the awards from her home in Kerikeri, says women are often the deciding voice when car buying decisions are made, but neither the mainstream motoring awards, nor the motoring industry were taking the female viewpoint into consideration.
‘‘We spend money, we drive cars, but we weren’t being represented.’’
From the start, the Women’s World Car of the Year awards have been based on different criteria.
‘‘If you look at other awards around the world, they do concentrate a lot on these Newton metres of torque and power-toweight ratios, which don’t actually mean a lot to a lot of people, including men, so we decided we were going to have different judging criteria.’’
Instead of torque power and torque curve and top speeds, the judges focus on ‘driveability’.
‘‘When you drive a car you know if it’s good, or if it’s not good, if it suits you or if it doesn’t, regardless of the technicalities. It doesn’t mean to say we ignore the technicalities, we just look at it differently.’’
The judges also consider value for money, storage space, and child friendliness.
‘‘It’s not just about colour, which a lot of car companies think women choose cars on.
‘‘You are a different shape and you have different strengths as a woman and different weaknesses, you can’t lug a great big seat down as easily as a man, and where do you put the kids?’’
The judging panel includes women motoring writers from all over the world, from Iceland to Italy, the US to Britain, South Africa to Australia.
The supreme award is presented each year at the Paris or Frankfurt Motor Shows or at a press conference organised by the winning car company.
Last year Ford, which won the award for its Fiesta EcoBoost, held a press conference at its European headquarters in Cologne, where chief operating officer Barb Samardzich was presented with the official trophy, a plate made at ceramic studio Keriblue in the Bay of Islands.
Myhre, who attends the award ceremony each year with the assistance of sponsor Air Tahiti Nui, said the awards were garnering international attention for New Zealand, with journalists intrigued by her ‘exotic’ sponsor and plying her with questions about New Zealand.
Last year, for the first time, the awards included a ‘dream car’ category, which was won by the Aston Martin Vanquish.
‘‘It was to say, we do have aspirations to own an exotic car as well, and this is what we would choose.’’
The Women’s World Car of the Year award was presented to the Jaguar XF in 2010, the Citroen DS3 and BMW 5 Series jointly in 2011, and the Range Rover Evoque in 2012.
The winner of this year’s award will be announced in September.
For more information, go to womensworldcoty.com