The best Passenger and Sports cars of the year
COTY continues with finalists in two more categories, plus your chance to win $5k of fuel/charge!
It’s AA DRIVEN Car Guide New Zealand Car of the Year time again! We’ll be awarding wins in 11 different categories and this week we continue the programme by announcing the finalists in two very different categories: Passenger, and Sports & Performance.
Passenger
Our COTY programme recognises the overwhelming Kiwi preference for all things SUV; we have dedicated SUV categories and of course SUVs pop up as finalists elsewhere too.
But we also reserve a special category for Passenger cars: hatchbacks, sedans, station wagons and people movers, because they remain important to many buyers. In short, anything that’s not an SUV.
In fact, with the incredible design flexibility offered by new electric vehicle platforms, we’re also finding that those more traditional formats are making a bit of a comeback. More choice: we like that.
Case in point: two of our Passenger finalists are hatchbacks that also appear as Clean Car BEV contenders, although of course we look at them through a slightly different lens for each category. With BEV it’s how well they bring EV technology to the market; here, in Passenger, we consider them as mainstream family cars first and foremost, and if they happen to be electric so be it.
The first is the BYD Dolphin ,a hugely appealing 5-door hatch from the Chinese brand that brought us the larger Atto 3 — a car that continues to be a best-seller in NZ (it’s even in the top 10 list for Peoples Choice this year).
Dolphin arguably boasts even more mainstream appeal than Atto 3, with less confronting cabin design and colouring — even if it is part of BYD’s Ocean Series and sporting some subtle marine-themed cues.
It’s loaded with safety tech, and surprisingly practical and spacious for what’s essentially a superminisized hatch on the outside — a great example of BEV packaging bringing huge advantages for family buyers.
BYD NZ sells the Dolphin in just two models. There’s a standard range at $49,990 with a 45kWh battery (340km range) which is aimed mainly at the fleet market, but the more relevant one for us here is the $55,990 extended range, with a 60kWh battery (427km) and higher specification.
The MG4 is another BEV contender that reappears here. It’s a brilliant package that blends true RWD driver appeal with excellent practicality for the family — so there’s something for everybody.
The MG also offers an extremely broad range: there are three different battery sizes, so you only need to pay for the range your lifestyle demands, and another three different specification choices. In all, the mainstream model range stretches from $46,990 to $63,990.
And of course there’s been a recent over-the-top addition to the line-up: the incredible MG4 XPower AWD, with supercar-like acceleration (0-100km/h in just 3.8sec), yet costs only $69,990 and loses nothing to the other models in terms of practicality.
German brand Opel was relaunched into NZ last year with the emphasis on eco-cred and tech. The latest Opel Astra looks sensational, is packed with technology and the $49,990 SRi model is fascinating because it’s extremely green without offering any form of electrification: 5.1l/100km thanks to a fizzy 1.2-litre turbo- petrol engine.
That’s now been joined by a $71,990 PHEV model called GSe, which blends EV commuting ability with more of a sporting character (“GSe” stands for Grand Sport electric). Of course, there’s also a pure-electric model on the way . . . but that’s a story for another day.
Sports & Performance
It’s so important to celebrate Sports & Performance: no great car can exist without plenty of passion from designers and engineers, but this category is where it’s all distilled
down to its purest form.
There’s no requirement for an enthusiast car to be impractical (in fact, two of our finalists are also useful family hatches), but the point of this category is to be a little selfish: these cars are about entertaining the driver first and everything else second.
The Honda Civic Type R arrived a little too late to be included in our 2022 COTY programme. But after our late-2022 first drive and a proper review earlier this year, it thrust itself into the limelight.
Longer, wider and lower than the previous Type R, the FL5 (model codes are very important to Type R fans) is more bespoke than ever and a simply brilliant blend of dayto-day driving thrills and great track ability, if you’re of a mind to explore its potential on a circuit when opportunities arise.
The $72,000 Civic Type R is pureICE and pretty powerful for a small car: 235kW/420Nm. But it’s not just about straight-line performance; the real point of the Type R is driverpleasing mechanical precision,
including one of the best manual gearboxes you’ll ever have the pleasure of shifting.
The original Toyota 86 wowed us a decade ago with its classic sportscar setup: a compact coupe with manual-transmission (well, you could have an auto as well) and reardrive.
Now a $58,490 Toyota GR86, the latest version takes that acclaimed formula and ramps everything up. It looks much more muscular, with hints of the larger GR Supra around the rear — check the integrated “ducktail” spoiler. Still pretty businesslike inside, but with some nice touches: more heavily bolstered sports seats, new infotainment system and a digital instrument layout with multiple display modes.
But the most important upgrade to the GR86 by far is the new engine.
The new 2.4-litre adds 27kW/ 45Nm for a total of 174kW/250Nm, and more importantly it’s just so much more responsive across the rev range. Nice raspy soundtrack, too.
For the $74,990 Toyota GR
Corolla, the Japanese maker’s Gazoo Racing division took the key powertrain technology developed for the GR Yaris — the 2021 COTY overall winner, no less — and applied it to its humble family hatch.
The result is epic: a Corolla with a 221kW/370Nm threecylinder turbo-petrol engine (more power than the Yaris, so the larger Corolla is just as fast), six-speed manual with revmatching and a very clever AWD system that can be adjusted for variety of power deliveries, including a super-aggressive Track mode.
But the GR Corolla also has a softer side that you don’t get with Yaris, including regular road-car drive models like Eco, Normal, Sport and Custom.
Of course, the GR Corolla is notoriously hard to purchase, with Toyota NZ running a batch ballot system to give all buyers an equal chance. Which makes it even more desirable.