How Autocar India chose the ‘Car of the Year 2017’.
If there was an award for ‘Word of the Year’, the unanimous decision would have been ‘demonetisation’.
The Autocar Awards were instituted in India in 2002. Autocar UK, our sister publication, has been part of the European Car of the Year Awards since its inception in 1964. So, behind the Autocar Awards is nearly 40 years of learning.
When it comes to choosing the Car of the Year (COTY) from such a diverse basket, the trick is not to compare apples and oranges. You compare a luxury car in the framework of luxury cars and judge how it compares to others in its category. You judge an electric car or a sportscar against the purpose it was designed for and then decide who moved the goalposts the most in its category. And it is the car that makes the maximum difference in its class that is the winner.
The call to crown a car or a bike with the coveted Autocar Award is not made from the heart; it is a process that’s objective, measurable and quantifiable. This objective view has earned the Autocar Awards its reputation and credibility, and made it the most genuine of all awards in the Indian auto industry.
We do it by ensuring every decision by our panel of judges is based on cold facts and hard figures. The data is acquired using Autocar India’s top-of-the-line computerised equipment and satellite-based systems. They measure and tabulate each and every parameter of a car’s performance with gunpoint accuracy.
Our methodology is the analysis of an exhaustive list of parameters with the objective of picking a single decisive winner. Each of our jury members is an expert in evaluating cars and the major body of our panel has remained unchanged for several years and this gives consistency to our ratings and verdicts.
The responsibility of that is handled by a panel of experienced judges. To put the cars to the test, we have Hormazd Sorabjee, editor of Autocar India, Shapur Kotwal, editor-in-chief of What Car? India, Renuka Kirpalani, editor of the Autocar show, champion racing driver, Narain Karthikeyan, and car historian, Manvendra Singh.
And now it’s time to call on the winner of the Car of the Year 2017 .
