Get ready for the Canadian Car of the Year awards

AJAC TestFest

The Canadian auto industry is gearing up for this years' Canadian Car of the Year (CCOTY) awards. This is the 28th round of the CCOTY awards, which will be held in Niagara Falls, ON, this fall.

This annual event allows the most important new vehicles to be brought together and tested, back-to-back against the competition. The event is hosted by the Automobile Journalist Association of Canada and a large panel of Canadian auto reviewers judges the results.

"As car awards go I personally believe that the Automotive Journalists of Canada (AJAC) serve our industry very well. Their testing process is very thorough and fair involving journalists who evaluate a very wide spectrum of vehicles through the year and thus know how to evaluate a complex product.

They come together once a year to evaluate these specific vehicles and their choices are almost always right on the mark.  I also very much like the fact that they give awards to a wide segment of vehicles which results in comparing apples to apples.  This allows the ordinary Joe consumer to get more value from these awards than many of the US based awards that annually choose a super luxury model that only a handful of Canadians could ever aspire to," said Dennis DesRosiers in a recent statement.

This year will put the new Honda Fit and Nissan Micra head to head for testing in the 'Small Car Under $21,000' category, while the all-new Subaru Legacy, Toyota Camry and Chrysler 200 will go head to head in the 'Family Car Under $30,000' category. In all, new-car offerings across fifteen vehicle categories will be tested and scored in this year's event. The full list of vehicles and categories is available on the AJAC website.

The CCOTY program, which is open to new-this-year models, sees the highest-scoring vehicle in each testing category declared a winner, before all category winners re-compete for the overall title of Canadian Car of the Year and Canadian Utility Vehicle of the Year. A field of dozens of vehicles is narrowed down to a handful of top-scoring finalists, and then just two overall winners.

"Our program is absolutely testing-based," explains CCOTY Co-Chair Justin Pritchard.

"We've got dozens of experienced vehicle testers driving dozens of vehicles, back to back, over the course of several days. This testing process generates thousands of data points across dozens of voting fields. We share every aspect of this testing data online—so shoppers can see how a given vehicle won its category, or how it stacked up to the category winner."

Last year, the Mazda 6 and Jeep Cherokee took top honors with the highest scores through two rounds of testing and evaluation.

AJAC TestFest (Photo: AJAC)

But category winners, and the overall winning vehicles each year, are far from the only important results to come from the intensive annual testing program.

"Whether you're interested in one of this year's category winners, which we'll announce in December, or another model from a previous year, every bit of our testing data and voting data is shared online, along with tools to compare vehicles across various categories and years. Our performance data, which is factored into every vehicle's overall score, is also published".

The goal is, ultimately, to provide highly relevant consumer-driven information for Canadian shoppers to take with them in the marketplace.

Interested in checking out the highest scores for acceleration, refinement, cargo space, value, steering or interior ergonomics, as assigned by a panel of Canadian auto experts, for the next vehicle you're considering? Head to www.ajac.ca. Testing and voting data from this year's panel of competitors will be online shortly after the event, in late October.

SOURCE Automobile Journalists Association of Canada