Why is $139,000 Audi R8 Car of the Year?

Sports car's win a 'failure of democracy'

Feb 15, 2008

Special to the Star

The Audi R8 was chosen 2008 Car of the Year and the Chevrolet Silverado was picked Utility Vehicle of the Year by Canadian auto journalists this week.

The Automobile Journalists Association of Canada announced the winners at the media preview of the Toronto auto show on Wednesday.

The other finalists for Car of the Year were the Saturn Astra and Audi S5, while the Buick Enclave and Nissan Rogue were runners-up for Utility Vehicle of the Year (i.e., truck, SUV or crossover).

The Audi won Best New Design as well, having previously been picked by the journalists as "most coveted" during last fall's three-day Test-Fest, where all new cars and utility vehicles are put through their paces by members of AJAC.

Ford took Best New Technology with its SYNC system, which enhances connectivity by allowing various electronic devices – Bluetooth phones, iPods, etc. – to be operated through the car's own control systems.

With the exception of the Design Award (the R8 is gorgeous by any measure) and "most coveted" (who wouldn't want to own this car?), all the other choices are steeped in controversy.

As my Grade 11 history teacher Wally Coulthard used to say when we collectively got the wrong answers to his pop quizzes: "Another failure of democracy."

For starters, how can a $140,000 sports car, of which they'll sell maybe 100 in Canada, be Car of the Year? Surely a Car of the Year should represent something that's within reach of at least a measurable portion of the market?

Some such contests require that a prospective winner sell a minimum number to be eligible – a North American Car of the Year, for example, must be reasonably expected to sell 5,000 units combined in the U.S. and Canada.

AJAC has no such provision.

Can't blame the people at Audi. They don't make the rules, and they aren't going to hand back the trophy.

Beth Rhind, AJAC's manager, who has worked on the Canadian Car of the Year program almost since its inception, says that various safeguards have been built into the system to try to ensure that an expensive exotic doesn't snatch the title.

"The various attributes the journalists vote upon are tempered by a price factor," she notes. In effect, expensive cars have to be better just to break even.

"Ten per cent of the vote also goes to `market significance,'" she adds. You'd be hard-pressed to think any journalist would give a 100-unit car much credit here.

"Historically," continued Rhind, "the average vote on any attribute is 6.8 out of 10. For the Audi to break though these various controls, the journalists must have given it 9s or 10s across the board.

"We haven't had a chance to examine the votes yet to see how this was done. In the 14 years since we started the current system, only one really expensive car, the BMW M3, has won the overall Car of the Year. We are continually fine-tuning the system to make it even better," she concludes.

On the other hand, Car of the Year is not a popularity contest or a sales award.

In that case, we would have such worthy members in our Hall of Fame as the Ford Tempo and Chevrolet Cavalier.

Marc Lachapelle, a Montreal-based journalist and one of the key members of the Car of the Year group that (with Wheels' own Gerry Malloy) initiated this system some years ago, noted, "The Car of the Year is supposed to be special, supposed to represent a breakthrough in some way. There can be no doubt in anyone's mind that the Audi is a very special car, in design, technology, and performance."

Choose your side, let the arguments begin.

Personally, I think the wrong Audi emerged from the threesome of finalists. The S5 has almost the same technology and performance, twice as many seats and costs half as much.

But for me, the real car of the year didn't even make the final three: Chevrolet Malibu isn't as technologically impressive as the Audi, but it brings a host of attributes, not the least of which are affordability and accessibility, which earned it this year's North American title.

It didn't even win its category in AJAC, finishing third behind the Honda Accord and Subaru Impreza hatchback.

Only category winners are eligible to be voted on for overall Car of the Year.

On the Utility Vehicle side, the Silverado is an impressive pickup, but nowhere near the breakthrough represented by the Buick Enclave.

And if "most improved" were part of the judging process, the Nissan Rogue would have won in a walk, given that it replaces the lamentable X-Trail in Nissan showrooms.

Finally, I am already on record as saying that Ford's SYNC simply enables more driver distraction in our vehicles, which is exactly what we don't need.

Winston Churchill once said that democracy is the worst system of governance, except for all the others. Winston, meet Wally Coulthard.

But as Maple Leaf fans say, wait till next year. We'll probably get it wrong again.

Toronto Star