Behind the Scenes: How Does MotorTrend Decide Car of the Year?

MotorTrend

For 70 years

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00:00 I am standing in the middle of the Mojave Desert at the Hyundai Kia Proving Ground. Why? Because it's the

00:06 2020 Motor Trend Car of the Year.

00:08 That guy, that's Angus ruining the shot. Good job, bro.

00:25 Car of the Year is a competition where we take all the new or significantly

00:30 refreshed cars for this model year. We have 22 models, 32 cars total with variants.

00:36 Our goal here is to undergo some really intensive testing to come up with somewhere between five and seven

00:43 finalists that we then drive on the public roads around Tehachapi, California.

00:54 Struggle is real. How do we do that? How do you take a $20,000 car and compare it against a $190,000 car?

01:00 Criteria. Six key criteria. Value, performance and attention, design,

01:06 engineering excellence,

01:09 efficiency, and safety. There we go.

01:12 So it's the car that hits it hardest against the criteria that becomes the winner.

01:22 We do our typical 60 to 0 stops, our 0 to 60 acceleration, quarter-mile acceleration, and

01:28 then I hand it over to Kim. I will do the figure-8 test, which is our primary handling test.

01:35 We explore the limits of the car and I must say that by the time 33 is done, I'm really good at the figure-8.

01:42 [laughter]

01:44 So now we're headed to the winding road for us.

01:57 We're gonna go on the special surfaces here. All right, so now we are entering the oval.

02:11 So we're wrapping up our first day. We have one more day of testing to really narrow down the field.

02:16 We'll decide our finalists and then we're off to Tehachapi.

02:40 All right, so this is the finalist loop. Here we want to see what these cars are actually like

02:46 when you drive them around town. And that's what's so nice about this drive loop is that

02:51 we start off testing the things that people do in their car every day.

02:55 Anyways, yeah, good acceleration. Only 450 horsepower.

03:00 Okay, we're driving the 2020 Toyota Supra. This car delivers an awful lot of bang for the buck.

03:08 [engine revving]

03:10 We are in a nice Subaru Legacy. Let's have some fun.

03:18 What a lovely planted chassis.

03:22 So this is the Audi A8 L. It's super plushy, comfy.

03:28 It's Audi's flagship sedan. We are driving the

03:32 AMG GT 53.

03:37 As you can tell, it makes a great, glorious noise.

03:40 Your heart doesn't skip a little bit of a beat. You have no soul. So this is the Mercedes

03:46 A220. We no longer just have the

03:50 Mercedes badge and that we actually have a Mercedes quality interior to go with it.

03:56 Okay, so now I'm in the Kia Soul.

03:59 It's a very low cost vehicle that delivers a surprising amount of content. It's a lot of fun to drive.

04:06 All right, so I'm currently driving the Tesla 3 twin-engine, one two-engine, more powerful version.

04:12 It certainly is quick. From a design point of view, I have to say I quite like it.

04:17 Well, the enthusiast world has been waiting for a mid-engine Corvette since the 60s. This car is pretty amazing on the performance front.

04:26 The sound of this engine is just marvelous and it's terrific out of the box.

04:34 It's cool to be able to participate in something that's going to make history.

04:37 So we just have to decide on one winner and that's going to be tough.

04:40 I'm always a fan of the underdog cars, the ones that punch above their weight.

04:45 This could be the one.

04:48 [Music]

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