Behind the Scenes at the 2027 Car of the Year: Remarkably Serene on the Way to Naming a Winner
MotorTrend’s Of The Year competitions are usually rife with strife, but we somehow avoided that in this edition.
SUVs and trucks dominate new vehicle transactions in the U.S., but the traditional car hasn’t disappeared—and for people who still prefer to drive something more “right sized” and don’t place a premium on “sitting up high,” plenty of automakers continue to develop and offer intriguing and innovative choices. That’s why MotorTrend’s Car of the Year competition still matters greatly.
Our judges evaluated and scored 16 nameplates (actual car models) and a total of 22 variants (the physical number of cars in attendance, due to our desire to sample more than one version of some of them), representing 12 automakers. The group that we had on hand to begin this year’s showdown at the Honda Proving Center in Cantil, California, was incredibly diverse as it vied for our Golden Calipers trophy.
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A quick reminder: Our Car of the Year competition, like our SUV and Truck of the Year programs, is not a direct comparison test; we’re not pitting something like the BMW M2 CS against the Nissan Sentra SL, because doing so would make zero sense. Rather, each car is evaluated on its own merit in our six officially judged categories: value, efficiency, safety, advancement in design, engineering excellence, and performance of intended function. Naturally, these criteria can be applied to any vehicle. We use them first to narrow the field to a selection of excellent finalists then consider them again to determine which car best fulfills its mission.
As we once again got down to business—has it really been a year since our previous Car of the Year throwdown?—in the Mojave Desert, it was a remarkable COTY competition for just how unremarkable it was. We’re more than used to at least a few dramas during these things, but for once we experienced no challenging weather events, no catastrophic breakdowns (vehicular or emotional), and no surprisingly good or bad contenders within the field. Yes, it was hot, as it often is in August, and yes, the Chrysler Pacifica developed a worrying clunk in its front-left suspension, but that was the extent of anyone’s stress.
Indeed, of the three ways an Of The Year competition can go—one obvious winner, no obvious winner, or multiple potential winners—this year represented the latter. Our team faced a cornucopia of very good cars and an unusually strong field of finalists. The judges’ debates and ultimate votes reflected the diversity of both their opinions and the award-eligible candidates.
It was, in a way, heartening to face such a strong field. As noted, the car itself—be it a sedan, coupe, or convertible—has been on the decline for years, and rather than leaving us with a ragtag field of unkillable wheeled cockroaches, the category has instead been distilled to (mostly) its best qualities. Today’s cars drive better, look better, and get better fuel economy than ever. This means it’s more difficult than ever for those still buying cars to go wrong, whichever one they choose.
To the point, there was something for nearly everyone in this field. Sports cars and family sedans, luxury cars and EVs, inexpensive but nice commuters, and even a minivan. The hybrids and EVs range from mileage heroes to supercar killers, the sedans from runabouts to cruisers to limousines. If you can’t find a car that interests you in this group, you don’t like cars and are likely waiting for us to move on to SUV of the Year and Truck of the Year. Both of those reports are coming soon.
Back to the now: Not being saddled with bad or broken cars, road-closing weather, or any other calamities of note made for the smoothest and most relaxed Of The Year competition in recent memory. There was more time for reconnecting with far-flung colleagues and guest judges in person rather than on a screen, be it gathered in associate editor/gaming nerd Billy Rehbock’s hotel room for some rounds of Halo on his 10-year-old old Xbox One S (at this point, he only keeps it as a travel companion for occasions like this) or the hotel’s nonfunctional fire pit. The latter was the biggest disappointment we dealt with; almost bizarrely in the context of MT OTY history, we were so at ease that even our verbal debates were calm, rational discussions heavy on professional critiques and unusually light on emotional outbursts, flaming arguments, and blatant personal insults. We’re either collectively getting old, mellowing in general, or the difference between cars is becoming more immediately apparent.
