Results of the Autoworld Car of the Year Awards 2011 were announced recently where a total of 17 awards were up for grabs contested by 33 nominated cars that were on sale from November 2010 to October 2011. The results of these awards were reached by a consensus between scores given by our panel of judges and votes casted online from our readers.
List of Winners
Best Super Compact Passenger Car: Perodua Myvi 1.3 Best Sub-Compact Passenger Car: Honda Insight Best Premium Sub-Compact Passenger Car: Volkswagen Polo GTI
Best Compact Passenger Car: Proton Inspira Best Premium Compact Passenger Car: Volvo S60 T5 Best Mid-Sized Passenger Car: Ford Mondeo EcoBoost
Best Premium Mid-Sized Passenger Car: Volvo S80 T5
Best MPV: Hyundai Grand Starex Royale Best SUV / Crossover: Chevrolet Captiva Best Premium SUV / Crossover: Volkswagen Touareg
Best Pick-Up Truck: Toyota Hilux
Best Alternative Energy Vehicle: Honda Insight Best Performance Car: Volkswagen Polo GTI Best Value for Money Performance Car: Mazda3 MPS
Judges’ Choice Award: Volkswagen Polo GTI Autoworld Member’s Choice Award: Volvo S80 T5
The aforementioned judging panel is largely retained from members of the previous year’s inaugural awards, and the team of judges took the nominated test cars on road tests to venues such as Belum Rainforest, Lumut, Tanjung Tualang, Malacca, and Ipoh. At each test drive session, each judge is given the opportunity to drive every car and award them with appropriate scores on various criteria such as performance, space, comfort, price, and value-for-money. The judges’ scores are eventually added up and averaged out, but they do not decide the winners outright. In order to give its readers a say in the awards, a scoring mechanism was developed whereby 20% of the overall scoring awarded to the cars are based on online voting over a one-month period by Autoworld members through a specially developed microsite. The combination of scoring from judges and results of online voting means that the winning cars were chosen not arbitrarily, but as a consensus between both judges and readers. Echoing a trend from the previous year’s award, online voting proved decisive in settling the outcome of certain categories.
