Our First Drive Car Of The Year Awards

Sydney Morning Herald

Friday December 1, 2006

Joshua Dowling, Motoring editor, SMH

It's no wonder people are baffled by the number of new cars on the market. After assembling 48 cars from 12 categories for our inaugural Drive Car of the Year award, we began to wonder if there is such a thing as too much choice.

You'd think having $3 million worth of cars under one roof would be a car-buyer's dream. But, at first, it seemed a nightmare. Luckily, we set ourselves some strict criteria before we started. It helped us remove some of the emotion from our decisions - and we hope the results will prove to be a handy guide for those looking to buy new cars.

There will always be those who have unique preferences, so we announce these awards knowing that not everyone will agree with every choice. Indeed, with a few exceptions, any one of our finalists is worthy of consideration. We've made these decisions with your safety, comfort and wallet in mind.

As we reported in the lead-up to our special feature, there are dozens of Car of the Year awards, which is why we believe such awards will soon be a battle of credibility.

Unlike some other awards (that only consider cars released this year), Drive's award is a real consumer guide: every current model on the market is eligible. We believe buyers are looking for the best car in each class, not necessarily the newest. It proved to be a worthwhile decision, as at least one category was won by a three-year-old car.

To our knowledge, no other magazine or newspaper has assembled this many models in the one spot for a week-long test. We clocked up a total of more than 20,000km. For six consecutive days we drove the cars from sunrise

to sunset.

Nine judges crawled over, sat in, steered, swerved and drove on every road surface imaginable the four best models in each of 12 categories.

In addition to the eight experts on the Drive team at the Herald, our sister publication The Age in Melbourne and our colleagues at drive.com.au, we also enlisted the services of Insurance Australia Group industry research manager Robert McDonald.

His experience in evaluating cars for safety, cost of repairs and theft protection proved an invaluable asset.

We hope you enjoy the results and that maybe, just maybe, they help those of you choosing new cars.

© 2006 Sydney Morning Herald

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