Do Car of the Year contests help you choose your new car?

Here are some statistics that will interest you if you are on a journey to buy a new car. See if you can identify yourself. If not, have a good laugh.

The data crunchers say that beyond the budget that car buyers have in mind, 80 percent of them start their buying journey without a clear idea of what they want to buy.

The buying journey of the normal car buyer takes about 11 weeks, where the first four weeks is exploratory and the last four weeks is finding the deal and getting the financing. In between, there are three weeks where, if there is a spouse, compromises are worked out.

Well, perhaps that’s not what the data crunchers said in so few words, but it must be acknowledged that women account for 55 percent of the car buying decision.

The Malaysia Automotive Institute (MAI) Malaysia Car of the Year awards gala night last Thursday was one such contest where the intention was two-fold: guide car buyers and also celebrate the achievements of the car makers and their captains.

Our feedback and testimonials from our readers are that they use our COTY awards to choose their cars.

"I bought my Ford Ranger because I wanted a pickup but didn’t know which. Once I learned that the Ranger was the pickup of the year, and the overall car of the year, it was an easy decision for me,” said SR, one of our readers, of our COTY awards a few years ago where the Ford Ranger was both a category winner as well as the Overal COTY.

Our confidence that our MAI Malaysia Car of the Year contest helps you make your buying decision better and is boosted by most manufacturers’ keenness to win. Winning a Car of the Year award definitely, helps to sell cars except for brands - think Porsche, Ferrari, and, in Malaysia, and Jaguar – where punters know precisely what they want.

Categorisation is where the experience of the judges count for a lot because cars designs and powertrains are in constant evolution. Car makers do their best to differentiate their products and to make cars that we don’t even know we want, but which we lust for when these are launched.

Where the car makers try their best to make unique products, the judges of the MAI-Malaysia COTY have to try their best to level the playing field.

It’s easy in most cases such as pickup trucks where they fit into the RM100,000 – RM140,000 category, all use diesel engines and have automatic transmissions and are twin-cab i.e. 4-doors with a cargo bed.

The MAI-Malaysia COTY contest starts every year with the categorization of the new cars that are launched from Nov. 1 last year to Oct 31 this year, about 60 cars.

Our research manager, SJ Ganapathy, generated the first categorization on September 7th with 57 cars and 14 categories

In all, we had 12 iterations of the categories until we were satisfied that we had done the best to level the playing field in the categories. We were aided by the contest software designed by CarBay.my and its principal, Girnarsoft of Jaipur, India.

There were some segments that were so difficult to homologate in the conventional way (by engine displacement or body type) that we created new segments to capture the mood that the car makers had intended.

Inevitably, some cars were not nominated for the contest because there was no competition to them. Jaguar was affected because they had a full portfolio of posh rides with downsized yet powerful 2,000 cc engine. Yet, their prices were premium because they were fully imported cars.

For instance, using the initial category of executive sedans with engine displacements from 2,000cc to 2,500cc, the Jaguar XJ 2.0 i4 (RM645,000), the Jaguar XE 2.0 Prestige (RM580,000) and the Jaguar XF 2.0 Prestige (RM400,000) would have to compete with five other models including the Proton Perdana 2.0 (RM113,000) and the Perdana 2.4 (RM134,000).

The judges agonised on this for several meetings until it was decided to create a Young Upwardly Mobile Executives category which was won by the Mercedes-Benz C180.

The judges and the Clerk of the Course consoled ourselves that Jaguar was in a class by itself by virtue of its high-tech downsized engines. Perhaps next year when there are competitors to Jaguar in the downsized engine luxury limousine category?

Another critical decision made by the panel of judges was to include variants in the same category, a deviation from our previous COTY where only the highest specification variant was selected for the competition.

The Honda Civic started the argument. In the family sedan category, the Honda Civic 1.5 TC was a turbocharged car while the Honda Civic 1.8 was a normally aspirated car. Both had significantly different characteristics. Would you recommend your elderly Aunt who drove gingerly, crouched over the steering wheel, a turbocharged Civic when an NA Civic would suit her better?

The same argument applied in the entry level category. There was the Perodua Bezza 1.0 with a three-cylinder engine and a Bezza 1.3 with a 4-cylinder engine.

Again we put in two of the variants in the same category on the grounds that the 1.0 was a good car for pottering in the city while the 1.3 was a more versatile car for buyers who might need to travel longer distances.

Happily, despite the earlier fears of vote splitting, in the final outcome, the Honda Civic 1.5 TC won both the category as well as the Overall Car of the Year while the Perodua Bezza 1.3 won both the entry-level category as well as the People’s Choice.

The People's Choice voting was powered by Girnarsoft of Jaipur, India, and its subsidiaries, CarBay.my and DealerTech

Yamin Vong was the chairman of the Malaysia Car of the Year 2016 and the Clerk of the Course, Jason Tan, free-lance journalist and lifestyle editor with a keen passion for automobiles and automotive history