/ 25 January 2005

Picking the best of the best

Judging isn’t simply a matter of putting your mark next to the car that gives you the warmest glow in your heart. The most important thing for the 24 jury members and their assistants to remember is that they compare the cars — not with each other, but with their nearest competitors. This can be difficult to do — when you’ve hopped straight from the R474 500 Audi A6 3.0 TDi into the R110 500 Ford Fiesta 1.4, it’s not easy to remember how the Hyundai Getz 1.3 felt the last time you drove it. The static evaluation that forms the first part of the judging can also lead to murky waters — after being impressed by the Audi’s cavernous trunk you find yourself peering into the Ford’s luggage compartment and trying to recollect how the Peugeot 206 compared. How do you rate the Ford on the scale of 1-5? Still, after battling to get into the groove things come together and you do the best you can.

The second phase of the evaluation involved driving each car around Wesbank Raceway — in the pouring rain — to evaluate its handling dynamics. The same rule, of course, applied here. Except that I haven’t driven the Hyundai or the Peugeot around a racetrack in the rain, or even in the dry, so yet again it’s hard to make a decision. The final leg of the testing — and probably the most important — takes place on public roads, where the jurors get to drive each car in the way that most owners will, in the real world.

Without further ado, and before the bean counters have even started adding up all those scorecards, I’ll give you my seat-of-the-pants judgement for the South African Guild of Motoring Journalists’ Car of the Year 2005.

The winners:

1) Volvo S40 2.4i: A worthy winner. A beautiful car with a lovely, lively engine that was fun on the track and fun on the road. Well built, very well equipped and excellent value for money at R227 000.

2) Ford Fiesta 1.4i 5-door: A good looking car that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg to buy or maintain. Remarkably lively, even at altitude, for a 1,4 litre engine. R110 500.

3) Peugeot 407 2.2 ST Sport: A bit of a travelling lounge-suite rather than the sports car its name implies, but very well specced for R249 900. The sort of car you could hire a driver for occasionally, just so you can wallow in the back and feel spoilt. Well worth half the price of the most expensive car here.

The rest – in alphabetical order:

Audi A6 3.0 TDi: Far and away the best car here, but then it should be, at R474 500. A superb package that, for me, was knocked out only by its price: there are too many other superb cars around at half a million to make it stand out against its peers as much as it did against the other much cheaper finalists.

BMW 120i: Failed to stir me as most BMWs do. Good performer but flawed — where the French are so good at making small cars seem massive inside, BMW’s given this big hatch a ridiculously cramped interior. That’s what you get for building a rear-wheel-drive hatch, I suppose. Cover the BMW roundel in the steering wheel and this could be any car, aesthetically. Expensive at R215 000.

Mazda3 1.6 Dynamic (R179 990): I keep thinking that this car doesn’t deserve to be lumped with the “also rans.” It’s well styled and well built, and goes well enough. It’s just that it doesn’t stand head and shoulders above the extremely competitive bunch of cars it has to contend with in its price range.

Opel Astra 1.8i Sport: A fair performer with great looks. Shabby paintwork on the static display car, and a crappy gearchange around the racetrack cost GM points with this one. Expensive spares pricing knocked the final nail into the Opel’s coffin for me. Handling superb, but power should be more impressive in a R193 720 car that looks as hot as this.

Volkswagen Golf 2.0 TDI Sportline: Far nicer to drive than to look at. Offers marvellous ride and handling and feels very solidly built. Pity about the R227 820 price ticket.

So there you have it. Care to comment? Give us some feedback and we’ll publish your idea of what should be Car-of-the-Year.

The SAGMJ Car of the Year winner will be announced at the Wesbank banquet on 15 March 2005.