My votes for Car of the Year

For the uninitiated, Canadian Car of the Year happens every October. Auto journalists who meet two criteria are invited to participate in the voting, the criteria is:

• Must be an Automobile Journalists Association of Canada member
• Must regularly test drive vehicles

Every new vehicle for 2009 is eligible to be voted best new car for its category and upon winning its categry is then eligible to be voted best new overall car (or truck). The categories change from year-to-year. For example, there was no minivan category this year and some years there has been an alternate fuel category.

In order to vote for a category you must drive each vehicle in the category on the same day. This makes it impossible to vote for every single category so journalists are assigned three categories and with whatever time is left over are encouraged to complete other categories. I was able to complete my three assigned categories and then complete two others driving a total of 20 cars over two days.

I’ve put screen captures of my actual ballots below. A few notes – when I vote, I give numerical values based on how vehicles compare to each other in a given category. So if a $70,000 Acura receives an eight for throttle response, and I also give an eight to a Pontiac Vibe, this is not to say they are the same. I compare vehicles to each other in the same category.

If you’d like to ask why I gave a certain score to a certain vehicle, please leave a comment. I put my votes online because I have no problem with letting Canadians (and the rest of the world, I suppose) know how I voted which may lead to a consumer purchasing one vehicle over another. That being said, if you e-mail me directly, I will not repsond, only to posts here on this blog.

However, I may not exactly remember the circumstances that lead me to vote the way I did. As I said, I drove 20 cars over two days and while I filled out my ballots after each category, I may be a bit fuzzy now.

Here are my ballots:

Luxury Vehicles under $50,000

Family Car $22,000 – $30,000

Pickups

Small Cars over $18,000

Luxury Vehciles over $50,000

For those who are curious – I think the Honda Fit has an excellent chance to be overall car of the year. I know my ratings don’t neccissarily reflect that opinion but the buzz I was hearing at Test Fest and given the solid scores I did give it make me think it has a good shot.