Final judging of the annual SA Guild of Motoring Journalists' Car of the Year competition is no cakewalk. In fact the just-completed 2008 event was the most comprehensive in the event's nearly quarter-century history. LES STEPHENSON, motoring.co.za's editor, was one of the sweaty-palmed adjudicators.
Final judging of the annual SA Guild of Motoring Journalists' Car of the Year competition is no longer just a ride in the country. In fact the just-completed 2008 comparisons were the most comprehensive - and high-tech - in the event's nearly quarter-century history.
The guild's COTY committee has worked hard in recent years to improve and intensify the depth of car-comparison, moving from one lap of the Kyalami circuit and then many, many kilometres of town and country driving on tar and gravel to instead the high-speed circuits of the former WesBank Raceway in southern Johannesburg couple with a repeated route through the suburbs.
For 2008 everything speeded up with the focus on the two high-speed handling circuits of the Gerotek testing centre west of Pretoria and then the facility's high-speed banked oval. No any other COTY competition anywhere in the world can equal the punishment the nine 2008 entries endured.
The 2008 winner will certainly be a worthy one but the way all nine stood up to the gruelling hammering and handling demands imposed on the 27 cars - three examples of each entry - by 54 motoring writers showed one thing: there ain't no such thing as a "bad" car sold in SA.
Here's the final entry list, voted on an chosen from every passenger car launched in SA in the past year:
Fiat Bravo 1.4 T-Jet Sport - R197 000
Honda CR-V 2.2i-CTD 4x4 - R326 900
Land Rover Freelander 2.2 TD4 HSE 4x4 - R410 000
Lexus LS460 - R803 400
Mazda2 1.5 Individual - R158 990
Mazda5 2.0 Active - R199 990
Mercedes C220 Cdi Elegance - R325 500
Nissan Qashqai 2.0 Acenta - R219 950
Toyota Corolla 1.8 Exclusive - R207 500
City and open-road driving was kept to a minimum; the real judging took place on Gerotek's one-way "ride and handling" and "dynamic handling" tracks, each scientifically designed to, together, provide tightening "spiral" curves, severe gradients, high-speed straights, undulations that put some cars in the air and adverse cambers through some corners.
There was almost universal surprise at how well the less handling-inclined - such as the Freelander, Qashqai, Honda and Mazda5 MPV's - responded positively to both tracks. Maybe in future the guild should put up stands and invite the public to watch just how much punishment today's family cars can absorb.
The Lexus and Mercedes, particularly, showed that being big and expensive doesn't mean sluggish and slack through the twisting bits; both, in fact, seemed to give a mechanical shrug that said: "So, what's the big deal?" as they were hustled, tyres howling, around a track that had maybe a metre to spare on each side of their tyres.
Pity, then, that this year the open-road driving failed to include the gravel roads that in the past exposed serious suspension shortcomings in some entries; gravel roads are - and in future will probably become more so - a fact of life in SA and buyers deserve to know how their new car will handle them.
Also new this year was the involvement of satnav company Garmin which supplied a big-screen, R15 000 unit, mounted on sturdy suction pads, in each of the 27 cars. Lost cars used to be a regular - and funny - feature of COTY on-road testing; not so funny was trying, on the move, to read a complicated route schedule while simultaneously completing hundreds of multi-choice questions on dozens of answer sheets.
The whole three days of testing was programmed into the units and those I used kept me and partner freelance journalist James Siddall right on track ain't technology wonderful?
Wonder what the guild will have up its sleeve for us all in 2009.
But now you'll want my choice of winner (with apologies to the other guys) OK, with due consideration for price, my choices are from:
- Mercedes C220 Cdi
- Toyota Corolla 1.8 Exclusive
- Mazda2 1.5 Individual
but after last weekend's thrashing, you'll be safe buying any one of the nine.