How we decided the 2022 carsales Car of the Year

Testing for carsales Car of the Year, proudly presented by Bingle, traditionally takes about a week but the process starts long before that.

Although this year’s was the first to gather our finalists and judges together physically after two years of COVID-affected awards processes, consideration for 2022 Car of the Year began with the first new model released since last year’s event.

To be eligible for carsales COTY, a vehicle must be:

That still left us with dozens of new models and hundreds of individual variants, requiring a brutal culling process to whittle the field down to a shortlist of 30 contenders and then 10 finalists plus two wildcards that continued through to the testing process to find our ultimate winner.

Precedence was given to all-new models rather than facelifts. Thus, our 10 finalists were:
BMW iX xDrive40
BYD Atto 3 Extended Range
Cupra Formentor VZx
Ford Everest Sport
Honda Civic VTi-LX
Jeep Grand Cherokee L Summit Reserve
Kia EV6 GT-Line AWD
Mercedes-Benz C 200
Tesla Model Y RWD
Volkswagen Polo Style

And our two COTY wildcards, selected at the discretion of our most senior road testers, were:
Genesis GV60 Performance Lux
Toyota Corolla Cross Atmos AWD Hybrid

Before we conducted back-to-back testing, we held a reader poll to determine the People’s Choice, which this year was the Cupra Formentor. The hot wagon-cum-SUV attracted more than 30 per cent of your votes.

Determining the carsales Car of the Year, proudly presented by Bingle, involves five main criteria but cost of ownership data supplied by the vehicle valuation experts at RedBook.com.au this year accounted for 50 per cent of each vehicle’s score and was used in all three steps of the COTY adjudication process.

While the COTY award applies to the entire model range, RedBook calculates cost of ownership based on the entry-level variant of each model, with two exceptions this year being the Volkswagen Polo Style (the only manual in the field, so we chose the more popular auto) and the Toyota Corolla Cross Atmos AWD Hybrid, because the base GX 2WD variant was unavailable for testing and will be less popular.

RedBook’s unique and comprehensive cost of ownership data scores and ranks each model in six key areas:

Price: Compared to other models in the same market segment
Depreciation: Average retail (non-private) value of a ‘good’ three-year-old example with 45,000km under its belt
Running costs: Finance, insurance, fuel/electricity and tyres over three years
Aftersales: Service costs, warranty and roadside assistance
New technology: Score based on nine safety features designed to protect occupants and other road users
Bonus points: Selected stand-out features standard across the range

No vehicle received a perfect score in any category and no one vehicle topped every category. Once tallied, the RedBook cost of ownership data ranked our 12 finalists thus:
Kia EV6
Cupra Formentor
Genesis GV60
Toyota Corolla Cross
Ford Everest
Honda Civic
Jeep Grand Cherokee L
Volkswagen Polo
Tesla Model Y
BYD Atto 3
BMW iX
Mercedes-Benz C-Class

The other 50 per cent of the score is accounted for by our 10 judges, who evaluate the cars on Safety, Innovation and Technology, Practicality and Presentation and Road Testing, including ride, handling and general excellence behind the wheel.

It’s important to note that this is not one of our regular comparison tests. Judging such disparate vehicles against one another would be unfair and unrepresentative, so the use of criteria allows us to rank each car’s strengths and weaknesses against its market peers to arrive at a fair assessment.

For example, comparing a Ford Everest with a Volkswagen Polo is basically impossible. Instead, we asked the question: “How does the Ford Everest compare on safety, innovation, technology, practicality, presentation and driving against other large off-road SUVs in its market segment?” And likewise for Volkswagen Polo and every other vehicle in the field.

The process for assessing our contenders starts with a full day of static evaluation. Judges are nominated as ‘experts’ for particular vehicles, presenting them in detail to the rest of the team. All 10 judges then crawl over the cars, poking and prodding and lifting, et al, to assess innovation and technology and practicality and presentation.

It’s here that the Tesla Model Y electric SUV impressed with its space efficiency and massive, super-fast touch-screen. The Cupra Formentor performance crossover also surprised with the amount of cabin room it offers for its overall size.

On a less positive note, the quirky design of the BYD Atto 3’s interior was deemed less of an issue than some unsightly build quality elements.

Meantime, chief judge Marton Pettendy refused to accept the bonnet of the BMW iX cannot be opened. It was a foible that continued to vex our Managing Editor all week.

It’s clearly a missed opportunity when the Tesla offers 117L of luggage space in its nose.

From there it was on to our testing base, VinFast and GM Holden’s former proving ground south-east of Melbourne, for two days of dynamic assessment. An international-standard vehicle testing facility, Lang Lang is the ideal place to put our contenders through the wringer, with its ride and handling course purpose-built to tie cars into knots.

Intermittent rain spiced up proceedings somewhat and exposed the compromises inherent in the Ford Everest’s all-terrain tyres. Another large SUV, the Jeep Grand Cherokee, demonstrated superior roadholding and dynamics but its underwhelming petrol V6 blotted its copybook.

Standouts included the punchy performance of the Genesis GV60 electric SUV, the beautifully polished dynamics of both the Honda Civic hatch and Kia EV6 electric SUV, and the playful handling of the Cupra Formentor.

Meanwhile, it amazed a number of judges that despite being radically different mechanically to its stablemates and forebears, the iX still managed to feel exactly like a “proper” BMW.

Here all contenders also underwent a number of performance tests to collect data and evaluate how they performed in an emergency situation – specifically, braking from 100-0km/h in both wet and dry conditions, and performing an emergency double lane-change.

Since accelerating to beyond 100km/h is required for the braking test, we record 0-100km/h acceleration figures while we were at it, for interest’s sake. The results were as follows:

100-0km/h dry/wet
Tesla Model Y – 35.6/43.4m
Cupra Formentor – 36.4/44.0m
Genesis GV60 – 36.6/47.8m
Honda Civic – 37.0/46.8m
Kia EV6 – 37.1/44.0m
BMW iX – 37.1/44.8m
Mercedes-Benz C-Class – 37.3/48.4m
Volkswagen Polo – 37.3/49.6m
Toyota Corolla Cross – 38.6/45.5m
BYD Atto 3 – 39.2/48.7m
Jeep Grand Cherokee L – 39.8/55.8m
Ford Everest – 43.7/69.0m

0-100km/h
Genesis GV60 – 4.1sec
Cupra Formentor – 4.8sec
Kia EV6 – 5.0sec
BMW iX – 6.1sec
Tesla Model Y – 6.9sec
BYD Atto 3 – 7.4sec
Mercedes-Benz C-Class – 7.7sec
Toyota Corolla Cross – 8.2sec
Honda Civic – 8.4sec
Ford Everest – 9.2sec
Jeep Grand Cherokee L – 9.9sec
Volkswagen Polo – 10.5sec

As you can see, most vehicles performed quite well, with the Tesla being the standout performer in terms of braking.

On the other side of the ledger, the Ford Everest was almost alarming in its lack of retardation, particularly in the wet, and not particularly stable in the process. It’s a stark reminder of the compromises inherent in a tall, heavy vehicle with limited grip, even one as otherwise impressive as the new Everest.

Another point to note was the strange groaning noise emitted by the Corolla Cross under heavy braking. It didn’t appear to affect performance in any way but was nonetheless off-putting.

The purpose of the double lane-change manoeuvre isn’t to find a maximum value but to rank how comfortable and stable the cars are during rapid changes of direction at a set of predetermined speeds. The procedure saw the testing start at 60km/h and increasing in 5km/h increments until the procedure could no longer be comfortably performed without scattering cones to the four winds.

The Everest again struggled, its weight, lack of grip and slow steering saw it unable to complete the test even at 60km/h without cone casualties. This was also the limit for the large Jeep but it was much more composed in the process.

Adding another 5km/h and the Genesis, BYD and Tesla were out of ideas, all displaying reasonable amounts of oversteer (the rear-end sliding) on the sharp change of direction. In all cases, the cars’ stability control systems stepped in and did the job before the situation got out of hand.

The Tesla’s waywardness was exacerbated by extremely fast steering that turned small inputs into large ones, particularly in an emergency.

The rest of the field managed 70km/h but with varying degrees of comfort. It’s about the limit for the Toyota Corolla Cross and Kia EV6, the BMW iX was composed but hindered by its size, the Cupra moved around a lot but in an entertaining fashion and the Mercedes-Benz C-Class was extremely impressive in its accuracy and control.

The surprising benchmark of the field, however, was the Honda Civic. The expensive but impressive small car negotiated the course with little fuss.

The final piece of the testing puzzle was four-up urban loops around Melbourne to assess the cars from all corners in the environment in which they’ll be used most.

It was then time for the arguments to start in the carsales boardroom packed with coffee, tea, biscuits and opinions.

It’s fair to say none of the carsales COTY finalists enjoyed absolute universal acclaim, but some were more easily dismissed than others.

Some provoked strenuous discussion, but that’s the benefit of having a diverse and experienced judging panel.

Our process sees each judge submit votes for their top three cars in an independent ‘blind’ poll. These are combined with RedBook rankings – at a weighting of 50 per cent – to determine a winner.

The Cupra Formentor and Genesis GV60 were the surprise podium-placers, earning them Highly Commended awards in 2022.

But it was the Kia EV6 that emerged on top, securing five first-place votes and three seconds. Only two judges did not list the Kia in their top three.

The EV6 is the third EV to claim our top gong, following the Hyundai IONIQ 5 in 2021 and the Tesla Model S in 2015.

All hail the Kia EV6, the 2022 carsales Car of the Year, proudly presented by Bingle.