US awards Honda Civic and Volvo XC90

Honda's new Civic and Volvo's latest XC90 have been named the 2016 North American Car and Truck/Utility of the Year at the Detroit motor show.

Launched Stateside in September, the redesigned Civic sedan, which arrives in Australia this year, and coupe beat out the Chevrolet Malibu and Mazda MX-5 to take top car honors.

“This award is acknowledgement that the new Civic is an exceptional car,” said Honda Australia director Stephen Collins. “The Civic is a pillar of the Honda brand globally and this new model, which has been completely redesigned from the ground up, will make its way to our shores in the middle of this year. We can’t wait to bring this new Civic to our customers.”

It is the second win for the Civic in the award’s history, following its win in 2006, and gives Honda 11 finalists for the NACOTY awards since their inception in 1994 – more than any brand outside Detroit’s big three car-makers.

The second-generation XC90, meantime, defeated the Honda Pilot and Nissan Titan XD to the truck/SUV award, at the same show Volvo's all-new S90 sedan based on the same new SPA platform.

The previous-generation Swedish SUV won the award in 2003, when it set industry standards for seven-seat interior packaging and occupant impact protection for an SUV.

Now, with the company restructured under Chinese ownership after Ford sold the brand in 2010, the first all-new XC90 in more than decade has repeated its forebear's success.

Accepting the award, Volvo Car USA president and CEO Lex Kerssemakers gushed: “There is a lot more to come. By 2019 Volvo will have a totally renewed product portfolio. By then the all-new XC90 will be the oldest car in the showroom.”

By then, Volvo Car will have opened its $500 million assembly plant in South Carolina, where it will build the mid-size S60 sedan for global export. Volvo is also expected to make considerable gains with Israeli technology partner Mobileye and Silicon Valley-based NVIDIA toward full autonomous urban and highway driving.

NVIDIA announced last week that Volvo Car will equip a fleet of 100 XC90s in Gothenburg, Sweden with its Drive PX2 in-car supercomputer to advance real-world development of an autonomous vehicle.

Another world-first technology in development by Volvo is an animal identification technology which can differentiates between animals and human pedestrians, an important ability for an autonomous car. It’s even being developed to distinguish between a tall kangaroo and the average Aussie bloke.

When we spoke with Kerssemakers in November he claimed Volvo expects to have the self-driving technology ready for customers in 2020 across its expanding product range.

Volvo today revealed in Detroit the replacement for its large S80 sedan, and we’ll soon see a new 40-series range of small cars and SUVs designed and engineered at Volvo’s facilities in Gothenburg.

For design director Peter Horbury, who designed the original XC90 and now oversees Volvo studios in Europe and Geely studios in China, the pace has been rapid-fire.

The North American awards are decided by 53 independent journalists from the US and Canada, who cited the XC90’s technology, comfort, dynamics and design as key reasons for their decision.