2016 Overall World Car of the Year

[Felix C]

I drove a GFs Miata once for a while. Other vehicles towered over me and this is before the large SUV craze hit. Now I would feel like those humans running among the stampeding dinosaurs in the recent King Kong remake.

[GTOlover]

The Mazda MX5 Miata has been on Car Drivers top 10 list as long or as many times as the BMW 3-Series/M3, Honda Civic, Toyota Camry and Mazda 3 all are huge sales success in their segment with a major cult like following and lots of brand/Customer loyalty.

But I do see it odd naming a two seat convertible sports car as odd to be the world car of the year not in anyway to say the MX5 is bad car just an odd choice IMO

It would make perfect sense for it to be named world sports car of the year though.

[latunafish]

i owned a miata several years ago and i agree, it is an award winning car. pretty much bullet proof drive train and sold it for the same price i bought it for, three years later!

[notnamed]

They do have a separate World Performance Car award which was the Audi R8.

They basically judge on how well they achieve their design goal whatever that may be.

You may also wonder how such a wide-ranging selection of models that happen to appear in a given year might fairly be compared. Among the 2015 finalists, for example, were the powerful Ford Mustang sports coupé and convertible at one end of the scale and the quirky Citroen C4 Cactus at the other. The answer is to judge each car on its fitness for purpose, across the same set of criteria. The Mustang is clearly meant to be fast, fun, affordable and stylish, this being its primary purpose, and it will be assessed with an emphasis on these qualities. But it will also be judged on real-world practicalities such as running costs, interior space and comfort, because without a decent slice of each of these qualities and more, the car will not be easy to live with.

For the Citroen, by contrast, the emphasis will be on space, practicality, comfort, convenience and low running costs. And because it’s unusually styled, careful attention will be paid to the issue of whether its design has compromised its usefulness.

The fitness for purpose principle enables a Ferrari to be scored using the same criteria as a Fiat 500.

The World view on car awards | The National

[Yanagisawa]

Originally Posted by Garthur

Worthless car for 98% of the population. I would like to know what was the criteria for the selection.

And any five seater car is worthless for like 80% of the world population, I guess

[V8 Vega]

I have seen lists of best places to retire and then they list a bunch of places where it's freezing cold. I hate to be cold.