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The Volkswagen ID.4 has won the World Car of the Year 2021 award.
Volkswagen
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Volkswagen says the ID.4 is just as important to the company’s future as the Beetle was in the past.
Jonathan Gitlin
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I have rarely had as much trouble photographing a new car on a press day at an auto show as trying to get a good photo of the Honda E. He was always harassed.
Jonathan Gitlin
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Which isn’t too surprising considering how cool this thing looks.
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The Defender is a modern take on a 20th century classic.
Jonathan Gitlin
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The 2021 Land Rover Defender.
Landrover
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In addition to the passenger Defenders, Land Rover had more utilitarian Defenders on its stand at the Frankfurt Motor Show in 2019.
Jonathan Gitlin
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The interior is even better.
Jonathan Gitlin
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Torx screws are plentiful!
Jonathan Gitlin
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Mazda’s first battery EV is this little crossover, the MX-30.
Mazda
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Like the BMW i3, the MX-30 has suicide doors.
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The Polestar 2 uses an angular design language.
North Star
The real measure of the success of Volkswagen’s adoption of electric vehicles (EV) after dieselgate will be how much the company can sell each year. But on Tuesday, VW’s job might have gotten a little easier. That’s because the new ID.4 crossover just won this year’s World Car of the Year award, beating two other finalists, the adorable Honda E and the new Toyota Yaris. Fear not, E-fans: the small electric hatchback won the World Urban Car category. Previous winners included the Kia Telluride and Jaguar I-Pace.
I expected the Honda E to win World Car Design of the Year; as one of 93 judges around the world I gave it high marks because just look at it. But more of my fellow judges chose the chunky Land Rover Defender for that honor, and the Land Rover also beat the Mazda MX-30 in the process.
The World Luxury Car award went to the new Mercedes-Benz S-Class, perhaps no surprise when you consider that the other two finalists were the Defender and the Polestar 2. bombastic Benz.
Porsche’s new 911 Turbo took first place in the World Performance Car category. To be fair, this one hurts a bit. In a normal year, I would have ridden most or all of the finalists in all categories, but COVID cancellations meant only a handful of seats. Judges are only allowed to score vehicles in which they actually drove, so Ars had no input for the performance award, which also included the Audi RS Q8 and the Toyota GR Yaris. The Toyota is a homologation special for a racing version that has never raced. It has a bare body compared to the normal Yaris, and just about everyone who’s driven it has fallen in love. Unfortunately, there are no plans to bring it to the US.
The same goes for all three World Urban Car finalists, including the Honda Jazz (or Fit) and the normal Yaris, along with the aforementioned Honda E. The E’s victory here was to be expected; the environment is one of the characteristics by which every car is judged, which means that an electric powertrain has the advantage, everything else is equal.
Before 2022, that won’t be the case – at least for a newly introduced World Electric Vehicle of the Year category. With so many new EVs set to hit showrooms in the coming year, it’s sure to be a hotly contested award.
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