Something's wrong when the best car can't win
By JEREMY CATO
Thursday, December 15, 2005 Page G5
The trick with courting publicity while also trying to please almost everyone is that you might just get attention you don't want as you go about making some people unhappy.
Take me and the Automobile Journalists Association of Canada. I'm forced to give AJAC some unflattering press because I am appalled at some of AJAC's 2006 Car of the Year category winners. Some of them are downright silly and one lacks total legitimacy.
For the latter, I am not talking about the car that won, mind you. The 2006 Chevrolet Corvette Z06 is a brilliant car and deserves whatever honours it gets. But certain insiders at AJAC chose to give this car an award called the "Most Coveted Car" without consulting the membership at large. They just made it up.
Why? An apparently flawed process left the Z06 on the sidelines as the much less pricey Honda Civic Si took home the trophy for Best New Sports/Performance car.
The AJAC insiders who chose to give the 'Vette its "coveted" crown clearly had their hearts in the right place. I know every single one of them quite well and I believe them to be good people who acted with the best of intentions. But they didn't have the mandate to step outside the established voting procedures and just hand out a special, extra award to the 'Vette.
What AJAC should have done is take its lumps and concede that something is wrong with its testing and voting process. What other conclusion can one reach when it is impossible for the best car to win? Making up a special award for the 'Vette won't fix an inherently flawed process.
Now for those who remain a little baffled by this whole controversy, let's recap and put everyone on the same page. In late October, 60-odd members of AJAC gathered, as they do every year, in Belleville, Ontario, to spend the better part of a week testing 62 new next year's models. Their goal was to come up with the winners of various Car of the Year categories. The overall Car and Truck of the Year are then chosen from among the category winners and announced in February at the Toronto auto show.
Flawed or not, this is a pretty thorough process. The evaluation procedures are intense and detailed, requiring AJAC members to work hard at comparing all the different new models in a wide-ranging manner. None of the AJAC members are paid for their efforts. In fact, all of them pay their own expenses for hotel accommodation, though AJAC provides a small subsidy for members who travel long distances.
At the end of it all, AJAC voters plug in numbers that reflect ratings of each vehicle on everything from cargo-carrying capabilities to road manners and even apparent build quality. Those numbers are then tabulated by an outside accounting firm and run through a "value" program that is designed to factor in price. The idea is to level the playing field among vehicles with quite different price points.
In the case of the Corvette, the price turned out to be a huge problem. Apparently the Z06 was off the charts with every single voter in all the subjective categories. The voters universally loved the car, and rightly so.
But the Z06 is about $60,000 more than the Civic Si. Once the value factor came into play, the Z06 not only failed to win, it crashed out of the top three in its category. The Civic Si, with its more manageable price, emerged victorious.
To me, this can only mean the AJAC methodology needs to be revisited.
If the value factor results in the utter exclusion of the best new car of 2006, then it's time to go back and revisit the methodology. Anyone who has taken a research course knows this; it's basic Research 101.
That is, if your research methods result in an absurd conclusion, then there is something wrong with those methods. Good intentions aren't going to fix a problem with the research question and how it is answered. Remember, the "value" factor is supposed to level the playing field, not tip it in favour of less expensive cars.
So in the case of the Corvette, AJAC's credibility has taken a hit. I'm not happy about that. I'm a member of AJAC, thus I've taken a hit, too. As a group we need to fix this problem right now.
While we're at it, AJAC needs to ask a few other questions. For instance: Do we really need so many categories? For 2006, there are 11 categories, including Best New Alternative Power. Add in more awards for Best New Design, Best New Technology, overall Car of the Year and Truck of the Year and there are just too many awards.
Now if AJAC stays with this long list of categories, then it needs to ask such things as what's an SUV (sport-utility vehicle)? The winner of this category for '06 is the Mercedes-Benz M-class. Good vehicle, very pretty and highly competent in the off-road stuff. But it has a car-like unibody structure, not a ladder frame. So I'd argue it's more a crossover vehicle than a true SUV.
What's a pickup? The winner for '06 is the Honda Ridgeline. This is a very interesting vehicle and it is having a huge impact on the future pickup plans of all the auto makers. But the Ridgeline is more a crossover vehicle with a smallish cargo bed at the rear than a true "pickup."
What the heck is a "modern muscle car?" This year, it is the Dodge Magnum SRT8. But come on -- doesn't this smack, just a little bit, of a made-up category? One that was created just to provide a space for orphan vehicles?
Well, that's a start. Frankly, though, if it were up to me I'd pare the whole thing down to four categories: car and truck of the year more than $35,000 and car and truck of the year less than $35,000. Sounds simple enough, doesn't it? We'll adjust the dollar figure each year based on the economy and market conditions. But fundamentally what AJAC needs to do is streamline this thing.
jcato@globeandmail.com
SOURCE - The Globe and Mail, Canada's National Newspaper
By JEREMY CATO
Thursday, December 15, 2005 Page G5
The trick with courting publicity while also trying to please almost everyone is that you might just get attention you don't want as you go about making some people unhappy.
Take me and the Automobile Journalists Association of Canada. I'm forced to give AJAC some unflattering press because I am appalled at some of AJAC's 2006 Car of the Year category winners. Some of them are downright silly and one lacks total legitimacy.
For the latter, I am not talking about the car that won, mind you. The 2006 Chevrolet Corvette Z06 is a brilliant car and deserves whatever honours it gets. But certain insiders at AJAC chose to give this car an award called the "Most Coveted Car" without consulting the membership at large. They just made it up.
Why? An apparently flawed process left the Z06 on the sidelines as the much less pricey Honda Civic Si took home the trophy for Best New Sports/Performance car.
The AJAC insiders who chose to give the 'Vette its "coveted" crown clearly had their hearts in the right place. I know every single one of them quite well and I believe them to be good people who acted with the best of intentions. But they didn't have the mandate to step outside the established voting procedures and just hand out a special, extra award to the 'Vette.
What AJAC should have done is take its lumps and concede that something is wrong with its testing and voting process. What other conclusion can one reach when it is impossible for the best car to win? Making up a special award for the 'Vette won't fix an inherently flawed process.
Now for those who remain a little baffled by this whole controversy, let's recap and put everyone on the same page. In late October, 60-odd members of AJAC gathered, as they do every year, in Belleville, Ontario, to spend the better part of a week testing 62 new next year's models. Their goal was to come up with the winners of various Car of the Year categories. The overall Car and Truck of the Year are then chosen from among the category winners and announced in February at the Toronto auto show.
Flawed or not, this is a pretty thorough process. The evaluation procedures are intense and detailed, requiring AJAC members to work hard at comparing all the different new models in a wide-ranging manner. None of the AJAC members are paid for their efforts. In fact, all of them pay their own expenses for hotel accommodation, though AJAC provides a small subsidy for members who travel long distances.
At the end of it all, AJAC voters plug in numbers that reflect ratings of each vehicle on everything from cargo-carrying capabilities to road manners and even apparent build quality. Those numbers are then tabulated by an outside accounting firm and run through a "value" program that is designed to factor in price. The idea is to level the playing field among vehicles with quite different price points.
In the case of the Corvette, the price turned out to be a huge problem. Apparently the Z06 was off the charts with every single voter in all the subjective categories. The voters universally loved the car, and rightly so.
But the Z06 is about $60,000 more than the Civic Si. Once the value factor came into play, the Z06 not only failed to win, it crashed out of the top three in its category. The Civic Si, with its more manageable price, emerged victorious.
To me, this can only mean the AJAC methodology needs to be revisited.
If the value factor results in the utter exclusion of the best new car of 2006, then it's time to go back and revisit the methodology. Anyone who has taken a research course knows this; it's basic Research 101.
That is, if your research methods result in an absurd conclusion, then there is something wrong with those methods. Good intentions aren't going to fix a problem with the research question and how it is answered. Remember, the "value" factor is supposed to level the playing field, not tip it in favour of less expensive cars.
So in the case of the Corvette, AJAC's credibility has taken a hit. I'm not happy about that. I'm a member of AJAC, thus I've taken a hit, too. As a group we need to fix this problem right now.
While we're at it, AJAC needs to ask a few other questions. For instance: Do we really need so many categories? For 2006, there are 11 categories, including Best New Alternative Power. Add in more awards for Best New Design, Best New Technology, overall Car of the Year and Truck of the Year and there are just too many awards.
Now if AJAC stays with this long list of categories, then it needs to ask such things as what's an SUV (sport-utility vehicle)? The winner of this category for '06 is the Mercedes-Benz M-class. Good vehicle, very pretty and highly competent in the off-road stuff. But it has a car-like unibody structure, not a ladder frame. So I'd argue it's more a crossover vehicle than a true SUV.
What's a pickup? The winner for '06 is the Honda Ridgeline. This is a very interesting vehicle and it is having a huge impact on the future pickup plans of all the auto makers. But the Ridgeline is more a crossover vehicle with a smallish cargo bed at the rear than a true "pickup."
What the heck is a "modern muscle car?" This year, it is the Dodge Magnum SRT8. But come on -- doesn't this smack, just a little bit, of a made-up category? One that was created just to provide a space for orphan vehicles?
Well, that's a start. Frankly, though, if it were up to me I'd pare the whole thing down to four categories: car and truck of the year more than $35,000 and car and truck of the year less than $35,000. Sounds simple enough, doesn't it? We'll adjust the dollar figure each year based on the economy and market conditions. But fundamentally what AJAC needs to do is streamline this thing.
jcato@globeandmail.com
SOURCE - The Globe and Mail, Canada's National Newspaper
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