VW Golf European Car Of The Year

VW Golf European Car Of The Year

“least daring new model of the year, most conservative, car with the least amount of revolutionary new ideas, or car that looked most like the one it replaced”

GENEVA, Switzerland – The rich get richer, the poor get poorer and Volkswagen of Germany’s Golf is Car of the Year 2013, at least in Europe.

In North America, Cadillac’s ATS won the award.

You couldn’t name a less deserving winner, at a ceremony held on the eve of the annual Geneva Car Show, if you were looking to give the also-rans a break, but unhappily for Europe’s financially threatened manufacturers that wasn’t the case.

Of course, it is hard to criticise the winning candidate, because the VW Golf is unquestionably excellent. But it might also have won the prize for least daring new model of the year, most conservative, car with the least amount of revolutionary new ideas, or car that looked most like the one it replaced.

In truth, there weren’t any cars widening the technology envelope, unlike the winners of the last couple of years, the battery-only Nissan Leaf, and the Opel-Vauxhall electric-range extended Ampera. And given their pitiful sales, winning the award is clearly no guarantee of success in the market place.

My personal car of the year would have been the Mercedes A class because it took a mighty intake of breath and all the courage the company could muster to go with such a radical new design, at least in terms of looks. If the award committee – consisting of “Europe’s best motoring journalists” it risibly said during the presentation ceremony – had wanted to give a loser a break, it might have awarded gold to the Peugeot 208, or the Volvo V40. You couldn’t have argued that both weren’t excellent.

The Ford B Max was worthy but not very exciting, a sports car from Toyota – the GT86 – was never going win, the excellent Hyundai i30, a Golf basher in the making, is made by the Koreans. Enough said.  The Renault Clio is OK, but no car of the year.

At least the award has escaped the stain of possible corruption allegations this time, as when certain dogs from France and Italy have won in the past. Nobody can really argue the winner wasn’t a great car. It just isn’t very exciting. That probably helps to explain why VW is the only European mass car manufacturer making respectable profits at the moment while increasing it’s market share, and threatening to force some its competitors into bankruptcy.