What will be the Stuff Top Car for 2021?
Friday, 17 December 2021
So right about now you are probably wondering where our traditional Top Cars picks for this year are.
And you are right to wonder, because we have usually revealed them by now. But, of course, this year was different, what with that ongoing pandemic delaying our access to road test cars and the ongoing stock shortages disrupting the entire car industry no end as well.
So we decided to make a few changes this year, some temporary, some more permanent.
The biggest and most obvious temporary change is that we have pushed our announcement back to the start of next year, to allow us to squeeze in all those cars we had to postpone during Auckland's four-month lockdown.
**READ MORE:
* Celebrating the best cars of 2020
* The little big winner: the Stuff Top Car for 2020 is the Toyota Yaris
* Tesla Model 3 crushes Hilux in September sales
* Top Cars: the rest of the best
**
So to that end, we will be announcing the winners over the week starting on the 9th of January, just under a month away, so not long to wait now!
The other big change is more permanent – we have given the categories a thorough shake up as well.
The fragmented nature of 2021 has meant we have decided to cut down on the number of different categories by combining a number of them to make things more streamlined.
But another factor was the increasingly blurred lines between cars, SUVs and even size segments have led us to take a look at things from a different angle. For example, whereas previously, having separate categories for small, medium and large cars and SUVs made sense, the literal extinction of the mainstream large – and even medium – traditional car, and the domination of the SUV in every segment has often made that an exercise in frustration.
So we are taking advantage of the unusual circumstances of 2021 to change things up – give Top Cars a Casino Royale-style gritty reboot, if you will – and test out an entirely new range of categories.
While we will still have the overall Top Car winner, this year our reduced category count will be based on a more “why someone might be buying this car” approach.
An example of this are our previous Top EV and Top Hybrid categories. The absolute prevalence of electrified powertrains and rapidly rising percentage of battery electric vehicles quickly means that those separate categories are becoming pointless – virtually everything will be hybridised before much longer, and we have increasingly seen EVs win categories that weren’t EV-specific (the Mercedes-Benz EQC took out our Top Medium SUV category in 2020, for example), so why have a separate category?
Instead, we will have a “Top Car for the environment” category this year. This will take into account a wider range of concerns, like the overall carbon footprint and general sustainability of a car and the company's approach to making it. Because of the lack of industry-wide transparency on this, however, it does make it a bit more difficult, but then if a company isn’t being particularly transparent, then it probably doesn’t deserve to win this category anyway…
Here are the categories for Top Cars 2021:
Top Car
The overall winner. Any car we drove and wrote about in 2021 is eligible, but only one will rise to the top. Although it is often quite close…
Top Car for the environment
As detailed above, this takes into account a wider range of considerations than simply “an EV is good for the planet”. Again, everything is eligible, but we really don’t see a V8 taking this one…
Top Car for families
Room, ease of use, sensible practicalities, value for money – a particular segment of vehicle doesn’t have a monopoly on these qualities, so we will be picking this one on how well a particular vehicle deals with every day family duties.
Top Car for commuters
Again, no particular segment of vehicle ticks all the boxes for the commuter, but does the ride height of an SUV make it better? Or the nimble ease of a small city car? How about the zero emission silence of an EV? Or the high-tech semi-autonomous capabilities of a high-end luxury car?
Top Car for a budget
This one is pretty self-explanatory – which vehicle offers you the best experience for the least money.
Top Car for fun
Again, pretty self-explanatory – bang-for-your-buck on the fun scale! But this doesn’t necessarily mean ferocious straight line speed or razor sharp handling – we also include off-road fun in this category – the winner could be a supercar, hot hatch or even a 4x4 SUV or ute. As long as it is massively fun and engaging…
Top Car for work
Okay, so a traditional “car” is unlikely to win this particular category, but for uniformity we’ll just call it that – this one is for vans, utes and anything else that can perform serious working duties.
Top Car for spoiling yourself
So you’ve made it in life and fancy treating yourself to something a bit special? This is the category for you then. It could be a high-end sports sedan, a supercar or a luxury limousine. Or maybe even something that combines several of those things.
Top Car brand
Which car brand do we consider stood out above all others in this last year? Whether it be by shaking up the industry, introducing a bunch of impressive new models, or just having a banger of a year in general.
So that’s what Top Cars 2021 will look like. Keep in mind that this contracted version is a response to a weird, broken year, and we will be keen on expanding it again, so please let us know what you would like to see happen in future Top Cars awards.
Do you like the new approach to things, or do you think the old categories were more useful? What categories would you like to see? And what would you like to see gone? We want your input to help shape the future of Stuff’s Top Cars.