Car Of The Year 2020

IT’S BACK TO BARE-KNUCKLE BASICS AS THE REBORN TOYOTA RAV4 TAKES ON THE HIGH-FLYING MAZDA CX-5 AND HYUNDAI TUCSON IN THEIR RAWEST, MOST AFFORDABLE FORMS

- Andy Enright

IT’S GOING TO be between the BMW 3 Series and the Porsche 911,” I said, with all the breezy confidence of a man who knows how these things work. Two weeks before Car of the Year, I’d just been asked what was going to win.

Two weeks later, things are looking a good deal less cut and dried. In fact, so Byzantine is the voting process in the first round that it comes down to eliminating one car from our lists and, when that doesn’t create a clear top five, we have to choose between the Toyota RAV4 and the Peugeot 508. These are Byron Mathioudakis’s two closet favorites at the event and, judging by the look on his face, it’s like telling someone there’s only room for one of their two kids in a lifeboat.

Despite my pre-event bluster, this year looked a close-run thing. We’d deliberately culled the number of models back a little from last year in order to concentrate the quality of the field and to make the first round of judging less frenzied. We were also back at Lang Lang, 90km south-east of Melbourne, doing the static poke and prod while staving off hypothermia in a gazebo that was acting as a wind tunnel. Since the last time we were here, GM had introduced stricter safety rules regarding high-center-of-gravity vehicles at its proving grounds. In other words, there’d be no flat-out stuff with the SUVs.

The alternative is a coned lane-change test. Our host isn’t keen on seeing airborne wheels as the family tricksters jink through the chicane of witch’s hats, so instigates an initial 60km/h speed limit on the exercise for SUVs. Unfortunately, Byron has something of a (genuine) hearing impediment and initially launches a Toyota RAV4 at the fearsomely tight right/left/right maze at 90km/h. Amid manic ESC braking interventions, it emerges with barely a cone left standing. And we thought he’d turn over a New Leaf…