The Hyundai Venue won the Indian Car of The Year (ICOTY) award for 2020 in a close contest with its cousin, the Kia Seltos

At the end of it, Hyundai Venue won the ICOTY 2020 award by nine points, with scores of the 18 judges collated by Grant-Thornton. This was one of the closest results and thanks to the scoring system, which was fair enough, to find one clear winner. The new BMW 3-series was the winner of the Premium Car award by ICOTY, which is in its second year. Its stablemate, the new BMW X5 gave it tough competition.

Since the award, many people have asked how can the Hyundai Venue beat out Kia Seltos? While I cannot speak for the other judges, it was a close contest in most of the minds. Make no mistakes, the Kia Seltos is a brilliant new vehicle, and if you are looking for a mid-sized Sports Utility Vehicle in the Rs 15-20 lakh price range, the Seltos is by far and away the right choice. But there is a lot in common between the Hyundai and the Kia. Not least because they were developed by the same engineers. Hyundai and Kia share not only the same parent but also the same research team, although they have very different design philosophies and aggressively competitive marketing and communications teams. Both cars have made significant changes to their segments, thanks to the widespread introduction of turbo-petrol engines coupled with Dual-Clutch gearboxes. Sure, they’re not the first to bring in such technologies in the country, Ford and Volkswagen have tried it as well. In fact, the Volkswagen Polo GT TSI is still the most fun hatchback you can buy in India. However, the Hyundai and the Kia packaged the system alongside great interiors, good infotainment systems with emergency service assistance (again, pioneered by Ford) as well as reliability and the ability to hold value. But in the ICOTY, affordability plays a major role, like it does in most COTY awards as well as whether a vehicle defined or redefined a segment.

The Venus clearly redefined the compact SUV segment giving a far superior offering as compared with anything else in sight. And it was more affordable, at least, in my opinion as well as of those of the other jury members.

In addition, the Indian Motorcycle of The Year award went to the Hero X-Pulse 200. All the awards were given out by Raghupati Singhania, Chairman, JK Tyre, a copy of which has supported ICOTY and IMOTY since its initial years.

But these two cars were not the only ones to surprise me this year. In third place, voting was in favour of the Renault Triber, which in my opinion was the most surprising car of the year. Yes, the one-litre 71 horsepower engine is underpowered, not so woefully. It can get the job, not very fast, but it sure can. In terms of packaging and pricing, the Triber is a genuine head-scratcher because it is so good. Indeed, I have wondered if Renault India had added a little bit of class, steering controls and 10-12 more horses, it could have been the winner easily. But if you want a spacious little mini-estate, which is what the Triber is, you can’t go wrong here.

Another car that genuinely took me by surprise was the Hyundai i10 Nios, not just because Hyundai does small cars just right but also because the company has got the handling bang-on with this car. It was a surprise on the track. With the 120 horsepower 1.0 turbo-petrol engine from the Venue, which it is expected to acquire early next year, this car can be the best affordable hot hatchback in India since the Maruti Zen. Despite its issues, the Honda Civic was also a strong contender. The Mahindra XUV 300 might have stood a chance, if it wasn’t up against the Venue and also if the car had made it to the jury round in the first place. ICOTY rules state that unless a car is at the jury round it cannot be considered.

Of course, all these pale in comparison to the most fun car that I have driven this year, which was the stunning Lamborghini Huracan Evo around the Madras Motor Speedway, which was, despite a 360-degree spin or possibly because of it, the most fun that I have had this year. Over the next few weeks, I will be releasing a bunch of videos on YouTube and other platforms where I will be in conversation with other automotive journalists from the Indian media about a whole host of topics. The first video of the series, where I am in conversation with the editor of Evo India, Sirish Chandran, is out and can be viewed at www.youtube.com/kushanmitra.

Here is wishing every single one of you a very happy new year and hopefully 2020 will be a better year for everyone and the Indian automotive industry.