The Hyundai i20 was the winner of the Indian Car of the Year (ICOTY) for 2021
2020 has been the hardest year in living memory, not just for Indians but across the world. At the start of the year we were just hearing about a strange new viral infection emerging from China and most of us dismissed this infection as another iteration of Avian Flu or Swine Flu, something that would remain isolated in East Asia with limited spread. But SARS-CoV-2 or COVID-19 as we know it today ravaged us, as a society and stopped the modern world in its tracks. There have been tens of Hollywood movies about pandemics, but none had a script that was as terrifying as what happened in the real world.
The automotive industry also came to a screeching halt, the month of April 2020 which would have been the start of a brand new financial year was completely shuttered. Old stock remained unsold and few new cars were produced. This writer returned from the Hyundai factory at Sriperumbudur outside Chennai where the new Creta was being produced and little did he know that it would be the final flight he took in 2020. The Hyundai Creta went down as the last car launched before this global storm took over our lives.
The Indian Car Of The Year (ICOTY) is an award handed out to the top car launched in India in that year. This old and storied award has been around for a while but as the pandemic ravaged the world for months on end, even the jury members wondered whether the award would happen this year. After all, with almost no launches, could any car win. But the industry was resilient, timelines slipped but the Indian auto industry, a bulwark of India’s manufacturing economy roared back to life. The new Kia Sonet, the Mahindra Thar, the Tata Altroz, the fifth-generation Honda City and the third-generation Hyundai i20 were all launched. Of course, now with the prerequisite social distancing norms in place. The test drives were socially distanced and the launches all over video conferences. No flights to far-flung corners of India and drinks with the management and our friends. However, the industry was back and that meant that award would be too.
The jury was reactivated, Yogendra Pratap, Editor of AutoX remained as Chairman and this year saw the addition of Times Drive’s Kranti Sambhav on the jury as well. The remainder of the jury included They were Rahul Ghosh (Auto Today), Dhruv Behl and Ishan Raghava (AutoX), Aspi Bhatena and Sarmad Kadiri (Car Magazine), Sirish Chandran and Aniruddha Rangekar (Evo India), Pablo Chaterji and Kartik Ware (Motoring), Bertand D’Souza and Bob Rupani (Overdrive), Murlidhar Swaminathan (The Hindu BusinessLine), as well as independent jurors Vikrant Singh (CarWale), Girish Karkera (Times Auto), as well as this writer, Kushan Mitra.
However, there would be no jury round where we all met up for a day or two’s madcap driving at the Buddh International Circuit or someplace like that. In line with what had passed in 2020 and early-2021 and even though some of us had started flying again, it was decided to conduct the jury round remotely. But when you think about it, that was appropriate given what the last few months had been like. Of course, that meant driving cars at our own convenience and actually getting to spend a lot of time with each vehicle. Honestly, spending a few days with every car gives you far more time to objectively evaluate it, living with a car even if it is a for a few days helps you discover its foibles.
For me, interested as I am in interior features and infotainment systems, I looked the user interfaces, how clear the displays were, the line of sight for the information on the screens and even the quality of the sound system and how well it copes with outside noise and vibrations. hings that often get overlooked in many reviews. Of course I also look at the driving and the handling, even if a car has the best infotainment systems around it can’t win if it rolls around every time you show it a corner or accelerates like a tortoise. Things that often get overlooked in many reviews. A winning car in my opinion has to be a balance, both of mechanical performance, its feature-set including driver assistance and safety features as well as its price-value proposition. My fellow judges have their own opinions on what makes a car worthy of winning, and that ultimately is why ICOTY is the top award. I’m not denigrating any other awards, but when you have as varied a jury as ICOTY does, we all have different likes and loves.
And that showed, when we voted in a secret albeit online ballot vetted by Grant and Thornton India, the results as we were informed later were super close between the top contenders. But the superlative third-generation Hyundai i20 won the top prize of ICOTY 2021. I spent a lot of time with the i20 in January 2021 travelling through Madhya Pradesh and it was a brilliant car and fully deserved to win in the eyes of the jury. In the second-ever Premium Car category, the highly-acclaimed Land Rover Defender picked up the prize beating out a strong German contingent. And this year saw the first-ever Green Car award by ICOTY. This is an interesting category, one that the jury members felt will become increasingly important in the next few years until of course, I for one believe that the Car of the Year will have to be a Green Car. But that might take till 2030, but in 2021 the award went to the Tata Nexon EV.
2020 was a rough year, many people across the world lost people near and dear to them, but hopefully we have all turned a corner and 2021 can be much better as long as we continue to maintain precautions.