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The Car of the Year (drum roll please...) is the 2010 Ford Fusion! The Fusion beat out 60 others, and indeed had the most vehicles (3) among the 13 cars which made the "contender" cut to the second round of judging. The mighty Fusion beat out such worthy opponents as the BMW Z-4 (my favorite runner up), the can’t-tell-them-apart hybrid twins Prius and Insight, the “German Sedan Panzer Corps” Mercedes C and E classes and BMW 7-series, the Kia Soul (honorable mention for best cubular car over Nissan’s Cube), pony cars Mustang and Camaro, and Ford’s own Taurus, also no slouch, having just been named International Car of the Year at the Los Angeles Auto Show on Dec 7th, and Esquire Car of the Year last summer.
The main distinguishing factor? Sit down for this: “Bandwidth.” In an intentional pun, Motor Trend gave the Fusion huge kudos for being everything from an affordable but not boring econo-sedan, to a gas-sipping 41-mpg hybrid, to a nearly sporty 268-hp 6.8 sec 0-60 “Sport” model. Something for everyone. But what they were really referring to was the ultra high-tech cockpit, with toys, bells, whistles, and even games galore. Yes, games! The hybrid, when asked, coaxes you to drive more economically by filling the instrument cluster with green leaves as a reward. I can just see my teenager: “Mom, I scored 23,000 points, a free replay, and 1.5 mpg more than you!” Good job, Ford. Keep it up.
Having won such accolades for their cars, you’d think Ford would rest on their laurels, but no! They also won the Truck of the Year, for the umptey-unth time, with the updated 2010 F-150. “Their best truck yet,” it was called, eking out Dodge, “the Ram is just a tad less superior than the Ford,” the Hummer truck (Hummer makes a truck?), and the Suzuki something or other which is just a rebadged Nissan Frontier. Yep, that’s right, there were only four trucks in the competition. Depending on how you look at it, the F-150 was the only real truck in the competition, since it got points for towing capacity, which the other vehicles are clearly not designed for. Why is this? Why no Chevys or Toyotas? It’s because Motor Trend only tests NEW vehicles, as in totally new model, or redesigned substantially for this model year. So the Ford didn’t compete against the Silverado, which recently passed the F-150 as best selling vehicle in the US for the first time in 20 years. Also left out is the Toyota Tundra, which several of my friends own, and they all say it’s the only truck that won’t be crushed for scrap in 15 years. I don’t know about you, but I think Motor Trend should compare all vehicles in a class before handing out trophies. The F-150 might actually still have won, and is an excellent truck, but it’s not much of a comparison this year.
The third American vehicle to win? That would be SUV of the Year, the Subaru Outback. “Subaru, an American car?” you might be asking. Well you tell me what it means when the cars are all built in America, by Americans, for Americans. Well, they do export them as well, and in fact the Outback ranks as the # 6 exported car from the US (to Canada and Europe mainly). I think that means it’s an American car. I think it actually is the official state vehicle of both Vermont and Colorado, and may even be on the Idaho flag. I have in-laws who work at the plant in Lafayette, IN, and they’d fight you for their jobs. One of them actually quit GM to work there, and recruited several other people away from GM in Dayton OH and Fort Wayne. Good thing, too, with GM closing the Dayton plant and severely cutting back in Ft. W.
So the Outback is the second winner in a row for Subaru (the 2009 Forester also won), made all the more significant by the admitted bias against repeat winners by the Motor Trend writers. They noted with glee the Outback’s superior ground clearance and cargo capacity to the Jeep Cherokee and several other “pure” SUVs. The Outback makes a mockery of vehicles that claim to be “crossovers,” such as the Toyota Venza and Ford Edge (my opinion…and I admit a bias, I’ve owned three Subarus and loved them all). Motor Trend praised the Outback’s near perfect blend of offroad capability, city street comfort, and bad weather prowess. The car literally laughs at ice and snow (it makes a chattering sound as the tires catch their grip in wet snow) and the lines on the hood are designed partly to channel fresh powder away from the windshield. For real.
The Outback only sells 6,506 vehicles a month (a 142% improvement over 2008; source: Philadelphia Business Journal 12/1/09), which is maybe 10% of Ford’s F-150 sales. Definitely NOT a huge part of the US market. But sales have more than doubled, and the Subaru following continues to grow. By way of lending them credibility, the Outback was also ranked as the #1 Afrodable Full Sized Wagon by US News and World Report, and Most Versatile Car by Popular Mechanics. On the other hand, a harshly negative (and very funny) counter-review of this “awkwardly bloated carcass” by Jonathan Gergory can be found at www.thetruthaboutcars.com .
What does the rest of the Rant/Rave universe think of this? By the way, if you've read this far, I highly recommend the link, it gives you the articles discussing the winners as well as the contenders, and even has recent years' winners. It's very in depth, and candy to the car aficionados like myself.
Yours
Doc Scott