If you want to do the fairest and most scrupulous job as a road tester, to reconfirm an impression or be sure about a relative strength or weakness, the best thing is simply to start over. Rinse and repeat. Come with a fresh set of senses and just give the cars on which you’re about to pronounce one more chance.
The more important the pronouncement, of course, the stronger the case to hit the reset button. That’s why, come the darkest winter months, the UK-based jurors for the Car of the Year award gather together the seven new cars that have made the competition’s final shortlist – the result of an initial round of voting in the early autumn – and engage in a fresh set of back-to-back driving on the roads around Silverstone circuit.
They may be cars already quite well known to most of those voting, but back-to-back comparison on the most relevant kinds of roads never fails to be revealing. This year, it was my turn to attend on behalf of Autocar, and the shortlisted cars were the Citroën C5 Aircross, Dacia Bigster, Fiat Grande Panda, Kia EV4, Mercedes-Benz CLA, Renault 4 and Skoda Elroq.
If I tried to tell you something meaningful about all seven of them within the span of this column, I wouldn’t do justice to any of them. So instead I’ll focus on the three that I think are the likeliest to contend for the podium places when all of the votes are collected and the result is announced later this week.
Step forward, then, the CLA, Elroq and Grande Panda. Any one of them could be the 2026 Car of the Year winner.
The Mercedes because it seems to advance the art of the possible for the electric car, at least to some extent; the Fiat because it’s a classic COTY favourite, representing the sorts of values that the competition’s jurors have responded to so many times over the years; and the Skoda just because it’s such a singularly well-rounded, versatile and pleasant family car for a reasonable price.
We road tested the EQ electric version recently, and I confess that I was a little bit surprised that the range and efficiency numbers it posted weren’t better. That might be something to do with the particular speeds at which we happen to benchmark efficiency, though.
I was pleasantly surprised at Silverstone, at any rate, at the way in which this car, with its two-speed gearbox, could maintain its efficiency on the motorway – where so many EVs can’t – without running on the type of efficiency-skewed tyres that adversely impact ride and handling.
The truth is that this Mercedes isn’t at all one-dimensional. It steers and handles sweetly and has a way of carrying momentum that makes you feel like you’re getting extra value out of every mote of energy consumed. That’s how EVs should feel, surely.
If the Mercedes had the same completeness as the Skoda, it would be the clear favourite for me. But I was less convinced about its rear cabin space and likewise the rather mixed impression for material quality of its suspiciously glossy, plasticky fascia.
The Elroq, by contrast, just feels like the Mk7 Volkswagen Golf of the electric C-segment. It’s such a competent car: roomier and more comfortable than the Renault, more refined and settled-riding than the Kia, grown-up and substantial in its character and deportment, well finished and easy to drive.
There’s nothing it does badly; no real compromise that it asks you to make. The Grande Panda will end up being there or thereabouts when the votes are counted, because it will benefit from a certain amount of sentimentality, but it’s far from undeserving.
COTY jurors have a history of preferring more accessible cars to pricier ones, and the little Fiat is great value, a superb bit of product design and a perfectly competent car to drive.
But I wonder whether it has the real universality of the feted original Panda – or if Fiat could, and should, have committed harder to a broader product range to really deliver on its potential.
It’s a hard field to predict this year but, gun to the head, I’d say the Elroq is most deserving, if it isn’t a bit too dowdy and mature for its own good. Soon enough, all will be revealed.
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