BMW’s new 3-Series has won the Premium Car Award by ICOTY for 2020. The Premium Car Award was constituted last year to give premium or luxury cars their due. Now, ICOTY or the Indian Car of the Year award is more skewed towards mass market offerings given the Indian market relevance is a big consideration when voting for the ICOTY. And that meant premium and luxury cars never really had a chance.
The Premium Car Award changes that. To qualify for this award, the contender should be priced over Rs 40 lakhs. And then instead of India-relevance, the jury looks at comfort, luxury and performance and if a particular car has managed to set new benchmarks, among others. This year, the shortlist for the award included the Audi A6, the BMW 3-Series, X4 and X5, the Jeep Wrangler, and the Mercedes CLS.
The jury for this year, meanwhile, was the same as ICOTY 2020, and consisted of Rahul Ghosh and Yogendra Pratap from Auto Today, Dhruv Bhel and Ishan Raghava from autoX, Muralidhar S from the Hindu, Aspi Bhathena and Sarmad Kadiri from Car India, Sirish Chandran and Aniruddha Rangnekar from evo, Kartik Ware and Pablo Chatterjee from Motoring World, Bertrand D’souza and Rohit Paradkar from Overdrive, Kushan Mitra from Pioneer, Girish Karkera from GQ, and Vikrant Singh from CarWale.
The award was presented by Dr. Raghupati Singhania, Chairman & Managing Director, JK Tyre & Industries Limited on behalf of the ICOTY committee.
