The 2020 edition of the Indian Car of the Year or ICOTY awards recently concluded its jury round at the Buddh International Circuit near Delhi. ICOTY, regarded as the highest honour that can be bestowed on a four-wheeler made or assembled in India, recognises the most outstanding car, SUV or MPV launched in a particular calendar year. The four-wheeler in question must have a number of attributes to win. For starters, it must have strong relevance for the Indian passenger car market. And it should also have set new benchmarks in the segment it operates in.
The ICOTY jury this year comprises of Yogendra Pratap and Rahul Ghosh from Auto Today, Dhruv Bhel and Ishan Raghava from autoX, Aspi Bhathena and Sarmad Kadri from Car India, Sirish Chandran and Aniruddha Rangnekar from evo, Kartik Ware and Pablo Chatterjee from Motoring World, Bertrand DSouza and Rohit Paradkar from Overdrive, Murlidhar S from the Hindu, Kushan Mitra from the Pioneer, and Vikrant Singh from CarWale. Now even though quite a few cars were launched in 2019, the said jury shortlisted the strongest contenders for the jury round.
This year, the shortlist included the Honda Civic, the Hyundai Grand i10 Nios and the Venue, the Kia Seltos, the Maruti Suzuki S-Presso and Wagon R, the MG Hector, the Nissan Kicks, the Renault Triber and the Tata Harrier. And for a jury member to be able to vote for a particular car, the car had to be present at the jury round in driveable condition.
Now here’s how the voting works. Every jury member has 25 points to award. The maximum a jury member can give a car is 10 points. And the jury member must award points to at least five cars. Also, the top two cars cannot be awarded the same points, which means every jury member signals his or her clear winner.
The winner of the ICOTY 2020, in the meantime, will be announced on the 18th of December. May the best car win!
