CCOTY Voting Process Gathers and Applies Plenty of Data
TORONTO, Dec. 10, 2014 /CNW/ - Last week, the Canadian Car of the Year Awards (CCOTY) program, presented by the Automobile Journalists Association of Canada (AJAC), announced this year's 15 category winners, trimming a field of several dozen competitors into just fifteen winners across various categories.
"We start with a large field of categorized entries, and proceed with an extensive test-driving, evaluation, and voting process," says CCOTY Co-Chair Justin Pritchard.
The extensive test-drive process occurs during a week in October, dubbed Test Fest, which sees all of the vehicle entries and test-driving journalists brought together to perform the evaluation.
"This year, we started with 50 vehicles. After days of scrutiny and testing, the original field of 50 entries generates just one winner in each category - the model with the highest score. We announced these category winners last week."
Category winners have achieved the highest numerical score, which is the result of voting by test-driving journalists, as well as objective data compiled on the tested models.
"Journalist test-drivers apply a score to each vehicle through their voting on things like comfort, ride quality, noise levels, ergonomics, styling, and overall value," Pritchard comments. "We also apply a score for things the test-drivers can't measure directly on their test-drives; like cargo capacity, stopping distance, and emissions, for instance. It's a very comprehensive process - the only one of its kind."
Once all of the journalist test-drive scores and data for a given vehicle are compiled, a weighting factor is applied to help reflect the importance of the individual scores for the vehicle category in question. For instance, trunk space and ride quality scores are weighted more heavily in the Family Sedan categories than they are in the Sports and Performance Car categories.
"This is how we work to achieve maximum relevance and the massive data generated by this process is available on our website, along with comments from our driver's log-book, on each tested model."
The category winner's announcement serves as the first of two virtual rounds of elimination. From the initial field of over 50 new models, and then the field of 15 finalists, just two overall winners will be chosen: the Canadian Car of the Year, and the Canadian Utility Vehicle of the Year. That final announcement will be made in Toronto at the Canadian International Auto Show on February 12th, 2015.
SOURCE: Automobile Journalists Association of Canada
please contact the CCOTY Board of Directors Co-Chairs Justin Pritchard [email protected] or Gary Grant [email protected].
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