Judging of 2009 Motor Trend Car of the Year

Come behind the scenes to see what the judges really had to say about the 10 finalists for Motor Trend's 2009 Car Of The Year.

Learn about the 2009 Motor Trend Car Of The Year - The Judging Angus Mackenzie: So we’ve reached the end of the second phase of judging for the 2009 Motor Trend car of the Year. Each judge has driven each of the finalist around the 25-mile road loop here. This loop includes city straights, two-lane black top and freeway. So all that’s left is to discuss, debate and decide the 2009 Motor Trend car of the Year. Male: In a lot of ways, it's not an advancement, a significant advancement over the previous car. It's a good car and also it's tough to position this as a real luxury car to me. It's sure unlikely. It’s a nice driving car but kind of like go for front wheel drive handling and then it kind of falls off the map. It doesn’t change the needle at all. Male: I don’t think this one pulls ahead of the Mercedes or the BMW in nearly any front. I do love what they do with this 2.0 liter turbo engine. It's a lot more fun to drive with some of the V6s and returns pretty good mileage. It pushed the engine a little bit further back than it used to be. I don’t feel as much of that pendulum effect but a nice piece, luxurious, nice looking but in class superiority, not this time. Angus Mackenzie: The styling is a very subjective thing but I'm struggling to find anyone among us who actually really thinks this thing is good looking. Male: I think they’re trying to deal with the -- you know, this is a vinyl type of car, the old accurate he outblended into the landscape tediously and it's an over reaction. It's like well, give them some styling and it's not styling but it's different and stands out. Male: They avoided polarizing styling by eliminating the -- Male: I really appreciate the very small size of it. That you know, the tidy dimension makes it feel very tossable, -- seemed much bigger in this car that they didn’t some of the other ones. And performance wise, pretty much at this kind of price point or below, you have to be blowing to put up with an Evo or an STI to get this kind of performance. So this is like a grown up Evo or something like that. Male: I like the styling and the two plus two seating. This reminds me of a modern kind of four door hard job. Male: If my guess that it will be easier to sell of a $40,000.00 and looks like this than it was to sell a $40,000.00 -- so the significances that they’re taking another swing at $40,000.00 Passat and it's probably I like that they’ll be more successful. Male: But it’s still a VW Badge and again the European curse of the Euro. Angus Mackenzie: This size vehicles is popular in Europe and Asia for very logical reasons to have small roads, gas is very high, twice the price of this year. So these cars make a lot of sense, I'm just wondering whether a B cars is actually relevant for the United States. Does it make sense here or would -- I kept wondering how good this car would be if I was on a Honda Civic platform. Just shave it, just a little bit more width a little bit more shoulder in. It would have hit a sweeter spot in the market. Male: Being a much better Mazda6 is good but that doesn’t necessarily move you to where you need to define the segment and that’s were this car is, it’s a very, very good mid sized car. But it's not yet a car that redefines a segment. Male: Well that’s kind of there too, I was underwhelmed at first at the proving ground but out here I was very impressed but I just -- I can't say for sure that it's better than a Camry SE V6. Male: At the test track, I was a little unimpressed compared to my expectations. A little bit more impressed driving it here but the big reaction I have is just basically emotional. I like to look at this car, I like how it feels, it feels very solid. It's just a car that just touches me emotionally and I like it a lot. Male: I enjoy the Genesis, I think it's a good vehicle but for a lot of the vehicles that they come out with over the last five years, it seems to be a shot of the targets, sometimes they get close, sometimes they don’t get close. This is clearly an attempt to do something as far as the strategy that they’ve been doing for the last couple of years. Offer something that does as well or maybe just a tiny bit better than other vehicles in the segment for $6,000.00 or $7,000.00 or $8,000 or less. And sometimes that’s going to work and sometimes it's not. Male: Yeah I think what really got to me, we’re all blown away about the GT-R at the test track. I mean the number’s outrageous. The performance when you're pushing it really, really hard. It's just breathtaking but I wasn’t ready to put it to the very top of my list until I came out here and drove it in the real world and I felt all of a sudden that the car shows that it can really do anything you wanted to do. You could cruise in this car. I can live with it more than I thought I could, and on the winding road, it was perfectly happy. I didn’t feel like I was being beat up and yet the speeds we’re going were probably 10 miles an hour faster than anything else. It really is remarkably well-rounded and something I didn’t quite expect from the very outset for a car that has numbers as high as this one. Male: To me at normal driving speeds and it's boring. It's a trilling car at the limit and boring at normal speeds. I think it's extremely unattractive and I think it's a generation of the car. We were talking about this yesterday where some of the younger folks, they think of video games you know they think, I love the video game, I love this car. For me I don’t have that background with driving cars with video games. I have a background of driving in neat, beautiful old cars and to me this is not a neat, beautiful modern car. Angus Mackenzie: Well it's been one of the highest quality fuels for Motor Trend car of the year judging that we've had in years but the debate and the discussion is over. So now it's time to vote and decide the 2009 Motor Trend car of the year. We do have a winner and I think reflecting the quality of the fuel, you should know, four cars received primary votes which I think is most that we've had ever. But the winner is the Nissan GT-R.