Northern Group Car of the Year 2019: Driving Day
Following the success of the 2018 event, the Northern Group of Motoring Writers has held its second Car of the Year driving day, based at the Coniston Hotel near Skipton.
In previous years, the Northern Group COTY has been a raw opinion poll of the Group’s members. All of the membership has been eligible to vote, selecting their personal favourite cars from those they’ve driven among all of the new cars launched over the preceding 12 months. Whichever car gained the most votes would then be crowned the winner.
Following proposals in 2017, the process changed in 2018. While the poll still formed the basis, the results would generate a winner in each of six categories. These six cars were then gathered at a single location, for a panel of judges to drive over the course of a day to select one overall champion, and this was how the Kia Stinger became the 2018 COTY.
We repeated this process for the 2019 voting, bringing our six class-winning vehicles to Coniston Cold for the Driving Day. As you’ll likely spot from the image above, the six finalists were:
- Alpine A110
- Kia e-Niro
- Mazda 3
- Peugeot 508GT
- Toyota Corolla
- Volvo V60
After a solid seven hours with the cars, the judges — including chairman Andy Harris — all had their say on the pros and cons of each and voted for their choice of COTY. The winning vehicle will be revealed on September 24th at the SMMT North Test Day at Wetherby, with a presentation to the victorious manufacturer’s PR team.
