Zim car of the year awards launched

Obituaries
Finally, Zimbabwe now has its own car awards, namely Zimbabwean car of the year (zimCOTY).

standard wheels:with Andrew Muzamhindo

Finally, Zimbabwe now has its own car awards, namely Zimbabwean car of the year (zimCOTY).

These will be Zimbabwe’s most prestigious motoring awards.

The scoring system will be transparent. It even has a reader’s car of the year category, which is open to anyone by voting on www.zimbabweancaroftheyear.com Like anything else it might have its teething challenges, but its measures well with most leading awards outside of our borders. It has been bench-marked against the best and even gone on to be better than them.

There will be categories such as zimCOTY Car of the Year, zimCOTY Readers Car of the Year (website voting), zimCOTY Truck of the Year, zimCOTY Environmentally-Friendly Car of the Year, zimCOTY SUV of the Year, zimCOTY Crossover of the Year and zimCOTY Sedan of the Year.

The historic event to be held every April will be attended by motoring enthusiasts, dealerships, government officials and stakeholders.

A reputable audit firm has partnered zimCOTY so as to collate the results and ensure transparency in the process. A pool of motoring journalists and editors will adjudicate on the 14 cars that are participating. They will be looking at such attributes as appealing to both men and women, head-turning ability, environmentally-friendly, engineering and performance, affordable and practical, safe and dependable, fun factor, delivers on its promise, styling, innovation, value for money and test-driven, among others.

The zimCOTY competition is about automotive excellence and the winning vehicle must score highly in its own class, not against each other as is often thought, across a variety of categories including those, which reflect value for money, safety, dynamics, technology and aesthetics to name, but a few.

The voting process is designed to determine a single decisive winner, and not to provide a scale of merit of all competing cars.

On the crossover segment, there is the Renault Duster, Haval H2, RAV4 and Hyundai Tucson. The truck segmented has the Isuzu DMax, Toyota Hilux, Mitsubishi Triton, Ford Ranger and VW Amarok. The ever popular SUV segment is manned by the Land Rover Discovery, Jeep Grand Cherokee Overland, Mercedes Benz GLE Coupe, Mitsubishi Pajero Sport and Jaguar FPace

The winning cars will carry bragging rights. Testifying to their success further increases awareness of their clout to the public. For this reason and many others, these awards look increasingly likely to become the red carpet moment that carmakers and dealerships covet most, and that should be good news for motorists keen to buy quality.

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