The Automotive Video Association (AVA) Car and SUV of the Year
The Automotive Video Association (AVA), which represents nearly 500 million unique viewers per year, today announced the winners of its first-ever AVA Awards. The AVA award program was hosted Saturday, September 23rd, 2017, and held at the Resort of the Mountain in Welches, Oregon. Over the course of three days, the eight member jury drove all the vehicles back-to-back, culminating with final deliberations with the Performance Car of the Year and Sport Utility Vehicle of the Year being named.
The 2018 Mercedes-AMG GT C Roadster took home top honors for the Performance Car category and the 2018 Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk for the Performance SUV category.
As a refresher, the AVA Jurors were the following:
- Nik Miles (OurAutoExpert.com) – Northwest
- Roman Mica (The FastLane Car) – Midwest
- Alex Dykes (AlexOnAutos) – Northern Cal
- Kyle Lindsey (SaabKyle04) – North Carolina
- Sofyan Bey (Redline Reviews) – DC
- Jason Fenske (Engineering Explained) – Idaho
- Matt Maranowski (Matt Maran Motoring) – Pennsylvania
You can check out TFL’s take on the two phenomenal winning vehicles below:
Mercedes-AMG GT C
Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk
2017 AVA Deliberations:
“After careful evaluations of the entire vehicle line-up, we landed on the two cars that best deserve this award. With a thorough and fair voting process in place, it allowed for the vehicles to win on merit and not just opinion. However, the entire line-up of vehicles provided by the automakers for the AVA to test were all IMPRESSIVE and a special thank you goes out to each and every automaker that participated. Even if they are not in the top winner category, our videos will span the globe with consumers and enthusiasts alike who are tuning in to see how these vehicles performed. We will be presenting the winning automakers with their awards at a to-be- determined event… stay tuned,” The 2017 AVA Jurors.
Scoring Criteria
Scoring these vehicles was the most important part of this process. Credibility was essential and a process in place to ensure accuracy was mission critical. Voting was based on 100 total points and broken down into four key categories:
- 25 for Performance
- 25 for Value
- 25 for Style/Design
- 25 for Fun to Drive
Each category for value was based on a mathematical equation to ensure complete accuracy between vehicles. An example, the value was calculated by dividing the cost of the car by the horsepower. The top car received 25 points. The same equation was used to measure 0-60 times. For “Style” and “Fun-to-Drive”, we encouraged the jurors to use their own visceral response and feeling when driving the cars to come up with a number, with 25 being the top. The four key categories were then entered into a spreadsheet and the winner with the most points won.
(FOR THE MATHMATICAL BREAKDOWN AS WELL AS A COMPLETE LIST OF VEHICLES CONSIDERED FOR AVA’S TOP AWARD, GO TO THE AVA FACEBOOK PAGE)
To witness the full scope of arguments and consensus that went into the AVA’s picks, you can watch the video here:
About the Automotive Video Association
The AVA was formed by video media outlets that span the country and this group represents the auto industry’s first-ever national media organization that focuses on video exclusively. The AVA was established to provide media outlets that specialize in video content the ability to promote their industry, which is the fastest growing segment within the spectrum of automotive media. The organization is made up of some of the most prominent and most followed automotive outlets in the country.
