It used to be that the European Car of the Year – the oldest COTY event as it started in 1964 – winners were announced at each year’s Geneva Auto Salon. However, with the event having lost the support of automakers since the pandemic and not being run, the COTY organisation has chosen the Brussels Motor Show to make its announcement this year.
This year, there are two awards – the overall Car of the Year won by the Alpine A290 and the Electric Car of the Year won by the Renault 5 E-Tech Electric. Both fully electric models are from the Renault Group so it’s a notable achievement for the French automaker. The pair of French electric cars have won the award as one, given their shared architecture and technology.
Renault was one of the early COTY winners, having collected its first award in 1966 with the 16 model. Since that time, it has won 7 times with the last one just last year with the Scenic E-Tech Electric.
It’s the first time for Alpine which has a 69-year history and became part of the Renault Group in 1973. It took on the role in competition with Renault Sport up till 1995 and then became dormant until Carlos Ghosn revived it in 2017 with the A110. Last year, Alpine began producing the A290 which is a fully electric model.
The 60 jurors from 23 countries had first considered 42 nominees before picking 7 finalists. The others were the Alfa Romeo Junior (136 points), Citroen C3/e-C3 (215 points), Cupra Terramar (165 points), Dacia Duster (172 points), Hyundai Inster (168 points) and Kia EV3 which had 291 points to the 353 points of the Renault and Alpine EVs.
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