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Ford's FG-Series Falcon has won the New Zealand Car of the Year award, the first time the model has won New Zealand's premier automotive award in its 21-year history.
The Falcon's win is all the more special given the Australian-designed car was developed on a far more restricted budget than the other finalists, in alphabetical order, the Fiat 500, Honda Accord Euro, Hyundai i30, Jaguar XF, Mazda6, Nissan X-Trail, Subaru Forester and Volkswagen Tiguan.
Those finalists are selected by senior members of the New Zealand Motoring Writers' Guild, ratified by its committee and voted on by members in the print, internet and broadcast media spread throughout the country. As such, the Car of the Year is the only New Zealand motoring award in which no individual organisation can affect the result.
A car must impress a wide variety of journalists from different backgrounds, all using the car over an extended test period in everyday New Zealand driving conditions. That means each car considered must do well in a variety of Kiwi-specific environments, and when viewed from a range of different perspectives.
In judging the award, the guild's members considered every Falcon in the range, from the $41,790 normally aspirated six-cylinder sedan that opens the line-up, through the turbo sixes and much-admired $57,790 XR8, to the
LPG variant and the Ford Performance Vehicle derivatives. They factored in value for money, ease of operation and quality, as well as how well it fulfils the task for which it's designed.
The intensive crash-safety programme that went into this car - rewarded by its recent five-star occupant crash-test rating - also rated highly among those voting. Ford Australia spent two years on safety architecture development before building the first Falcon prototype. Some 90 fully instrumented cars were crashed during development, 310 sled tests were
conducted, and over 600 component tests were completed. Ford Australia forked out to do the research at Ford's safety laboratory in Dearborn, USA, and at Volvo Cars' safety centre in Gothenburg, Sweden. The aim was to build a car that could match the best the world has to offer.
Is such an accolade appropriate for a large car during an economic downturn? The guild's David Thomson said that if anything the award recognized the work Ford has done to improve a big car's economy without increasing its price.
Ford New Zealand MD Trevor Auger acknowledged the New Zealand Car of the Year award comes at a particularly difficult time for the industry, but argues large cars like the Falcon still have a future. "I think so, and the move to continue production of the in-line six at Geelong shows Ford has confidence in this model's future."
Auger - who took up the reins at Ford late last year - says he's excited to work at Ford during a time of change. "These are challenging times, yes, but exciting times. The adrenalin pumps because every day counts."
