Surprise podium appearance

The judges chose the Subaru WRX STI as supreme winner.

Funny how stressful situations can lead people back into familiar patterns so quickly.

The AA's Motoring Excellence Awards (MEA) test week, held annually at Taupo during February, looms large in the judges' diaries.

By about day three, many of us are into Groundhog Day: the same people develop a minute-by-minute obsession with the (very) tight scheduling to get through nearly 90 cars, adopt an unhealthy interest in some excruciating detail of every car they're testing - like how easy it is to tune the radio - and realise they're eating a frightening quantity of cake; okay, that last one's me.

But you couldn't say the same of the judges' collective car choices. Every year the overall winner - the highest-scoring car from one of the eight categories - has been a surprise, comprising everything from large crossovers to luxury sedans and high-performance supercars.

It's fair to say none of the judges expected Subaru's WRX STI Spec-R to roll out on to the stage as the supreme winner on MEA awards night. It was a worthy but - in my opinion - unlikely winner from a field that included the Mazda2 (Small Car winner), Skoda Roomster (Compact), Holden Commodore SV6 (Large), HSV Grange (Luxury), Mercedes-Benz's C220 CDI (Medium) and C280 Avantgarde (Executive) models, the Skoda Octavia Scout (Small Crossover) and Volvo XC70 D5 (Large Crossover).

As always, the results were kept secret until the gala dinner on March 7. Although the judges test together at Taupo, using a 14km road loop, closed-road gravel section and time on part of the A1 GP racetrack, we score in private using a spreadsheet designed by the AA especially for the purpose.

When we leave Taupo after six days and nearly 15,000km, all we know are the top three cars in each category - 27 finalists - since that's what the field gets whittled down to mid-week.

Even those are covered by a confidentiality clause in our contracts.

It's not hard to guess which will come up trumps in their classes of that final 27; certain vehicles stand out pretty clearly by the end of the week. The overall winner is impossible to second-guess because by the time we get down to those finalists, the vehicles are judged "globally": not just against their class rivals, but also against all of the finalists in all of the classes. It becomes a "fitness for purpose" exercise, not merely a "best in class" competition.

Which helps explain and justify the STI choice for this year. Let the scores do the talking, and what the Subaru win tells us is the judges collectively decided the STI does more to advance the performance-car cause - remember, it stomped all over the $170,000 M3 and $260,000 Audi R8 to take the class win - than the Mazda2 does to advance the small-car class, the C220 CDI does to advance the medium segment, and so on. It's about, well, excellence.

As always, the numbers linger.

A record 89 cars were sent to Taupo for evaluation (the MEA is open to all cars currently on sale); it took 12 transporters to get them there from all over the country.

The cheapest car on test was the Suzuki Swift XE at $16,990; the most expensive was Audi's low-slung R8 supercar at $272,000. The total value of the cars on site was in excess of $6 million.

There are also a lot of arguments between the judges. Well, there are only three or four actual arguments, but they are repeated several times throughout each day. I did not bother to measure my waistline at the end of the event.