Behind the scenes at Wheels Car of the Year

Wheels Car of the Year isn’t fun. At least, it’s not supposed to be.

Nor is the Australian Automotive Research Centre proving ground – “double-ay-ah-cee” – some amusement park. Secluded and sprawling, this secure venue drips protocol, hi-viz formal wear, clipboards, furrowed brows and science. An ideal base camp, then, for the world’s longest continually run motoring gong to use and abuse as a first-round chopping block.

As a shared facility, privacy is tantamount. The old Fight Club rules apply: what happens at AARC stays in AARC. Pointing a camera towards anything that moves – military equipment; camouflaged prototypes – risks sending Wheels and sister title 4x4 Australia, axle-deep in its own awards event, promptly packing.

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One car journalist with an iPhone could be considered risky business. The Wheels Army numbers 31: judges, photographers and videographers mostly, plus eagle-eyed support crew with radios. Thing is, with 21 of motoring’s newest, greatest and most future-pointing vehicles – including secret pre-release models – in tow to thrust through three days of testing and documentation, we were undoubtedly the most ogle-worthy presence let loose inside the fortified, 1000-hectare facility.

The judges assembled are familiar Wheels Media furniture but the 2022 Motley Jury are half newbies and two others are first-time returnees from last year’s event. Hopefully a rough century’s worth of media and industry experience between the six counts for, well, everything.

It’s three days of AARC eliminations plus two days of on-road finalist appraisal punctuated, team leader Alex promises, with fractious infighting and potential fisticuffs as the drama in eventually deciding the winner (or three).

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The riot act concludes with a simple instruction to reconvene at Shed 13 “100 metres that-a-way”. Two judges cohere by immediately strolling into an off-limits army garage, causing incident while miraculously withdrawing without any rounds discharged…

Surf Coast weather is ever-changing and often gruelling, except for the first week in February when Mother Victoria bestowed COTY proceedings with partly cloudy mid-20s pleasantry. Day One goes smoothly, no sweat or North Faces required, and conflict is yet to break out between the teams documenting still and moving imagery with two-thirds of the field, as is sometimes customary.

For the Motley Jury, it’s pens and clipboards at five paces with COTY’s infamous walkarounds, where each competitor is presented to the team by a judge. And where, I’m promised, the initial fractious schism amongst opinion-givers will likely escalate, if history is anything to go by.

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It’s a full day of poking, prodding, cabin clambering and occasional enlightenment. We discover that the Porsche Taycan has 18 cost-options worth $42K, that the BMW iX’s raw carbon shell is mostly decorative, that one in ten LandCruisers ever sold were bought by Australians and, by design, the Mazda MX-30’s so-called ‘freestyle’ doors are a panel beater’s wet dream.

Dylan insists on testing every powered tailgate safety sensor via self-flagellation, much to everyone’s amusement. But the most explosive laughter drops when a certain judge bestows a certain competitor with a nickname so fitting yet so politically incorrect it might never be repeated outside the judges’ sanctum.

The lukewarm respite of two dozen pizzas energises the spirits amongst the crew who aren’t already out hastily assembling the field group shot on the ARCC skidpan. Such is the price of art.

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Slowly and forensically, to the constant crackle of shooter Ellen’s voice barking “no, your OTHER right” across the walkie-talkie feed, 21 subjects are curated in the viewfinder of a camera perched atop a rented scissor lift. The 2022 COTY family portrait is captured for posterity in Day One’s dying light.

Day Two and a fair chunk of Day Three sees the serious business of repetitive road loop assessment. However, a wheel is yet to spin in anger and there’s already a casualty: Dan manages to gouge the sidewall from the C-Class’s tyre en route to today’s festivities, leaving staffer Louis Cordony to guard the Benz out in the sticks, sans phone reception, with little more than a muesli bar as company while a fresh hoop is dispatched from Melbourne, a couple of hours away.

As a kick-off, wordsmiths attempt maths in dividing 21 (cars) by three (groups) by six (judges) and a near-idiot-proof system is concocted where everyone drives everything around the prescribed AARC multi-terrain course.

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Each loop takes in lane keeping; sealed launching; gravel launching/braking/stability; highway noise/vibration/harshness (NVH) and high-speed cornering, swerve and recover; 80km/h emergency Tarmac braking; rough-road ride assessment and simulated twisty Aussie back-road handling. Then reassemble, rinse and repeat.

Each loop should take “18 minutes or so” Alex reckons. Right-o. Three loops in and the carefully assembled high-speed conga line had turned musical chairs. And by the time we’d cycled through Group One, nobody else had driven the bloody Golf either...

Surprises and delights come thick and, particularly in the Taycan’s case, very fast indeed. Having dispatched the swerve and recover station in the Porsche about 50km/h higher than the designated velocity, one judge absentmindedly recommits similar enthusiasm in more mortal machinery, exploding safety cones across the landscape. Oh how we laughed.

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You also couldn’t help but giggle at how the LandCruiser perched on its nose under emergency braking. Or how its tyres howl like a lovelorn dingo on twisty hotmix.

Just how elegantly playful some of the EVs are in a gravel slide brought a few split-melon grins, and the more brutal of the electrified bunch drew childlike gushing from some judges at the reassembly spot.

Others found appraising the ESC calibration of anything light, lithe and pointy – i20 N, BRZ, Golf – inconclusive enough to demand a good three or four slithering tours of the coarse aggregate and slippery stone circuit, just to make sure.

Another, more inertia-inflicted contender, chose to swap ends on gravel. Repeatedly. First for one judge and then another, then loaded up with a veritable collective noun of opinion-servers. During one clumsy pirouette, the culprit snagged a rut with its outside rear and threatened, in no uncertain terms, to potentially become only the second vehicle in COTY history to expose its underbelly to the skies above.

(EDITOR'S NOTE: Our team is working with the brand in question to test this vehicle further at an appropriate facility, to establish a cause for its behaviour during COTY and whether there's an issue in the wider line-up. We'll report further on this as the story develops.)

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Once AARC testing is properly dusted, the Motley Opinion-ators converge for COTY’s finalist cull, business almost as serious as Wrangler Dave’s homemade Italian-via-Gold Coast extravaganza – “four kilos of spag bol, two kilos of gnocchi” – as a tasty respite from the steady intake of coffee (454 cups to date), bacon and egg rolls (110 and counting) and pizza.

The judges, pretending to ignore exactly where standings are already clearly headed, scribble votes on napkins in secrecy for the top six cars to move to the final round of road-based judging. All try not to become distracted by a prototype of a 2023 hero car that’s parked itself outside the judges’ lunchroom, its camouflaged grilled almost pressed up against the window.

“Judges’ deliberation: 2:30–3:30pm” says the runsheet. Instead, it takes roughly 90 seconds. We recount the votes gain, to kill some time, before the inevitable topic of a potential tied result raises its head for the first of what would become many times over the coming days.

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The COTY circus departs AARC and the Surf Coast’s grand chalet accommodation, heading inland towards central Victoria for the evening and pitches camp at… student accommodation at a regional college. Or Starlag 13, as it’s quickly nicknamed.

The short-straw-drawers are dispatched to “charge the EVs”, quickly proving to be the event’s most thankless yet crucial responsibility, while the Pontificators of Judgement settle into what Google suggests is Chinese takeaway while making friends with the various species of arachnid sharing the Wheels sleeping quarters.

Day Four. Finalists’ road loop. And after sending a local cafe into mad panic attempting to feed and caffeinate a small army at short notice, the wordsmiths once again attempt a regimented testing system that falls apart quickly and leaves the poor Golf sat motionless for a long while because its key loses itself in one judge’s fashionably puffy vest (right, Dan)?

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“Judges’ deliberation: 2:30–3:30pm” says the runsheet. Instead, it takes roughly 90 seconds

It’s a cracking road loop, a wonderfully curated circuit comprised of the worse acne that regular road maintenance has managed to clearly avoid. Perfect.

Its first third is lumpy, pockmarked 100km/h straights. Its middle section is a smooth, narrow, Armco- and rock-pinned twisty hillclimb. Its last third is more goat track than road, with a nasty mid-sweeper bump and a sharp ridge at small creek bridge that’ll dislodge tooth fillings. Plus, a bit of highway section at end, where the local constabulary has set up all day to raise revenue.

Once again, the two Korean EVs are tethered together in running order so that judges get back-to-back impressions. At one point during proceedings, the pair pop out onto the final highway stretch right behind a Tesla 3, the Ioniq 5’s inimitable face full in its mirrors, the only EV6 circulating in public at the time flanked in squadron-like formation. The poor Tesla driver’s so focused rearward he almost runs right off the road, right in front of the police speed trap…

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Initially, it’s one-ups. Then out again, three-up with luggage. And short of an impromptu motorkhana paddock bash, thorough assessment of the 2022 COTY finalists is finally done, sending the Motley Executioners into a cafe huddle. A result is cast into the slab, but the concrete isn’t set quite just yet.

There’s still a motherload of schnitzel and beer to add smoke to Wrangler Dave’s already smouldering corporate credit card to help expedite a definitive verdict, but not before an early evening photo-op.

We front up to a wind farm – because: electricity – where shooters break every rule of Photography 101 by pointing lenses directly at a setting sun for high art, where helpers rediscover their “other rights” shuffling cars about, and where judges again attempt maths guestimating wind turbine blade tip speed without Google’s aid, the conclusion being either 64 or 27,500km/h.

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Lights, cameras and an entirely new day (five) of artistic action sees what’s an increasingly road-weary COTY crew mopping up things still unresolved. Judges reassemble, like Groundhog Day, though Alex and Dylan have since pored over deep, on-paper minutiae of the electrified Korean machinery in search of an extra veneer of devil’s advocacy to throw at what now appears to otherwise be a foregone conclusion.

But when COTY stumps are finally pulled, the verdict is left hanging from a cliff. It would finally be certified, unanimously via video conference, many days later.

Not one voice was raised in anger throughout the entire judging journey, not specifically in spite of COTY tradition, but perhaps because partaking in the circus ended up being far more fun-filled than this first-time panellist was led to believe.

Shhh, just don’t tell anyone…

2022 Wheels Car of the Year revealed!