Who Won the 2021 North American Car, Truck, Utility Vehicle of the Year Awards?

The 2021 North American Car, Truck, Utility Vehicle of the Year award winners prevailed over an exceptionally strong field of contenders.

Dan Carney, Senior Editor

January 25, 2021

3 Min Read
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Ford Motor Co., Hyundai Motors

The 2021 North American Car, Truck, and Utility Vehicle of the Year awards have gone to the Hyundai Elantra, the Ford F-150, and the Ford Mustang Mach-E electric vehicle.

The winners in the car, truck, and utility categories each prevailed in fields of three semifinalists. The other cars were the Genesis G80 and Nissan Sentra, the other trucks were the Jeep Gladiator Mohave and Ram 1500 TRX, and the other SUVs were the Genesis GV80 and Land Rover Defender.

Winners are chosen on their merits versus their market competitors, not against other candidates, which may compete in other segments, which is how a Mustang Mach-E electric crossover can be categorized against a burly Land Rover Defender off-road specialist. [Full disclosure: I am a North American Car, Truck, and Utility Vehicle of the Year juror.]

The criteria are segment leadership, innovation, design, safety, handling, driver satisfaction, and value for the dollar.  The jury’s 2021 evaluation process initially identified 43 eligible vehicles that it winnowed to 27 semifinalists and then nine finalists through two rounds of voting.

“The automotive industry launched an unusually strong field of impressive new vehicles, including many with significant technological advances, which made our job as jurors even harder than usual this year,” said NACTOY President Gary Witzenburg. “We applaud these 2021 winners and congratulate the industry for continuing to serve its customers with highly desirable new products year after year.”

Related:Engineering from Home, According to the Ford Mustang Mach-E Team

The race for the car of the year was a close one, with Elantra edging out the G80, 176 points to 173. The Nissan Sentra was hot on its heels with 151 points, highlighting the quality of all three finalists.

The F-150 won truck of the year in a blowout worthy of Alabama football, scoring 340 points to the Ram’s 130 and the Jeep’s 30 points.

The Mustang Mach-E also ran away with the utility award, its 265 points nearly doubling the score of runner-up GV80, which garnered 136 points. The Defender scored 99 points.

John Davis, host of Maryland Public Television’s long-running Motorweek television show credits Hyundai for rolling out a full line of Elantra models for this year’s redesign. “It is refreshing to see an automaker so committed to the sedan segment that at launch they offer such a wide variety of models as is in the Hyundai Elantra family,” he said. “Hyundai did not do the drip-drip of the model variants over a longer term as is typical for the class.”

The F-150’s new hybrid model sealed the deal for Canadian juror Denis Duquet, “Not only has this best-seller been refreshed esthetically and updated mechanically, but the Ford F-150 also offers a hybrid version, which is a quantum leap for the category,” he said.

Related:Ford’s Brutal F-150 Hybrid Battery Test

And the electrified Mustang was an unsurprising favorite. “The Mustang Mach-E leapfrogs European EVs as the Tesla Model Y’s most formidable challenger yet,” noted Henry Payne, of The Detroit News. “Like Tesla, Mach-E understands that the premium EV market is as much about interior tech as it is about torque.”

These awards, which began in 1994, are the longest-running new-vehicle awards not associated with a single publication, website, radio, or television station. They are judged by 50 professional automotive journalists from the United States and Canada who work for and contribute to a wide variety of magazines, newspapers, websites, television, and radio stations.

About the Author

Dan Carney

Senior Editor, Design News

Dan’s coverage of the auto industry over three decades has taken him to the racetracks, automotive engineering centers, vehicle simulators, wind tunnels, and crash-test labs of the world.

A member of the North American Car, Truck, and Utility of the Year jury, Dan also contributes car reviews to Popular Science magazine, serves on the International Engine of the Year jury, and has judged the collegiate Formula SAE competition.

Dan is a winner of the International Motor Press Association's Ken Purdy Award for automotive writing, as well as the National Motorsports Press Association's award for magazine writing and the Washington Automotive Press Association's Golden Quill award.

He has held a Sports Car Club of America racing license since 1991, is an SCCA National race winner, two-time SCCA Runoffs competitor in Formula F, and an Old Dominion Region Driver of the Year award winner. Co-drove a Ford Focus 1.0-liter EcoBoost to 16 Federation Internationale de l’Automobile-accredited world speed records over distances from just under 1km to over 4,104km at the CERAM test circuit in Mortefontaine, France.

He was also a longtime contributor to the Society of Automotive Engineers' Automotive Engineering International magazine.

He specializes in analyzing technical developments, particularly in the areas of motorsports, efficiency, and safety.

He has been published in The New York Times, NBC News, Motor Trend, Popular Mechanics, The Washington Post, Hagerty, AutoTrader.com, Maxim, RaceCar Engineering, AutoWeek, Virginia Living, and others.

Dan has authored books on the Honda S2000 and Dodge Viper sports cars and contributed automotive content to the consumer finance book, Fight For Your Money.

He is a member and past president of the Washington Automotive Press Association and is a member of the Society of Automotive Engineers

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