Once a year, the most well-respected automotive publications in India set aside their competitive natures and get together to pick the Indian car and motorcycle of the year. The ICOTY and IMOTY awards were first given out in 2005 and 2008 respectively, and since then, they have been the single most sought after awards in the automotive industry – this year, MW was on the jury for both awards (check out www.icoty.org for more information).

These specialist juries, consisting of 20 senior Indian automotive journalists, are the best in the industry and together, their members have over 200 years of evaluation experience. They are known for their analytical skills and competence in evaluating and testing cars and motorcycles, as a part of their profession. The highly experienced jury members are responsible for selecting a single decisive winner in each category, and the voting process has been designed to be very fair, unbiased and tamper proof.

Thanks to all this, the ICOTY and IMOTY trophies are the ones every manufacture wants to win; they are in line with international standards and are modelled on the American Car of the Year, European Car of the Year and Japanese Car of the Year. The eligible models are judged on various parameters, such as price, fuel efficiency, styling, comfort, safety, features, performance, practicality, technical innovation, value for money and, above all, suitability for Indian consumers and conditions.

The ICOTY and IMOTY 2016 juries included Yogendra Pratap (Auto Today), Rahul Ghosh (Auto Today), Dhruv Behl (Auto X), Jared Solomon (Auto X), Ishan Raghava (Auto X), Arup Das (Auto X), Rohin Nagrani (Motoring World), Kartik Ware (Motoring World), Aspi Bhathena (Car and Bike India), Aninda Sardar (Car and Bike India), Bertrand D’souza (Overdrive), Bob Rupani (Overdrive), Shubhabrata Marmar (Overdrive), Halley Prabhakar (Overdrive), Girish Karkera (BBC Top Gear), Abhinav Mishra (BBC Top Gear) Sirish Chandran (Evo India), Ouseph Chacko (Evo India), Muralidhar Swaminathan (The Hindu Business Line) and Pablo Chaterji (MW).

The top ICOTY contenders were the Hyundai Creta, Maruti Suzuki Baleno, Renault Kwid, Honda Jazz and Ford Figo Aspire, while the IMOTY category saw intense competition between the Yamaha R3, the Benelli TNT 300, the Bajaj Pulsar RS200 and the Mahindra Mojo, among others. The winners will be announced at a ceremony towards the middle of this month, so watch this space.