Car of the year 2017

Here is a concept I introduced half a decade ago and then let it go because of non-participation by interested parties, but I am glad to announce that the scene is slowly changing for the better and I can therefore, reintroduce the idea: the Motoring Press Agency Car of the Year Award.

Entry qualifications for the accolade are fairly simple: the vehicle in question must be on sale - or verifiably soon to be on sale, brand new — preferably as a 2017 model — from a licensed importer (franchise holder) within Kenya. A whole slew of such vehicles exist, so if you don’t see your shelf dolls here, perhaps you need to be a more active participant in future because this award is only going to grow bigger from here.

Without further ado, I present to you - the finalists of our COTY prize: the G30 BMW 5 Series, the all-new Land Rover Discovery, the Volkswagen Polo Vivo, the G01 BMW X3, the Range Rover Velar, the GD-powered Toyota Fortuner and... that’s the lot.

Those are the vehicles that stood out most in 2017, partly because they are the ones that were availed for driving/reviewing and partly because they are the survivors of a near-economic meltdown occasioned by shaky and unpredictable political transpirations.

Again, without further ado, the winner: ...err, this was difficult to choose between the Toyota Fortuner and the Volkswagen Polo. The rest failed to win, and we will explain why and, hopefully, by the time we get to the little hatch and the seven-seat SUV, we will have made up our minds....

 The BMWs

Wonderful, awesome drivers’ cars, both of them. BMW seems to be undergoing a renaissance, where their sole aim is to rightfully claim what is theirs: the title of purveyors of the Ultimate Driving Machine. I can tell them what’s not theirs, though, and that is the requisite sales numbers necessary to unseat their Stuttgart rival as the definitive premium luxury marque. There is a good reason for this, and it is apparent in the reviews of both cars that I did earlier in the year.

BMW just won’t commit to a figure. Listen here, Bavaria, just step outside for a minute and do a vox pop on random passersby. Tell them you are selling a BMW motorcycle, or a used X6, or something. Invariably, the first response will be a question: “How much?”

This is a Kenyan mindset, a unifying characteristic that links the lowliest of income-generators living far below the breadline to the wealthiest of investors for whom “breadline” is a number coincidental with the share price of a company he acquired last week in a hostile takeover: we are obsessed with price tags, and we are suckers for a bargain – real or apparent, which is why the grey import market is flourishing and robbing mainstream dealers of precious sales. So if you are coy about costing your products, it only follows that the masses will be equally coy about darkening your doorways in return.

(Bargains, real or apparent, were also a major determining factor on how our COTY winner came to be, but we’ll get there. Let’s finish up with the BMWs first...)

The shadiness about listings does not affect the buyers only; it also makes things difficult for us, auto journos, because it becomes tricky determining how the vehicles stack up against the competition in terms of value for money. One vehicle might outshine the next in several key ways, but the ultimate victory boils down to the net value per shilling spent, what corporate types refer to as “ROI”.

Then of course there are the individual foibles. The G30 is the E39 reincarnated, which is a good thing, but thick A pillars (for the curtain airbags) and low ground clearance limit the driving experience somewhat, plus the fact that it is a premium luxury brand means it is not appealing to everyone. The G01 actually dominates its sedan stablemate by offering immeasurably increased practicality and everyday usability but it lets the side down by falling short of being the Ultimate Driving Machine owing to its laggy electronic throttle and desensitised steering. On to the next one...

Toyota Fortuner AN60

There is only one reason why this car made the shortlist and that is because it personifies the common catchphrase, “tumetoka mbali” (“We have come from far”). The original Fortuner, codenamed AN50/AN60 was dreck: it was rough, ungainly, agricultural, thirsty, noisy, uncomfortable and felt like a quickly finished assignment done by highly distracted people who probably wanted to work on the Landcruiser but weren’t allowed to until they first finished their AN60 homework. Even Toyota themselves admit the first-gen car was bit junk.

This successor is everything the first one wasn’t. You’d be forgiven for thinking that either the two aren’t related beyond the Toyota parentage, or there are some development stages in between that probably never hit our market.

Toyota chooses the numbers game to blow their trumpet. Forty degrees Celsius below freezing and 4,500 metres above sea level are some of the extremes the engines can operate in comfortably. Fifteen  per cent better efficiency; 14km/l (compared to the KD’s 12); 30  per cent drop in cubic capacity; 25 per cent hike in power and torque.

The actual percentages might need independent verification in an extended test, but a few things do stand out at first drive: the outputs are definitely higher and smoothed out. While the previous KD engines shoved urge down your throat in a huge lump as one quick burst, the GD does it more progressively and over wider rev band, but more importantly, it does so with an oily smoothness that has you thinking that this might be money well spent after all, despite the number of commas in the asking price (there are only two, so don’t panic).

A very strong and convincing showing from Toyota, but they get edged out by the Germans, but only just...

The Land Rovers

Of all brands I think this is the one that has received the most “airtime” in the entire lifespan of this column, and there are two very good reasons for that: over the past seven years (incidentally the same period this column has been alive), they have been on a roll in terms of product rollout, and what a lineup they have given us. Replacements of ageing warhorses, creation of all-new never-seen-before models, technological marvels under the bonnet and in the landing gear (their terrain response system is still unmatched a decade later), and achingly beautiful designs that compensate for whatever weaknesses these cars might have, which is the second reason they have received a lot of attention: their biggest letdown, reliability, has always been a thorn in their side, without fail (pun intended).

So it came as no surprise when on Day 2 of our test drive in South Africa, the reversing camera in our all-new Discovery went offline. This was just one of several things that made the vehicle a bit underwhelming, and a failed candidate for my COTY award despite strong showings in previous years with previous models.

(Full disclosure: I am a well-known source of adulation for the now-defunct Discovery 4, and I secretly hanker for one, despite knowing full well that my family will pack up and leave when I put them on bread and water because I had to raise money to repair the suspension).

Land Rovers have always been devastatingly handsome vehicles, including the all-new Discovery’s own boxy predecessor. The new one looks too generic and has lost a sizeable portion of its fan base as a result. The generic look might not be a dissuasive mark by itself; there are design flaws to go with it: the back of the car looks chunkier than the front, meaning its side profile looks like a mashup of two different vehicles, and the vast acreage of sheet metal around the rear three-quarters is a bit awkward. The tailgate design is... just go back to my review of the car on the weeks of July 19 and 26 to see what I mean.

The build quality was good, but the car still felt unfinished. The diesel version was to blame. It rode harder and harsher than its petrol contemporary, and a respectable colleague from the south surmised that the comparatively heavier mill could be to blame, which means they were using “crate” (read modular) suspension all round and probably never had time to tune it specifically for different vehicle weights. The southern man is a genius, so I will appropriate his explanation as mine as well.

There is the fact that this new car steps on its brother’s (Discovery Sport and Range Rover Sport) toes, and then there is the problem with the name: we were specifically asked not to refer to it as the Discovery 5, despite it being the fifth-generation vehicle; we were instead told to say “all-new Discovery”, which would be fine if we were stuck in a Groundhog time loop that ensures every day is July 2017. What happens next year? Or when the sixth car comes out? What will we refer to this vehicle as then? Calling it “all-new” at that point when it so obviously isn’t just makes the speaker look foolish.

The Velar

One of the most anticipated vehicles of 2017. Of all the vehicles in this list, it is the one I spent the shortest time in: all of 20 minutes, to be exact; but in those 20 minutes I saw 140km/h on the dash at least once. Blame the supercharged engine for that.

It looks and feels expensive, and that is because it is; word going round on the day of introduction was it will cost a tithe short of an eye-watering quarter million, and that is in real American greenbacks (translates to about 23 million, in local non-cryptocurrency). This is encroaching on the Mercedes-Benz G63 AMG, which is the ultimate fashion accessory, which the Velar strives to be, because it does not fill any niche previously unoccupied except maybe for purveying the sense that the owner has a disposable income that reads like a telephone number complete with area code and carrier prefix.

This is a car of billionaires (of, and admittedly, for), if the billionaire in question is the late Steve Jobs (RIP). The interior has a distinctly Apple-esque feel with its sheer whiteness, contrasting sharply with piano- black touch surfaces reeking of minimalism, like a second-generation iPod. It is an Apple store on wheels, or what we imagine Steve Jobs’ bedroom looked like. Luxurious excellence is the theme here and they have pulled it off so well that it eventually becomes a bit off-putting. You are afraid to stain the seats with your stone-beaten, hand-washed worn-for-the-third-time jeans or leave greasy, salty fingerprints from your sweaty forelegs on that giant iPad of a centre console, which means you are afraid to use the car at all. It can get a bit overwhelming, to be honest, which is a far cry from the cosseting invitation of the Range Rover Sport and the little, girly Evoque, of which this feels like the lovechild thereof (and is presumably the androgen-ised version of an Evoque). It might as well be too, since it occupies the narrow size gap between the former two and the driving feel comes off as a blend of the previous pair as well.

It is notoriously difficult for a car aimed at the 1 per cent to win a real world COTY accolade, so now we move on to the default setting of most Kenyan drivers, Toyota...

• The winner: Volkswagen Polo Vivo

This might not be the car you want, but it is all the car you will ever need, and that is why it wins our COTY decoration. More than that, it wins because for the first time ever, we poor ones have hope at legally acquiring a zero-mileage car complete with a warranty for a down payment of only Sh175,000 for the Maxx (or 10,000 less for the entry level Trendline), and with a monthly instalment in the neighbourhood of Sh36,000, you can avail yourself of a brand spanking new German car with security to ensure peace of mind if anything ever breaks for at least three years from the date of purchase. If you have not already dropped the newspaper and rushed to DT Dobie for a deal on the car by the end of that sentence, I have no idea what you are waiting for. Volkswagen finally, truthfully and irrevocably, actually does mean “The People’s Car”.

The Polo Vivo is a no-frills approach to motoring with a sensible price tag to match. It is the most appropriate vehicle for city-bound types because of its size, nippiness, tractability, punchy 1.4 litre and of course, the automatic gearbox. This is a car that will appeal to enthusiasts as well, since the real OGs know the beauty in hooning the living daylights out of a small car; and as we saw last week, it is very possible to transform a regular Volkswagen hatchback into a fire-spitting chariot from hell.

The Vivo also stands as the icon of a new phase of industrialisation of the country, as I waxed patriotically during its review on October 4. Combine this with the price tag which I am unable to shut up about, as well as its all-round user-friendliness, appeal and practicality, and you can see why it is with confidence that we announce the Motoring Press Agency Car of the Year 2017 is the Volkswagen Polo Vivo.