For the third iteration of our Motor Trend Performance Vehicle Of the Year competition, we took 21 vehicles to the desert oasis of California’s Chuckwalla Valley Raceway, where we chuckwalla’ed them around the track and a special off-road course in order to cull the thundering herd. We whittled it down to a group of seven finalists that spanned the gamut from a wildly entertaining Korean EV to a thoroughbred Italian prancing horse to a bucking wild American stallion.
The goal after our time at the track was to take the measure of this magnificent seven on some of California’s amazingly entertaining roads, including desert byways and alpine passes, to extract more of what they’re all about in the context of our six PVOTY criteria (engineering excellence, value, performance of intended function, driver confidence and engagement, advancement. in design, and efficiency). This is the ‘living with it’ part of the program, where we fiddled with vehicle settings, attacked twisty roads and pavement imperfections, and otherwise enjoyed the finalists like most of their owners will.