CAR magazine recently announced its Top 12 best buys for 2008 at a gala event in Johannesburg in Sandton and now that the world knows which cars were picked by CAR’s editorial team, CARtoday.com is proud to announce the winners of the online Top 12 competition.
There were thousands of entries and although no-one managed to get all 12 categories correct, there were three people who were able to correctly guess the winner in eight categories (four picked seven, and three got six right). Lunga Mthwana from KZN was one of the entrants that predicted the winning vehicles in eight of the categories and was subsequently drawn as the competition’s overall winner. Lunga walks away with the grand prize of a 9-inch drop-down DVD player with headphones and FM transmitter (fitted) valued at R 12 000.
Lunga correctly predicted the Mazda2 as the Best Light Car, The Honda Civic as the Best Compact Car, the Mercedes-Benz C-Class as the Best Compact Executive, the Lexus GS 300 as the Best Executive Saloon, the Mercedes-Benz S-Class as the Best Grand Saloon, Honda CR-V as the Best Compact SUV and the Toyota Fortuner as the Best SUV. He also predicted the Toyota Hilux would be picked in the Best Double-Cab/Pick-up category and said, “the Hilux defines the double cab category in the same way that the S Class defines the Grand Saloon. Its reliability and durability over the last couple of decades means that it has a stronghold in the category.”
Apart from the Best Sports/Performance category, which the Porsche 911 has dominated for several years, Best Double-Cab/Pick-Up was the only category in which most entrants got the prediction right… 58% chose the Hilux.
Twelve other entrants each won a “mrHandsfree Blue Vision II” portable Bluetooth solution valued at R999 apiece. Wamuwi Mbao said of the Mazda2 in the Best Light Car category that, “it’s simply the best buy in its class”. And the reason Abu Bakr Khatib Khatib predicted the Mercedes-Benz C-Class in the Best Compact Executive category was because of its “dynamics, ‘wafability’, quality, engine lineup, and avant garde styling”.
Mohammed Ragie correctly picked the Toyota Fortuner as the Best SUV and Kobus Scheepers won for predicting that the Mercedes-Benz S-Class would be declared CAR’s Best Grand Saloon. “The rest are wannabees, he said. André Venter hit the nail on the head by predicting the Lexus GS300 even if he didn’t agree with the result: “Wins by default, no new challenger except Jag XF, which you haven’t tested yet” and Fanie de Villiers – who correctly guessed the Honda Civic motivated the reason for his vote with “Honda: enough said!”.
The other six lucky winners are Danie Schoeman who correctly predicted the Honda CR-V: “The CR-V can’t be beaten as a package. The diesel only made it better”, Francois Streicher who predicted the Best Hot Hatch as the Audi S3, “Although pricey, this is it – the S3 is hard to ignore, goes like clappers and builds on Audi’s solid reputation of quattro performance vehicles.”
Gert Visser was one of the many who predicted the Toyota Hilux as the Best Double-Cab/Pick-Up: “Hilux (wins) despite the great new Ranger and great-looking Navara!” and Hendrik Schutte thought the Porsche 911 would be the Best Sports/Performance Car because “(It’s) still the ultimate.”.
Divesh Nair correctly predicted the Best Budget Car as the Chevrolet Spark, and said it’s “everything a budget car should be: cheap, good safety features, frugal on fuel and cute styling. Good CSI ratings too”.
The one category which seemed to catch everyone by surprise was the best MPV/SW, only 5% guessed the Nissan Livina whereas 30% predicted the Mazda5 Winner Wayne Wheatley said of this prediction, “For the price, the Nissan has to be the best buy, it may not have the performance and personality, then again personality and MPV are not often used in the same sentence.”
The competition may be closed but you can still view all the winning cars in each category in CARtoday.com’s Top 12 Best Buys module, which also presents the percentage of votes, reveal videos, driving impressions, galleries and downloadable road tests. If you are looking to buy a new car, don’t forget to buy the March issue of CAR magazine in which we have a detailed feature on the Top 12 Best buys for 2008.