Below is a partial cut and paste of what Car and Driver had to say about COTY awards…
I give them credit for 'fessing up.
Here and now, in vivid HTML, Car and Driver formally apologizes for naming the Renault Alliance to the 1983 10Best Cars list. For the past 26 years, it’s been gnawing at our collective gut like a shame-induced ulcer. The car was trash. We should have known that back then, and it’s taken us too long to confess our grievous mistake. Let this frank admission be the start of our penance.
It’s not the only blemish on our record, and we’re not the only publication to recognize a few stinkers with a high honor. The history of automotive journalism has seen flaming piles of poo named “Car of the Year” even as they attract product liability lawsuits by the acre-foot and hunks of crud honored as “All-Stars” at the very moment buyers are seeking reimbursement under lemon laws.
Aw, poor Alliance. That award might have been why my mom checked it out. I was steering her towards a Mazda GLC (the first fwd version, not the rather crude rwd car.) Alas, the Mazda, being a good car, was in short supply and they were charging full price.
The Alliance had yet to prove its woeful lack if reliability. It was attractive, comfortable, competitively equipped, and even downright zippy compared to the B210 it was replacing (if slower than almost anything else.) But my word did that car find more ways of failing. I think fuel pumps were good for about 20k miles, half as far as the quality Michelins. The ignition system failed in various ways and a head gasket needed replacing in under 50k miles.
My patient folks kept it to over 100k miles before trading it in for a depressingly grim powder blue-gray used Escort, a car we all hated more than the Alliance, despite being so much better built and quicker. It was just such a gloomy color and had such ugly styling. Even broken down the Alliance had some charm and really great seats. And it was red, always a good thing to brighten up a drab day. The Escort got traded in on a new Civic a few years later and they were happy Honda owners ever after. They should have bought a red one instead of three beigy metallic Hondas in a row, but any beige Honda is better than a red Alliance.
Our current Hyundai Elantra GT is Volcanic Red, aptly named, one of the brightest reds I’ve ever seen. I love it. You could see it from the moon. From their web site it appears they’ve replaced it with the less retina-searing geranium red. A cute name, but they must be aiming this at women now. Figures. They’re big buyers of smallish hatches.
