 Scion FR-S (left) and Subaru BRZ. Click image to enlarge |
Five Days of Car Testing and Fantasy Fulfillment
Article and photos by Jonathan Yarkony
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2013 Canadian Car of the Year
We are freshly returned from Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, where the Automobile Journalists Association of Canada (AJAC), myself included, tested over 60 entries for the Canadian Car of the Year awards. While the results are ripe for debate, we thought we’d give you an inside look at the experience of a first-timer at this prestigious and almost overwhelming event. It was both a daunting task and an almost incomprehensible sandbox with all the coolest toys. I mean, Porsche 911s and Boxsters, Ford Shelby GT500s, BMW M5s, the Toyobaru twins, and Corvettes (which soon became Corvette, singular) were only a handful of the machines that were available for testing.
However, it’s not all fun and games, each journalist is assigned to at least two categories, each of which they must evaluate on a single day in back-to-back driving, or else your vote will not count, and worse yet, you have to pay for the hotel yourself! I’m still not sure if I was lucky or hated, but I was assigned to three categories, each with a minimum of five cars, to be evaluated on Monday, Tuesday and until noon on Wednesday. Then the field is wide open for elective categories (Prestige Performance anyone?) on Wednesday afternoon and Thursday, with Friday being a last day to drive and evaluate the category winners that are announced Thursday night. So without further ado, here’s how it went.
Day 1
After a quick breakfast, we had our main orientation session with all of the participating journalists. Don’t break the cars, drive for a minimum of 30 minutes, but no more than one hour, track handling course access is reserved for those who have completed a certified track or advanced driving course like Bridgestone Academy, a manufacturer driving experience, or something like ILR Car Control School. Newbies stay behind for further briefing.
 Scion FR-S (left) and Subaru BRZ. Click image to enlarge |
The newbie briefing is a detailed explanation of the categories in which we evaluate the cars, which are universal for all categories, and the same standard applies no matter what segment you’re driving. In other words, when rating the cargo space or ease of access or handling, apply the same scale for a Boxster as for a Santa Fe Sport. Cool, I can handle that. And as it turns out, my monster category, Sports/Performance Under $50K, with 10 cars, needed to be tackled Monday, as they split the evaluators between the two full testing days.
After clarifying a couple finer points about the rating system and scorecard, it was time to drive. In order to be more efficient, I paired up with another journalist so we could save time on key swaps, and I found it helpful to have someone to bounce ideas and quotes off of.
We started with the most modest performance cars in the category as we discovered the drive route and tiptoed around the ‘handling course’. The Chevrolet Sonic RS was a good baseline for the category, but not really much of a performance car, and even the 170-hp Fiat 500 Abarth showed its sting compared to the sporty-looking Chevy subcompact.
 Cars at Niagara Regional Airport. Click image to enlarge |
The drive route took us on a loop starting from the Niagara District Airport, crisscrossing various local roads with a brief blast up and down the QEW, which had a section of conveniently grooved asphalt to get a feel for the car’s noise, vibration, and harshness levels, plus its comfort. Of course, those factors aren’t heavily weighted in this category, but the form must be filled out. Our second pairing was the Accord V6 Coupe (also a bit of an oddity in this category) and Hyundai Veloster Turbo, both of which would serve well as daily drivers with a good dose of fun, but neither had much of an edge when pushed hard.
After a quick lunch, we saw that the keys to both the Subaru BRZ and Scion FR-S were available, and we were sick of compromised performance cars and wanted a taste of these focused sports cars, the product of a successful joint development program between Toyota and Subaru. Finally some true brilliance. It was also interesting to see that when driven back to back, and under the extreme conditions of an autocross course, it is evident that the FR-S has a slightly sharper and stiffer setup, and I actually found that I could drive faster with the softer BRZ setup—but if you like a back end that steps out early and often, well, the FR-S is your ticket. Both exceeded all my previous impressions because of the opportunity to drive the wheels off them on a closed course. If I could have just kept driving those two on that course, over and over again, I’d have been a happy man. Then again, in previous years the handling limits were tested on Shannonville race track, so I can understand some journalists disappointment in the short, quick course.
 Volkswagen Golf R (left) and Mini Cooper S coupe. Click image to enlarge |
Unfortunately, we had to keep the testing going, and our next pairing was the Ford Focus ST and Hyundai Genesis Coupe. The Genesis Coupe would have impressed me on any day that I didn’t drive the BRZ or FR-S, but I just drove them, so its impressive handling seemed just a little duller and the fun factor a degree lower. The Focus ST on the other hand, was a wild and unruly handful—a perfect choice for the recent Need for Speed Most Wanted commercial. The power just piles on one the turbo spools up, in an unruly torque-steering Gangnam style dance, with some of the quickest steering I felt the whole week. It also oversteered more than any FWD vehicle I’ve ever driven. A bit shocking, but not as much of a handful as its big, scary brother—the Shelby GT500 (more on that later).
The last pair of the day was something of an odd couple, the Mini Roadster S and VW Golf R, a personal favourite of mine and the only vehicle in the category with AWD. As ever, the Mini was a cat’s pyjamas and the bee’s knees all rolled into one when driving around town, but started to get a little too light and loose when pushed to its absolute limits. The Golf R delivered on our expectations, a refined ride in a practical package, and its AWD gave it the edge in outright speed and even helped it power out of corners in an authoritative manner. However, it was priced far above most of the other entries, and there is a significant weight on pricing in the final category calculations.
We finished our 10 cars with time to spare and I spent some extra time going over my scores—apparently pencils were a new adaptation this year and my eraser got some intense exercise before heading back to the hotel for the evening’s dinner plans.
Day 2
After that first whirlwind day, you wouldn’t think it could get any more hectic, right? Wrong. While I had two smaller categories to complete, I wanted to finish them both on Tuesday so I could sneak into another performance category before the doors were opened to video crews and non-voting journalists.
 Vehicles in the SUV/CUV categories. Click image to enlarge |
Today, I had the privilege of pairing up with Autos.ca’s founder (okay, founded as CanadianDriver.com, of course) and Contributing Editor (emeritus) Paul Williams for the SUV/CUV Under $35K category. When first walking up to the vehicles in this category, lined up in the parking lot and awaiting testing, I had a moment of déjà vu, thinking back to our recent Crossover Comparison Test that featured half of the entrants (Escape, CR-V, and Santa Fe) in this category. Upon closer inspection, these crossovers were more basic versions none even breaking the 200-hp mark in their need to stay under $35K.
Also, being crossovers, we decided to skip the handling course—normally there is an off-road course for off-road vehicles, but an unanticipated ownership change meant a last-minute cancellation of that venue. We also changed up our route, first taking the CR-V and Santa Fe through a more rural setting than the return highway portion, and also taking them along a concrete road with buckled and patched sections that was almost as good as any engineered proving-ground surface for feeling the chassis’ response to large and small surface modulations. Not surprisingly, we found these vehicles incredibly comfortable for the most part, and a welcome relief on driver switches after the contortions necessary to squeeze into some of the small performance cars (say what you will about the BRZ and FR-S, but don’t say they are easy to get in and out of).
Beyond the testing merit of the route, I experienced a moment of breathtaking appreciation of the beauty of this region, no less because of its unexpected timing. Between some of the main roads of Niagara-on-the-Lake, there was a stretch of quiet, mist-blanketed fields on one side and a perfect stone cottage with a small vineyard property on the other side. I returned later with a vehicle for a nice photo op, but the original moment of discovery was so intense, that I just wanted to pull over and take in the serene beauty of this seemingly untainted vision of idyllic repast.
 Porsche 911. Click image to enlarge |
But the crunch was on and we swapped and drove and swapped and drove and completed the remaining SUVs and Crossovers by lunchtime. If you ask me, all these vehicles are thoroughly competent, from the car-like XV Crosstrek and the surprisingly comfortable and competent Trax to the efficient and nimble (but underpowered) CX-5. The Escape 1.6 EcoBoost took the category, no surprise, since it offers an impressive list of equipment, good power from an efficient turbocharged engine, and an excellent balance of comfort and handling.
After lunch I was flying solo in the Small Car Over $21K category. I quickly took each one for a loop, plus the handling course, and the Elantra GT impressed overall as much as it did in our recent Compact Comparison, and I wasn’t surprised to see it won the category. I was surprised that the VW Beetle TDI was as fun to drive as it was— it was easily the best on the closed course, its big torque numbers helping it launch out of the many tight turns. And in the Mazda3 Sport, the same 2.0L SkyActiv-G that seems inadequate in the CX-5 really shone, having just the right sweet spot in terms of power.
While I could have called it a day after completing that category, I re-drove the Focus ST as I had come to some very opposite conclusions from other journalists who had driven that category. I’m glad I did, because it cemented my opinion that this car is borderline dangerous and even more fun than I first gave it credit for. Especially after driving the numb, slow steering of the compact cars, the Focus ST turned in with lightning quick reaction times, but its intensely grippy rubber handled it, and it scares me to think what someone with too much testosterone or adrenaline and without any advanced driver training might do. But damn, was it ever fun!
