Matt Prior: 2022's Car of the Year will be a tough fight

Our man heads to Silverstone to test this year's contenders

Last week, I headed to Silverstone to test the cars shortlisted for this year’s Car of the Year (COTY) award on some challenging surrounding roads.

Seven cars make the shortlist, of which I’m a juror and Autocar is a sponsor (nine European car magazines put up the staunchly independent award’s only funding).

This year, six of the cars on the shortlist are BEVs and an electric variant of the seventh, the Peugeot 308, will come next year to join the existing petrol, diesel and PHEV versions. (Although if you want a snapshot of what manufacturers think it’s like to run an EV all day long, it’s worth noting that the 308 was the only car tested to arrive and depart under its own steam, rather than on a transporter.)

The UK jurors organise a test day for these comparison drives every year, where the five other British judges and I drive each of them and then have an argument about them over lunch, before going away and voting how we like. There’s usually a big annual test for all the jurors in France, too, but this year and last everyone has tested on home turf, for obvious reasons.

Anyhoo, I’m almost over my disappointment that the Maserati MC20 didn’t make the shortlist, and by the time you read this I will have decided how to spread 25 points that I have to allocate to the finalists, which are the Cupra Born, the Ford Mustang Mach-E, the Hyundai Ioniq 5 and its Kia EV6 cousin, the very new Renault Mégane E-Tech Electric, the family-sized Skoda Enyaq iV and the aforementioned 308. Across Europe, 61 jurors from 23 nations are doing the same. The current holder is the Toyota Yaris. This year’s winner will be announced on 28 February.

I’m grateful to Silverstone’s Interactive Museum for putting up with us trotting in and out of its car park all day. It’s a seriously cool museum, and one that seems to be still under the radar, owing to it opening not long before the pandemic hit, but it’s gaining traction and well worth a visit.

It’s not just a bunch of old racing cars and bikes. It does have a collection of those, but there are also four high-end racing simulators and it’s about to hold a 60th-anniversary exhibition of BRM’s Formula 1 title victory. Even if you’re not due to go to the circuit, it’s a terrific destination in its own right.

Also spotted at Silverstone (although I first noticed it on the website Car and Classic) was a Sport Exige GT3 at the nearby Lotus dealer, now up for online auction. 

I first read about this model a while ago and have since been intrigued by the idea of modern little-engined cars competing with big GT3 racers, in the same way Minis used to mix it with Ford Galaxies in touring car racing, using a smaller frontal area and light weight to counter any power deficit. A bit like the Alpine A110 does, to a much lesser degree, in the lower GT4 category. 

Alas, after a successful UK campaign, this Lotus never really caught on. They built just three, in 2006. One is in Japan, one caught fire and this is the other. 

I don’t quite know where you would race it now. It was first up for sale at £95,000 a year ago, it’s still listed at £85,000 and the auction’s reserve is £65,000. At some price point it will become a compelling race, sprint, track-day or hillclimb car.