2008 Motor Trend Car of the Year Contenders

Phase One: The Proving Ground - Sorting the Serious Contenders From the Also-Rans

Here's where we start the judging process. Each contender is put through the complete series of Motor Trend performance tests to give the judges baseline data to work from. Then each judge drives each contender around a 13.5-mile loop that takes in the high-speed track, the freeway-surfaces road, the demanding winding road, and finally the special-surfaces roads. The judges also conduct detailed static reviews of each contender, looking at design, build quality, engineering innovations, and features. Daily meetings in the office adjacent to the skidpad look at every contender's strengths and weaknesses in detail.

The aim of this first phase isn't to pick the Car of the Year, but to eliminate those vehicles that don't measure up against the key criteria: superiority, significance, and value. As always, some vehicles fell well short of the high standards required for a COTY winner. Others came tantalizingly close. This year, after four days of testing and analysis, driving and discussion, the judges agreed on 10 vehicles that wouldn't make it through to the second round.

1. SKIDPAD
43 Acres; Length: 2950 feet; Width: 1200 feet
MT Figure Eight. Low elapsed time and high lateral g on the 1760-foot course shows how well the chassis copes with the combined acceleration, braking, and turning typically found on a winding road. Also provides data for max lateral g number.

2. STRAIGHT/STABILITY ROAD
Four lanes, 0.75 mile
Standard quarter-mile acceleration and 60-0-mph braking tests. Acceleration runs made in both directions to account for any wind. Provides data for incremental acceleration times, quarter-mile speed, and braking number, in feet.

3. HIGH-SPEED LOOP
Three lanes, 6.4 miles
Engine noise and transmission-shift quality under hard acceleration, and wind and road noise, plus stability at high speed. Provides subjective evaluation of acceleration from standstill by observing speed at the first mile marker.

4. FREEWAY SURFACES
One lane, 1.25 miles
Ride quality and transmitted tire and suspension noise. Road is sectioned into exact replicas of L.A.'s notoriously choppy 710, 10, and 5 freeways. Judges maintained 70 mph to replicate real-world freeway driving.

5. WINDING ROAD
Two lanes, 3.1 miles
Tests power, braking, and chassis balance at the limit. Three manmade hills also give stability-control and anti-lock brake systems a workout. A demanding combination of fast sweepers, decreasing-radius hairpins, and a tight right-left.

6. SPECIAL SURFACES
17 surfaces, 0.75 mile
Used for assessing noise from suspension and detecting rattles and squeaks from the body and interior. Has a mixture of typical distressed road surfaces, from broken asphalt, to potholes, to deep corrugations, to rail crossings.