These Cars Have Been Named the Best in the World in 2020

The World Car Awards normally are announced at the New York International Auto Show. However, with the show postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic, the 2020 awards were announced digitally, instead. More than 80 jurors from across the world came together to determine the best cars across five different categories. There were four winners.

Kia is the big winner, with wins for World Car of the Year with the Telluride SUV and Urban Car of the Year with the Soul EV. The new Porsche Taycan EV took home awards for the best luxury car and the best performance car. Mazda also had a strong year, with two of the three finalists for World Car of the Year and the Mazda 3 taking home World Car Design of the Year.

The complete list of winners — and our reviews of them — are below.

World Car of the Year

Kia

2020 Kia Telluride: My wife described the Telluride as “the perfect car for going up north”– the Michigander equivalent of heading out to the Hamptons — and that was an apt description. It’s a resolute and comfortable family cruiser, one that makes that everyday parenting grind feel that little bit less grinding. – Tyler Duffy, Staff Writer

World Luxury Car/World Performance Car

2020 Porsche Taycan:  “The 2020 Porsche Taycan Turbo S is vicious. It’s easy to shoehorn bombastic or hyperbolic adjectives into car reviews, especially with today’s crop of carbon-fiber-and-metal bolts of lightning. And yet, after sitting on an arrow-straight country road in Denmark on the outskirts of Copenhagen and releasing the brake pedal while mashing the accelerator to activate the launch control, the resulting take-off can be described by no other term but: Vicious.” – Sean Evans, Contributor

World Urban Car

2020 Kia Soul EV: “The Kia Soul has served as a master class in how to create an affordable, versatile, yet distinctive small car—a class that Detroit automakers especially seem to have slept through.” – Lawrence Ulrich, Contributor

World Car Design of the Year

Mazda

2020 Mazda 3: “The exterior is, to this reviewer’s eye, a beautiful mixture of flowing lines and sharp, decisive cuts. A thread of minimalism runs through the car, inside and out, from the lack of ornamentation to the pared-back interior. It’s a car that, like Volvo or Saab (R.I.P.), seems to announce to the world, “I could have bought something else, but I didn’t — for very specific reasons.” – Henry Phillips, Deputy Photography Editor

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