The three winners of the 2022 North American Car, Truck, and Utility of the Year (NACTOY) awards have been announced. Jurors narrowed their choices from 36 eligible vehicles down to nine finalists before selecting the three category winners.
Taking the North American Car of the Year award was the Honda Civic, with Truck of the Year awarded to the Ford Maverick, and Ford's Bronco was awarded 2022 North American Utility Vehicle of the Year.
Honda's all-new Civic took its top spot over the Lucid Air electric luxury sedan and the eighth-generation Volkswagen Golf GTI and Golf R.
Ford's Maverick compact pickup beat out the other vehicle in the segment it helped relaunch, the Hyundai Santa Cruz, while the other entry was electric upstart Rivian and its R1T electric truck.
For 2022 Utility of the Year, the long-anticipated return of the Ford Bronco off-roader won over the electric Hyundai Ioniq 5 crossover and the Genesis GV70 luxury crossover.
“2021 has been a highly significant year in automotive history,” said NACTOY President Gary Witzenburg. “We have seen groundbreaking and appealing new electric vehicles from almost every brand along with the emergence of new vehicle segments and impressive redesigns of familiar models. Meanwhile, a number of all-new start-up manufacturers are proving they are capable of competing with established automakers even with their first product offerings. Today’s winners represent our collective opinion of the best of what’s available to customers right now, and we sincerely congratulate the automotive industry on a very impressive year.”
The NACTOY juror pool includes 50 expert automotive journalists from the U.S. and Canada, including our own Editor in Chief Jodi Lai. Eligible vehicles include all new or substantially changed vehicles offered that year. The vehicles are driven and three rounds of voting begin in the fall ahead of the January announcement.
"It's great to see some of NACTOY's winners align with some of the winners of our own 2022 AutoTrader Awards," said Lai. "The Honda Civic won our Best Overall Car and Best Compact Car awards and the Ford Bronco won our inaugural Best Vehicle for Adventure award. I'm proud to be a NACTOY juror and I'm very proud that the AutoTrader Awards has become the most trusted automotive award in Canada."
