The Canadian Car of the Year (CCOTY) awards have been ongoing since 1986 and since inception the goal of the program has not changed: we seek to provide Canadians with reliable car buying advice, sourced from professional, well-respected automotive journalists from all corners of the country.
The CCOTY awards are conducted by the Automobile Journalists Association of Canada (AJAC), a professional association that connects together Canada’s best auto journalists and provides consumers with unbiased car buying advice from across the industry in all media mediums.
Thousands of test drives take place each year across Canada and journalists use these experiences to vote on stand out vehicles in each segment. Thousands of data points collected in the process provide insight on which vehicles deserve to be singled out in their segment.
Starting in 2024 and moving forward, the CCOTY awards will announce four main category winners:
- Canadian Car of the Year
- Canadian Electric Car of the Year
- Canadian Utility Vehicle of the Year
- Canadian Electric Utility Vehicle of the Year
About AJAC
The Automobile Journalists Association of Canada (AJAC) is an association of professional journalists, writers, photographers, and corporate members whose focus is the automobile and the Canadian automotive industry. Collectively, our primary objectives are to promote, encourage, support, and facilitate professionalism in Canadian automotive journalism and to ensure factual and ethical reporting about the automobile and automotive issues to Canadian consumers. This is achieved through the work of our members and AJAC’s annual vehicle testing and evaluation events, the Canadian Car of the Year Awards (CCOTY), Innovation Awards, and EcoRun.