Nope, it’s not my ego run amok again. It’s that time of year when the number of “of the year” awards appears to extend beyond the number of nameplates for sale. You should see the 2009 Ram in all of the competitions, but the HD’s new Hemi won’t qualify so it will have to wait for the 2010 redesign where it will likely go up against Ford and GM diesels catching up with the Cummins 6.7 in the emissions race.

These awards are an excellent press source for the outlets that provide them, and manufacturers love awards because they make great ad copy. Some of them are quite obscure while others have to keep adding them to keep up with the ever-more segmenting and confusing array of vehicles.

Car & Driver sidesteps the problem while recognizing good product with their 10Best list, and others single one out by majority voting. Entry criteria typically limit the field to what is “new” or partially so, and judging criteria usually include concepts like “importance” or “significance,” “value” (perceived or otherwise…and very hard to judge with the ridiculously optimistic numbers some manufacturers provide as prices), “best” or “superiority,” and so on. I am frequently amused when a minivan wins a “car” or “truck” award, curious how you can compare a group of vehicles where only a portion of them were designed to and/or can go on a 4WD trail or route, and dumbfounded when a top-selling unit that will continue to be a top seller is rated more significant than a completely new and very viable player in the segment.

A few auto-centric web sites have their own awards as well, the dilemma being they haven’t the relatively long history of things that 40, 50, or 60-year-old magazines do. Hits and history don’t always relate.

It’s critical to ensure the criteria are clearly explained and you have enough data to make an informed choice for what suits your needs best. Years ago when we did Four Wheeler of the Year tests, the winner was chosen not by vote but by numbers. Objective data determined by tape measures, sound meters and accelerometers was joined with points values assigned by every judge to perhaps 50-60 subsections. It was all weighted—with off-road performance the most important—and the equation results produced a winner. We often named people’s individual choice, and noted if their numerical scoring gave the win to a different vehicle.

That’s what I find from TDR, a bunch of information and source identification from which I can draw my own conclusions.

I recently read a motorhome test that compared the cabinets to those on an expensive motor yacht, and having been on a few yachts I can assure you this was wild hyperbole or good PR completely unrelated to fact. That’s the pitiful state of publishing these days, where politics are as pitiful as, well, politics.

Like most automotive-associated industries the TDR is not having a banner year and this will be the last blog, for awhile at least. The opportunity to blog where politics are irrelevant and I didn’t have to watch my mouth was a privilege, as was the reader input in favor of, correcting, or simply calling me a !@%^&*! idiot.

Diesel might be $4/gallon and the economy in the dumpster, but that’s priceless.