Ford Mustang Mach-E Wins WWCOTY Large Car Award

For the 12th year, the Women's Car of the Year (WWCOTY) Awards panel has named several vehicles category winners in this prestigious automotive award. WWCOTY is the only vehicle awards program exclusively of women motoring journalists.

The jurors of this awards program come from 40 different countries across five continents. The 2022 awards program began with 65 vehicles that each juror had a chance to drive. Though the program began with a long list of 65 vehicles, they cut the number down to the six class winners when the jurors completed their task.

The classes included:

• Urban Model
• Family SUV
• Large Car
• Performance Car
• Large SUV
• 4X4

Vehicles included in this program had to be on sale between January 1 and December 31, 2021.

An American manufacturer scored a significant victory in this program. Ford's Mustang Mach-E, an all-electric car, was named the Large Car trophy winner. It is funny that the Mach-E is part of the Mustang brand, and Ford established separate sub-brands a couple of years ago, beginning with the Mustang. Like Mustang, Ford has a different Bronco brand made up of the Bronco two- and four-door plus the Bronco Sport. Other models like the Bronco Raptor are to join it.

In the U.S. recently, the Ford Maverick won the top award in MotorWeek's Driver's Choice Competition. This is the second time in two years s Ford has won the award. Last year, the Mustang Mach-E won the top spot in the same competition making this year's award the second time in two years.

The Mustang brand includes both the all-electric Mustang Mach-E plus more standard engine-driven models. And while there was initially a bit of controversy about naming including the Mach-E in the Mustang brand, it is paying off handsomely for the automaker as the electric gained a considerable number of initial reservations, and each month the electric is at or near the top of the electric car market.

In other categories, the winners included:

Urban Model:Peugeot’s 308 was named category winner.
Family SUV: Kia's Sportage was named victor in this category.
Performance Car:Audi’s e-tron GT
Large SUV:BMW’s iX
4X4:Jeep’s Wrangler 4xe

Now that the class winners are all set, the automotive world will have to wait until March 8 to determine which vehicle is the overall winner of this competition. March 8 is International Women's Day which WWCOTY will mark by naming the still unknown top vehicle.

WWCOTY is a unique awards program. It is the only car awards program that, as noted, features women motoring journalists exclusively.

Photo Courtesy Ford Motor Co.

Marc Stern has been an automotive writer since 1971 when an otherwise normal news editor said, "You're our new car editor," and dumped about 27 pounds of auto stuff on my desk. I was in heaven as I have been a gearhead from my early days. As a teen, I spent the usual number of misspent hours hanging out at gas stations Shell and Texaco (a big thing in my youth) and working on cars. From there on, it was a straight line to my first column for the paper, "You Auto Know," an enterprise that I handled faithfully for 32 years. Not many people know that I also handled computer documentation for a good part of my living while writing YAN. My best writing, though, was always in cars. My work has appeared in Popular Mechanics, Mechanix Illustrated, AutoWeek, SuperStock, Trailer Life, Old Cars Weekly, Special Interest Autos, etc. You can follow me on: Twitter or Facebook.