Wheels magazine highlights the true cost of bad incentives in the automotive media landscape, with Car of the Year 2021. This is what happens when you kick your audience under the bus...

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Wheels magazine awarded Mazda CX-30 the 2021 COTY trophy.

CX-30 is - of course - more mainstream than last year’s official Car of the Year, the Three-Pronged EQC. But like EQC, Mazda’s CX-30 is really just pumped-up version of another virtual twin in the stable.

CX-30 is essentially a Mazda3 hatch with added ground clearance and, in some cases, on-demand AWD. So, well done there, moving the automotive sector profoundly forward. By jacking up a Mazda3.

“This is Mazda’s ninth Car of the Year win, making it the second most successful manufacturer at our award behind only Holden.”

If you were a carmaker, that’s how you’d want to be contextualised at this point - almost (but not quite) as successful as Holden.

Editor Dylan Campbell there. Well played, dude.

“To be our Car of the Year, the winner must nail five award criterion.”

Pro tip there, big D: ‘Criterion’ is the singular. (One criterion.) ‘Criteria’ is the plural. (Five criteria.)

“While to some the idea may sound quaint, the fact is Australian car enthusiasts demand agenda setting content that they can trust. We hold that trust dear and exist solely to deliver stories that inspire, reviews that inform and content that engages the current and future generations of Australian motorists.”

I’d suggest the only future motoring enthusiasts actually touching a Wheels magazine today are tidying up the lounge room after making sure their grandfather is just having an afternoon nap and is not yet dead.

Andrew Beecher there, from the same Car of the Year press release as ‘criterion’ dude. Beech isn’t a bad bloke, but he’s cursed with being the CEO of this ongoing near-death experience. So, to Beech I would say:

I love you, dude, but facts matter. You streamed this announcement live on YouTube, at 10am Monday.

And by ‘live’ I mean you pumped out a wholly contrived and epically self-indulgent pre-recorded video package that was un-watchably choppy - presumably the result of low upload bandwidth, which you should have tested, because you’re (you know) a multi-million-dollar business. Allegedly. And the audio was crap.

But apart from that: nice.

And, as for (quote) “content that engages”: Australia’s most allegedly coveted car of the year award had about 220 peak concurrent viewers, live, insofar as I could tell, watching it live. 220 - not 220,000. Nineteen of them had to be you lot, and maybe 200 industry insiders. Plus me, doing roasty research.

You could count the punters on one hand, dude.

The saddest thing is that, statistically, it seems to me nobody except Wheels and the finalists appeared to care less.