Everything you need to know about MOTOR Performance Car of the Year 2022

The brief for Performance Car of the Year 2022 was simple. Make it bigger and better than it’s ever been before. More cars, more breadth and depth of coverage, the best team on board, the most compelling video output and the fastest, most powerful group of enthusiast cars ever. Spare no expense on circuit booking, pull no punches on verdicts, and deliver a stack of hard data, presented in the biggest, weightiest edition of MOTOR magazine ever. No small assignment, then.

This year’s event sees a traditional PCOTY event fused with something new. You told us how much you missed Bang For Your Bucks, our annual competition for more affordably priced vehicles that’s been on temporary hiatus, so we listened and gifted Bang an upgrade into the PCOTY fold, giving it a spit and polish and launching it as Sports Car of the Year. So there are now two separate but equal competitions, which have resulted in two very deserving champions for this first instalment of the double-header.

The winners of both Performance Car of the Year and Sports Car of the Year 2022 will be announced on Tuesday, March 29.

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It doesn’t look real. I’m approaching redline in a Porsche 992 GT3. Ahead of me, Warren Luff is driving a fluorescent Lamborghini Huracán Evo. Blue and white kerbing strobes beneath its tyres as it’s framed by the blue and whitecapped Bass Strait, a cloudless dome of sky overhead and the distant heat-shimmer of Cape Woolamai’s sea cliffs beyond.

It seems for a moment, that the world has gone crazy on the beauty filters, jacking the intensity to some ridiculous level. We knew PCOTY ’22 was going to be full-on. We just didn’t expect it to be quite so otherworldly.

It started badly. You can read more about why in Daniel Gardner’s behind the scenes PCOTY wrap, but suffice to say nature conspired against us. Then the vehicles started dropping one by one. Photographic lead Ellen Dewar was hospitalised with an eye issue. It seemed that wrangling 18 cars and the attendant support vehicles was going to be a challenge the likes of which we’d never really experienced.

Still, it was obvious that the result was clearly going to be worth the effort. The Sports Car of the Year field ran to 10 cars, with the Hyundai i20 N probably pitched as a pre-event favourite. Keeping the baby Korean more than honest was the new Subaru BRZ, with the evergreen Golf GTI here in Mk8 form and the intriguing Toyota GR Yaris Rallye hoping to make up for the disappointment of its less focused sibling’s eighth place at PCOTY 2021.

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The 200kW Toyota wasn’t even the biggest hitter at SCOTY this year. That honour fell to the hearty 345kW naturally aspirated V8 of the Ford Mustang Mach 1, with both the Hyundai i30 Sedan N and the Ford Focus ST also eclipsing the acclaimed Yaris’ kilowatt count, if not its power-to-weight figure.

The field was rounded out by the most focused version of the ND Mazda MX-5, the GT RS, alongside the Skoda Octavia RS and BMW’s 180kW front-drive take on the Golf GTI theme, the 128ti. You couldn’t have asked for a more varied mix. Front, rear and all-wheel drive, manual, auto and dual-clutch and a near perfect smattering of body styles.

Remember, the cars aren’t being compared directly with each other, but judged against the long-standing PCOTY criteria. In this instance we tweaked the weightings of the scores a little so that the cars in the SCOTY competition were weighted more for value and less for X-factor, reversing that decision for the PCOTY class.

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Stepping up to the PCOTY field, a pair of Bavarians opened proceedings in the shape of the Alpina B3 and the BMW M3. The M3 was particularly interesting as it’s the entry-level car with three pedals and a stick, the only entrant in the senior field thus equipped. The Alpina’s a couple of grand cheaper than the M3 and with another 150Nm, Buchloe’s bahnstormer stood more than a puncher’s chance.

Jaguar’s facelifted F-Type P450 R-Dynamic delivered the only front-engined V8 in this section, sending power to the rear treads only and in most normal years might have been the best-sounding car at PCOTY. Not this time. Our first Australian taste of the long-awaited mid-engined Corvette C8 in right-hand drive form had everyone’s interest piqued, while we’d missed the inclusion of a Lamborghini Huracán Evo at PCOTY to date, so the launch of the new Fluo Capsule edition was all the excuse we really needed. If everyone else can flex the rules a little due to Covid, then so can we.

Porsche, perhaps stung by being pipped last year by Mercedes-AMG, had arrived in force. Trent Giunco couldn’t stop telling everybody quite how good the Boxster 25 Years was, so that was a natural inclusion. Cam Kirby was similarly insistent that we had to have a Taycan at PCOTY, having just missed out on one last year. We asked him to book a 4S, but he couldn’t be shifted from his view that PCOTY deserved the fastest version and so we ended up with a Turbo S.

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Finally, we managed to get early access to one of the first 911 GT3s to make landfall in Australia. An unbackable favourite? You’ve only got to look at Porsche’s record in past PCOTY events to see why. Would it be able to outrun its electric sibling over 400 metres?

Was it about to come undone on the challenging Gippsland road route? Could it outshine the million-watt star power of the Huracán? So many questions.

Alongside the rebirth of BFYB, we also welcomed back another MOTOR fixture for 2022. The gun driver tasked with setting the lap times and dodging geese around the Phillip Island GP Circuit was a guy who had form here, setting the hot laps the last time PCOTY was at the Island in 2008, one Warren Luff.

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Whereas many race drivers don’t always understand the story behind road cars, Luffy is deeply invested, perpetually curious and always has an interesting take on how a car performs.

The judging panel this year consists of the core MOTOR road test team and a ringer. We got in touch with a man who understands the Australian performance car market intimately; Premcar’s engineering director and co-founder, Bernie Quinn. With almost three decades of fast Ford fettling under his belt via Tickford, Prodrive and Premcar, Bernie knows a thing or two about how cars ought to ride and handle in local conditions.

Having plotted two separate road routes, a method of charging the Taycan that didn’t resort to dismantling the junction box of the hotel at Korumburra, a schedule for testing at Phillip Island that merely looked impossible to achieve while wrangling a photography team with only three functional eyeballs, SCOTY and PCOTY were a go. And MOTOR has never seen an event quite like it.

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The judges

Cameron Kirby

MOTOR’s Deputy Editor loves a great V8. Loves a terrible V8 too but we won’t hold that against him

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Trent Giunco

Wagga Wagga’s finest export after Dame Edna and the Chiko Roll. Handy steerer, XR6T owner

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Alex Affat

Superior power-to-weight ratio and the only member of the panel to fit in an MX-5 without resembling an orangutan

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Andy Enright

The ringmaster of the show. Now a Phillip Island local so we expect him not to punch holes in the local scenery

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Bernie Quinn

Premcar’s co-founder, so he’s responsible for the Holy Grail. Not sure of his involvement in Life of Brian

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The judging criteria

Performance

The VBOX doesn’t lie. Beyond the raw numbers, we’re looking for response and powertrain refinement

Dynamics

The subtleties of balance, grip, and control fidelity that separate the great from the merely very good

Accessibility

The process of how the vehicle allows you to access its reserves of talent, and the payback it delivers when you do

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Liveability

Ride quality, interior comfort, visibility, ergonomics and noise suppression. A liveable car is one you’ll keep using

Value

Price, option costs,talent versus its similarly priced peer group, warranty arrangements, fuel economy

X-Factor

Never be impressed with mere charisma. Look for character. Which car’s light shines brightest and longest?