In its 19th edition, celebrating the best cars and bikes to be launched in calendar year 2023, Hyundai’s all-new sedan Verna and Royal Enfield’s adventure bike, the new Himalayan emerged with maximum scores. A 7-member jury, each for cars and bikes, consisting of senior automotive journalists from carandbike.com editorial team, and external automotive experts, voted in this process. The winners were chosen based on a thorough and elaborate assessment programme that included experiencing these vehicles on the Madras International Circuit over two days followed by a proprietary scoring and voting process validated and audited by Divergent Insights, one of India’s well-known, independent market research and analytics firms.
The car&bike Awards are one of India’s oldest and most reputed automotive awards. This year, more than 50 vehicles were nominated for the awards.
“The car&bike Awards recognizes and honours the best amongst all new cars and bikes launched in a calendar year. The year 2023 was a rather interesting one for the automotive industry with some path-breaking launches in the four-wheeler domain and more so in the two-wheeler space. Also, record sales numbers in a very tough year. To acknowledge the efforts of the automotive industry, this year’s jurors had their work cut out to determine the best of the lot. As always, we took a scientific approach with the help of our jury and our audit partners to justify our top picks. My best wishes to all the winners,” said Girish Karkera, Editor-in-Chief, car&bike.
Gracing the trophy handover ceremony was Mr Tapan Singhel, MD & CEO, Bajaj Allianz General Insurance, which was also the Title Partner for the glittering awards ceremony attended by the Indian automotive fraternity. Mr Singhel commented, “It was our honour to collaborate with car&bike as the Title Partner for the prestigious car&bike Awards 2024. The platform recognizes the remarkable accomplishments of leading automakers in the country, which resonates with our ethos of celebrating innovation and excellence. We congratulate all winners. We will continue to work closely with the Indian automotive industry to add value to the lives of people.”
Mr Tarun Garg, COO and Mr JT Park, ED, Hyundai Motor India Limited received the trophy on behalf of the brand while Royal Enfield was represented by, Mr Pradeep Mathew, Head of Product Development at Royal Enfield and Mr Aiyappa Ponappa, Brand Manager, Royal Enfield Himalayan, on the stage.
The event was also supported by HDFC Mutual Fund, Sherlock AI and Victorinox (Associate Partners) and Just Urbane (Magazine Partner).
This year, car&bike also brought back the Design Awards in a different format with a specialised jury of professional automotive and industrial designers choosing the winners. This jury included Punit Chaphekar (founder C-Studio), Aashish B Choudhary (co-founder Studio 34) and Thomas Dal (Dean, Strate School of Design, Bangalore). The top votes in cars went to Mercedes-AMG SL55 Roadster and bikes to Aprilia RS 47. The runners-up in each category were Mercedes-Benz EQE SUV and Triumph Scrambler 400X.
A total of 30 trophies were distributed at the awards last evening. Of these 21 were judged by the individual car and bike jury members, four were selected on basis of online voting by visitors on carandbike.com and five were selected through car&bike’s internal editorial and marketing research teams. The latter included Manufacturer of the Year won by Hero MotoCorp, Business Leader of the Year won by Rajesh Jejurikar, Executive Director & CEO (Auto & Farm Sector), Mahindra & Mahindra and Tech Maestro of the Year won by Anand Kulkarni, Vice-President, Electric Passenger Vehicles, Tata Motors.
The 2024 car&bike Awards was spearheaded by Girish Karkera, Editor-in-Chief car&bike. The car jury also included motorsport constructor and auto analyst Raj Kapoor, senior automotive journalist Bertrand D’Souza, Indian Racing League and professional race driver Parth Ghorpade, car&bike Senior Editor Shams Raza Naqvi, car&bike Assistant Editor Seshan Vijayraghavan, and car&bike Head of Curated Content Ninad Mirajgaonkar.
The two-wheeler jury was led by car&bike Senior Editor Preetam Bora, and included two-wheeler expert and content creator Sagar Sheldekar, two-wheeler expert Rishad Cooper, Riding Coach and Big Rock Moto Park – Head of Business Ashok George, actor and biker Siddhant Karnick and car&bike Assistant Editors Kingshuk Dutta and Janak Sorap.
The car&bike Awards 2024 also had the distinction of having India’s most voted for Viewers’ Choice categories. This year too, the online votes polled on carandbike.com crossed the one million mark.
