The Japan Car of the Year is a Honda Van

The 59 judges for the Japan Car of the Year 2024 have spoken and Honda has taken out top spot with its Freed minivan. It was a relatively comfortable win over the second placed Mazda CX-80 on 196 points. This is the first time in 14 years that Honda has prevailed.

Honda’s Freed isn’t available in New Zealand because Kiwis seem to prefer SUVs over MPVs, making them a hard sell.

Freed’s chief engineer, Satoru Azumi, had this to say, “When designing the Freed, we went back to basics and created a new standard for the family minivan. It offers class-leading comfort, usability and packaging with the option of Honda’s unique hybrid system and a very reasonable price tag.”

Second runner up was BMW’s Mini Cooper on 172 points. It also took out the Import Car of the Year trophy. Mitsubishi won the Design Aware for its edgy Mitsubishi Triton, just one vote ahead of the BYD’s sleek Seal sedan. 

Honda walked off with another award as well, its CR-V e:FCEV capturing the Technology Award. It is a hydrogen-powered fuel cell vehicle.

The Japan COTY steering committee gave its Special Award to Mazda’s e-Skyactiv R-EV rotary technology.

The 10 finalists were decided in November. After the podium award winners, the Suzuki Front took fourth place with 110 votes, followed by Lexus LBX (70), Hyundai Ioniq 5 N (52) and Toyota Land Cruiser (44). Rounding out the final places were BYD Seal (32), Volvo EX30 (30), and Mitsubishi Triton (18).