Newsweek’s Autos Awards 2021

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NEWSWEEK’S AUTO AWARDS HIGHLIGHT THE industry's best in 25 individual vehicle and brand categories.

This first annual list includes several U.S. companies, a start-up automaker and a number of models that have recently been redesigned. Nearly all of the vehicles we ranked are made in America.

We rated vehicles in two ways: by test driving them and by comparing their standard and available features and specifications to those of other vehicles in the same category. Over the last year, the Newsweek autos team drove about 150 vehicles, rating them in seven categories: performance, handling and braking, technology, cargo area, seating, interior appointments and pricing. We focused on how well the vehicles lived up to the expectations of the target customer. Automakers were asked to provide vehicles for testing and only models that were available were test driven.

Best Car, SUV, Truck and Minivan category winners had 25 percent of their total rating deter-mined by the test drive score and 75 percent by features and specifications. Brand awards were more subjective. In addition to vehicle scores, we looked at changes to the model lineup and other company activities to determine our winners.

BEST CAR LINEUP

NISSAN

Nissan’s car lineup includes the Versa, Sentra, Altima, Maxima, 370Z, Leaf and GT-R. In recent years, the Versa, Sentra and