The MotorTrend Car of the Year award stretches back some 70 years, and we’ve taken flak for a few winners, such as the 1974 Ford Mustang II (which we still say was the right car for its time) and the 1991 Chevrolet Caprice (Chevy sent us an LTZ with the police suspension, so it aced the ride-and-handling route). However, few of our winners have drawn as much scorn as our 1983 Car of the Year, the Renault-AMC Alliance.
Honestly, we can’t help but wince when people bring up the Alliance, as one auto exec did recently. Still, going back and reviewing the history, we think our early-’80s forebears made the right choice. Step into the MT time machine, and let’s take a dive into the circumstances behind the Alliance’s 1983 COTY win.
Let’s start with a quick overview of what was going on in late ’82 when we did our 1983 Car of the Year testing. First, fuel economy was of outsized importance. Gas prices had doubled since the 1979 fuel crisis, which had caused rationing and
