At the press day of the Brussels Motor Show last Friday, the organizers of the annual European Car of the Year election announced that the new Mercedes-Benz CLA can now call itself COTY 2026.

In this 63rd edition of the election, the 59 members of the Jury, all car journalists from more than 20 European countries, had already selected 7 finalists by the end of last year.

The seven finalists were the Citroën C5 Aircross, the Dacia Bigster, the Fiat Grande Panda, the Kia EV4, the Mercedes-Benz CLA, the Renault 4 Electric, and the Skoda Elroq. Three of them can only be bought as full-electric: the Kia, the Renault, and the Skoda; three others are available as pure electric or in hybrid versions. Only the Dacia Bigster has no pure electric version; it is a gasoline or hybrid, and it can also run on LPG.

Something of a surprise

In fact, reviewing the competitors, there should be no doubt that the Mercedes was going to win. But, there’s a but… In the past, the jury has been heavily criticized for its choice of premium cars. There was once a Mercedes-Benz S-Class, Car of the Year (1974), and the last of the ‘heavy ones’ was the Porsche 928.

From then on, the jury had a much better eye for affordability, and that made premiums almost unacceptable. Until now. Not so long ago, Mercedes stated that its smaller segments, the A- and B-Class, were no longer important and that they would be phased out from the portfolio sooner or later, despite the fact that the (previous) CLA was clearly one of the more popular models.

Meanwhile, Mercedes-Benz has rectified the message and the aim, resulting in the new CLA being the first Mercedes born to be an electric car. But while Mercedes had also promised in the past that it would be totally electric by 2030, it had to revise its objectives.

So, there’s a CLA hybrid coming, too, but the real star is, rightly so, the all-electric version. In this competition, it would have been strange not to win, although country partisanship can sometimes throw a spanner in the works.

Not this time, however. Although the Italians went on their knees for the Grande Panda and the French couldn’t entirely resist the R4 and the Bigster, the result was fair and obvious in the end.

CLA, Elroq, and EV4

With 320 points, the Mercedes-Benz CLA was a clear winner, leaving the second in the row, the interesting Skoda Elroq, far behind with 220 points. Kia, already a serious contender for many years and once a winner (with the EV6), was third with its new EV4 (208 points), while the EV3 already scored very well too, not long ago.

Fourth place went to the Citroën C5 Aircross (207 points), while the Fiat Grande Panda was fifth with exactly 200 points. The two Renault Group products came sixth and seventh. Affordability has played a lesser role this year, making the Dacia Bigster (170 points) an interesting car but not a real contender for victory.

And as many French-minded jury members had already voted for the Dacia, there weren’t many votes left for that poor R4 Electric. It deserved more, but there was an insurmountable handicap: last year, the R5 Electric (technically almost identical to the R4) won the COTY competition, and the year before, in 2024, it was… the Renault Scenic. Here also, ‘trop’ can be too much.