The 2015 Why This Ride “Bestie” Awards: Best Sports Cars, Vans, Trucks and our Dog Car of the Year! (Part 2 of 2)

2015 Bestie Awards: Best Sports Cars, Vans, Trucks

Voting/Arguing/Barking by James Hamel, MaryAnne & Jim Wendt, Joel Arellano, Randy Stern, Adam Fredricks, Arison Knapp and Roxy the Dog

Written by James Hamel

A two part automotive awards show? Who do we think we are, The Oscars? Or the Grammy’s? Okay, pretty much every awards show including the Do It Yourself Channel’s Shelving Awards? Well, our “Bestie” Awards are not only a tribute to the cars of 2015 that we all intimately know and love but also to the time honored epic known as the overblown and extra-long awards show. So actually, without further adieu let’s continue on with the winners of the rest of the categories. May the best full size cargo van win!

Best Affordable Sporty Car-(2015 Honda Civic Si/2015 Subaru WRX): Tied

Not everyone can afford to buy a new BMW coupe or any number of high performance cars. So what is a person to do if they love, love to drive but can’t spend over $30,000 and doesn’t want their insurance premiums to skyrocket uncontrollably? This contest wound up being a dead even tie between the car James loved more than any he drove all year (the 2014 Civic Si) and the favorite of our in-house Gen-Y superstar Arison Knapp. So does this mean only old people like the Civic SI? We won’t answer that but both make fine choices with Top Safety Pick Plus ratings from the IIHS and available manual gearboxes that are truly the sweetest in the industry. We say test drive both.

Best Performance Car-(2015 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray)

Adam, our stunt driver and performance modification expert, made this selection and after driving one in the winding canyons above Malibu MaryAnne concurred. End of story.

The Veloster Turbo is the only coupe Roxy will climb into willingly.

Best Car for a Dog Owner-(as Decided by canine contributor Roxy Hamel)-(2015 Hyundai Veloster Turbo)

According to Roxy, our dog in charge of testing the pet friendliness of new cars, it is in fact a minivan with sliding doors that is that least likely to make your dog happy. First of all, unless you buckle them into a safety belt there is far too much room in a van for your dog to be able to keep his or her balance. And as for power sliding doors, Roxy believes that they are the mouths of demons trying to eat her and then steal her soul. Once she makes up her mind there is no changing it.

Roxy also detests the opposite end of the automotive spectrum which are two door coupes mainly because she does not like having to squeeze through a tiny opening to get in and out of the back seat but also because at night sometimes she will refuse to get out of a vehicle. So when time came for Roxy to pick out her first dog car for her owner James Hamel to drive her around in, she picked the Hyundai Veloster Turbo.

The Veloster has an impressively large rear third door on the right hand side of the asymmetrical vehicle (cool!) which was fortunate because at night Roxy will only exit from right rear doors. We think she may be either superstitious, afraid of the dark or laughing at how dumb we are letting her get away with it.

The turbo model Roxy owns came with a six-speed manual and 1.6 liter 201 horsepower turbo to keep her driver entertained and the back seat as well as cargo hold are roomy enough to handle the needs of a single person, a couple and most definitely their beloved dogs. Kudos to Hyundai for building the most brilliant car design for people who love dogs and they did it by truly thinking outside the box. The Veloster looks like no other car on the road and may never resemble another one again. So buy one now!

Now this is the kind of truck MaryAnne likes to play with!

Best Pick-up Truck-(2015 Dodge Ram)

Run don’t walk to our YouTube page to watch MaryAnne give the smackdown to a hardcore off-road trail in a new 2015 Dodge Ram because it shows how tough our lovely leader truly is. She showed no fear down steep embankments in the Ram and appreciated a lot of its features like the available RamBoxes alongside the bed and the new availability of fuel efficient diesel engines. MaryAnne and James did get to take short 15 minute drive in the 2015 Ford F-150 and came away very impressed but decided it was past the window to qualify for this year’s “Bestie’s” and that it would make a fun face off this year once we get our hands on a Ram and the new F-150. Stay tuned for that.

It has a built in vacuum people!

Best Minivan-(2015 Honda Odyssey)

The Honda Odyssey has been the cleverest, most agile, cleverly roomy and yes, fun to drive, minivan for what seems like forever. The Odyssey from behind the wheel feels like it shrinks around the driver making you feel like you could be behind the wheel of an Accord. This sensation is much different than the one in the Nissan Quest which makes you feel like you are piloting a toaster oven in search of giant slices of wonder bread to burn to a crisp. Yes, it looks, drives and excites as much as a toaster unlike the Odyssey whose built in Honda-Vac gives it more character than a female protagonist in a Danielle Steele novel yet works with utter precision and brilliance. We recently tested the 2015 Kia Sedona SXL which surprised us as to how unsure we were that the Odyssey was still our favorite. Maybe Kia needs to install a Kia-Vac?

Best Diesel Powered Car-(2015 Volkswagen Golf TDI)

Everyone loves the new Volkswagen Golf with it snagging awards right and left from every magazine, journalist organization and now we are giving the 2015 Volkswagen Golf TDI a “Bestie” thanks to impressions gleaned when we got to drive first a year ago in August. The 2015 model is pretty much all new with the 2.0 liter turbodiesel seeing most of its parts changed of slightly altered resulting in a diesel engine so refined and powerful that for a moment we wondered if we had accidentally gotten into a GTI. Also note that EPA diesel mileage estimates especially on the highway are notoriously underrated as Mr. Hamel learned when he owned a 2014 Volkswagen Golf TDI manual which even at a steady 90 miles per hour cruise he could not get the fuel economy average below 50 miles gallon. Fun and frugality? Find that in a Prius.

Best Hybrids -(2015 Honda Accord Hybrid/2015 Lincoln MKZ Black Label):tie

To call this contest a tie is sort of unfair as both vehicles are priced differently and their target buyers are also divergently unique. The Accord Hybrid is not only one of the most seamlessly unnoticeable hybrids on the market, Joel Arellano recently got well over 300,000 miles from a much older Accord Hybrid so any worries about reliability should be cast aside.  Then there is the luxury sedan which now offers a special line of personalization and ultra-luxury with its Black Label line mainly serving the purpose of showing the world just how frumpy the Lexus ES300h really is.

Whereas that Lexus screams you had a personality and opinion bypass, the Lincoln MKZ Black Label is swoopy, like an Audi taking a stylistic risk and even the interior with Black Label models is quite impressive. Of interest to your friends will be the gearshift buttons on the dash that merely say PRND as well as the quality of the leather, fabrics, trim choices and color combinations. The Lincoln designers in charge of this project literally traveled the world to find inspiration and unique, never before used materials to mark out this MKZ as special. We loved that Lincoln offers three different Black Label flavors and the only one that seemed out of place was “Center Stage” (odd name for a Lincoln) as its red accents and black leather and alcantara seats would seem a bit out of place in a hybrid.

Oh yeah, both of them get good gas mileage as long as you drive it carefully and hypermile. Mileage varies too much by driver so for these Besties we have chosen not to publish the guesstimates made by the EPA. And that’s what they are, guesstimates.

Best Pure Electric Car-(2015 Kia Soul EV)

This call was made by our very own resident alternative fuel vehicle expert Arison Knapp and we were all in agreement with him even if we hadn’t driven Kia’s first all-electric model. First off we all know the Soul is an excellent car and second so long as he didn’t nominate the Nissan Leaf (which when driven by Mr. Hamel it makes him lose the will to live) everyone was happy to agree with Arison. Smart kid. But we do suspect maybe he was swayed somewhat by the hot new female hamster in the Soul EV television ads. Or not.

Oh my Gosh, we’re blind!

Best Full-Size Commercial Van-(2015 RAM ProMaster 1500/2500/3500)

You want your next van to be able to carry your family which bears a striking similarity in number to that of the “Partridge Family” who seemed to hatch a new child each episode much like today after each episode of “The Kardashians” one of them splits in two like an amoeba to become two Kardashians. But thanks to Ram now there is a vehicle all of them can ride in together. In the case of the Kardashians, perhaps right off a cliff but we would never wish ill will. To a perfectly good Ram van.

This van doesn’t mess around

Best Commercial Van-(2015 Nissan NV Compact Cargo/2015 Ford Transit Connect):Tied

This battle of the “Bestie” was between James who favored his week in a 2015 Ford Transit Connect even if its wipe clean rubber floor, oddly placed indoor blinding spotlight and lack of windows made him feel a bit like Hannibal Lecter chatting with Clarice Starling whenever he and MaryAnne drove it anywhere. But Arison Knapp believes that the Nissan NV200 compact cargo vans that will soon take over New York City as their new taxis is the best. So we have an in-depth comparison planned for very soon titled simply, “The Silence of the Vans.” And trust us, we will tell you when the vans stop screaming.

Do tell me when the vans stop screaming?

Best Specialty Model-(2015 Dodge Charger SRT/RT)

Sure, none of us would turn down a drive in a Hellcat, but many of us feel it would be difficult to not rack up speeding tickets in that thing. Or crash it as the Charger RT and SRT for 2015 are better than ever with truly stylish and luxurious interiors, any luxury feature you could imagine, the look cool and yes, they haul ass. And the noises their V8 engines make are sounds that will no doubt one day be legislated from existence. Lastly, Dodge even made these bad boys affordable to the common man. So congrats Dodge for winning the award created just for you.

Vroom! See ya!

(Note: All Winners of this Year’s “Bestie Awards” won their respective categories after a cutthroat decision making process undertaken by something close to a truly vicious episode of “Family Feud.” However, no vehicles, egos or auto journalists were harmed much in the creation of this list.)