The Jeep Avenger has been named European Car of The Year 2023 at the Brussels Motor Show.
In a contest dominated by EVs, Jeep’s first electric car cruised home to victory, leaving even the Volkswagen ID 4 and Nissan Ariya trailing in its wake. The 57 judges awarded the Avenger 328 points, while the second-placed ID only collected 241 points and the Ariya scraped 211 together.
Further down the table of seven shortlisted cars the Kia Niro finished fourth with 200 points, the Renault Austral came home fifth with 163 points, Peugeot’s 408 achieved sixth place with 149 points and the Toyota bZ4X/Subaru Solterra twins finished dead last, scoring only 133 points.
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The competition was first held in 1964 when it was won by Rover’s innovative 2000, but with the exception of cars like the Rover 3500 (1977), Porsche 928 (1978) and Citroen XM (1990) the cost-conscious European judges have normally favoured affordable, mainstream vehicles. This isn’t the first time an electric car has been awarded the ECOTY gong, though. The Nissan Leaf (2011), Jaguar I-Pace (2019) and Kia EV6 (2022) have all come out ahead of combustion cars in the last dozen years.
The jury of professional motoring journalists from across the continent is usually a 61-strong panel, but four Russian judges were forced to sit out this year’s event in response to their country’s invasion of Ukraine. Each of the jurors has 25 points to distribute, but they must share them between at least five cars and not give more than 10 points to any single vehicle.
The Avenger is based on the same Stellantis platform as the Peugeot 2008 and Opel Mokka, and is currently only available as an EV, though a 1.2-liter, three-cylinder combustion version will be added soon. But being designed specifically with Europe in mind, the tiny 160.5-in (4,076 mm) SUV won’t be coming to the U.S.
