Here Are Your 2026 NACTOY Winners
DETROIT -- The North American Car and Truck of the Year (NACTOY) winners have been announced here at Huntington Place -- formerly Cobo Hall -- in Detroit.
The NACTOY announcement typically kicks off the press days at the North American International Auto Show, also known as the Detroit Auto Show. Today's announcement covered three categories -- car, truck, and utility.
The Dodge Charger took home the award for car, while Ford's Maverick Lobo won for truck and Hyundai's Palisade won for utility.
NACTOY describes its voting process like this:
NACTOY jurors have spent the last year assiduously test driving, researching and evaluating vehicles on criteria including automotive innovation, design, safety, performance, technology, driver satisfaction, user experience and value. Their unique points of view inform the voting process, resulting in a well-rounded class of vehicles built for a variety of lifestyle needs. The organization announced its “Best of 2026” semifinalists in September at CAR MBS in the conference’s first year at Michigan Central Station, and winnowed the list down further to 9 exceptional finalists that were unveiled at the Los Angeles Auto Show in November.
Founded in 1994, the NACTOY awards are the longest-running new-vehicle awards not associated with a single publication. Vehicles are judged by 50 professional automotive journalists from a wide variety of print, online, radio and television media outlets in the United States and Canada. The votes are confidentially tallied by Deloitte LLP, ensuring each stage of the award cycle is the collective decision of all jurors. Ballots cast for the 2026 NACTOY winners remained secret until envelopes were opened onstage during today’s event.
The Charger got 195 votes, the Lobo 277, and the Palisade 270.
You can see more information at northamericancaroftheyear.org.
[Images: Dodge, Ford, Hyundai]
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Tim Healey grew up around the auto-parts business and has always had a love for cars — his parents joke his first word was “‘Vette”. Despite this, he wanted to pursue a career in sports writing but he ended up falling semi-accidentally into the automotive-journalism industry, first at Consumer Guide Automotive and later at Web2Carz.com. He also worked as an industry analyst at Mintel Group and freelanced for About.com, CarFax, Vehix.com, High Gear Media, Torque News, FutureCar.com, Cars.com, among others, and of course Vertical Scope sites such as AutoGuide.com, Off-Road.com, and HybridCars.com. He’s an urbanite and as such, doesn’t need a daily driver, but if he had one, it would be compact, sporty, and have a manual transmission.
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That pop sound everyone in the Midwest heard was EBFlex's head exploding because the Maverick Lobo won the truck award when the resurrected Ram 1500 Hemi was a candidate.
North American Car The Of Year?????? That NACTOY?