Land Rover Defender wins the Premium Car Award by ICOTY 2021: From the event

The Premium Car Award by ICOTY 2021 was won by the Land Rover Defender.

Since its inception in 2005, the Indian Car of the Year (ICOTY) award is the most prestigious accolade sought by every car manufacturer in India. In 2021, a glittering ceremony attended by select stalwarts of the Indian automotive industry attended the 16th edition of the ICOTY awards held at the Andaz Hotel at the Aerocity in New Delhi. Held under strict social distancing and sanitization guidelines given the circumstances, the attendance was kept very exclusive. JK Tyre who has been a staunch partner to the ICOTY awards since their inception continued to support the award even this year. The ICOTY jury panel’s voting process was supported by Grant Thornton who came onboard as the Award Validators. The well-known music band from Nagaland, the Tetseo Sisters, regaled the audience with their neo-classic jazz and folk performances. The Hyundai i20 was awarded the coveted ICOTY 2021 while the Royal Enfield Meteor 350 was awarded the IMOTY 2021. However there were two more awards to give out. The first is the Premium Car Award by ICOTY and for the first time a Green Car Award by ICOTY was introduced. Land Rover took home the Premium Car Award by ICOTY 2021. However due to travel restrictions, representatives from the company could not be present at the event. We had pre-recorded messages from all the probable winners who could not attend the ceremony. Hence once the Defender was announced as the winner, the pre-recorded message from JLR was played and Rohit Suri, president and MD, JLR India virtually addressed the gathering. The Premium Car Award by ICOTY takes into consideration all premium and luxury that sit above the Rs 40 lakh mark. These include both locally produced as well as imported car models. The BMW 2 Series Gran Coupe with 61 points and the Mercedes-Benz GLE with 77 points were runner’s up in the category.