2016 Ten Best/Worst Automobiles Today Nominations Open! Vote Now!

Nearly 10 years ago, Robert Farago and Frank Williams stumbled upon a grand idea: to counter all those other websites, media outlets, and blogs competing to see who could fellate automakers the quickest and fastest, TTAC decided instead to put on a pair of size 12 steel-toe boots and swing its leg where the sun don’t shine. Thus, TTAC birthed the TWAT awards.

Since then, The Best Automobiles Going (TBAG) awards joined its elder sibling, and the two were renamed so as not to offend the sensibilities of some. This year, Ten Best and Ten Worst are back — in a new time slot, but on the same channel — and it all starts with you.

Your mission: Set your typing fingers alight with vitriol and smash some keys. Nominations are now open.

What’s undeniable: Cars are getting better. We have more horsepower than ever before, and more hybridized, electric, hydrogen, and other alternatively powered vehicles than when these awards were conceived a decade ago. To top it all off, most automakers have done a stint or two at the Betty Ford Clinic for Automotive Badge Engineering. It’s up to us to pick the best performers.

However, truly bad cars still exist, and it’s our duty to highlight the worst offenders. Four-door coupes? Four-door coupe SUVs? Four-door coupe crossovers? The automotive industry is high on the astronomical MSRPs of niche-fillers. Alphanumeric platform sharing is still rampant, and it will continue for the foreseeable future, even as shared parts across model lines continue to push recall counts skyward.

Justifications must be given for a nomination to be valid. Reaching into the archives, here are some guidelines for justification:

• Looks That Stop Traffic: This goes either way: so beautiful that you can’t take your eyes away, or so ghastly that it qualified as a trainwreck as soon as it rolled off the assembly line.
• The “WTF” Factor: This also goes either way: a horrible decision usually produces a horrible car — but not always. Sometimes an automaker will ignore the beancounters and simply build something awesome.
• Misused Technology: Should a base BMW be sold without navigation? Does a Focus really need the ability to park itself?
• Misery Factor: When given to you as a rental, do you immediately request another car? Is it sold primarily on price and all the external factors instead of on merit? Is it a Mitsubishi Mirage or Dodge Journey?

This isn’t a one-way street where we crowdsource your answers for some easy content. Those who nominate their Ten Best and Ten Worst via the poll linked below will be entered into a draw for $100 Amazon gift card. The contest ends on Sunday, April 24 at 11:59 p.m. ET, which is also the same time the poll closes. That gives you a full week to nominate your list of truly awful and wonderful automobiles.

( Contest Rules can be viewed here.)

Rules of Engagement

A number of changes have been made to the nomination rules, so please read through them thoroughly.

1. Any car or light truck offered for sale as a new vehicle in the U.S. for the 2016 model year is eligible for nomination, regardless of country of origin, price, market segment, automaker, production/sales numbers, or domestic content.
2. You must provide a reason for your nomination. “Because it sucks” and “because it’s awesome” doesn’t cut the mustard, son. We reserve the right to cull lazy answers and their associated nominations. We reserve the right to do whatever we want, really.
3. Badge-engineered siblings can be nominated as a team in either category if they all suck/win equally.
4. A vehicle nominated in both the “Best” and “Worst” categories will be placed in the category in which it received the most nominations. It will be assigned a score that’s the net difference of those nominations. (e.g. if XYZ Car receives 20 “Best” nominations and 30 “Worst” nominations, the vehicle will be allotted 10 “Worst” nominations.)
5. TTAC staff will select 20 finalists in each category from the nominees, taking into consideration how well the nominations were justified and our personal opinions of the vehicles in question.
6. Readers will vote on those 40 cumulative vehicles to determine the Ten Best and Ten Worst.
7. Nominations start now and end Sunday, April 24 at 11:59 p.m. The 40 finalists will be presented for voting on or around April 27. Winners/losers will be announced June 9.
8. You cannot nominate the Jeep Compass. (More on this later.)