The Volkswagen ID Buzz had great vibes, but a limited range and high prices led to weak demand, and eventually Volkswagen’s decision to stop selling it in the United States. But it did still win the 2025 North American Car, Utility and Truck of the Year Award for Utility Vehicle of the Year, so at least there’s that. Well, except for the part where NACTOY’s president recently told Autoblog that he regrets not giving that award to a different vehicle. Oops.
At this year’s 2026 NACTOY awards, Autoblog asked NACTOY President Jeff Gilbert if there were any awards he wished could be taken back or times he would have voted differently. According to Autoblog, “Gilbert didn’t ponder long” before answering, “You don’t have to go back two decades, you only have to go back one year.” Considering NACTOY named the Honda Civic Hybrid its Car of the Year and the Ford Ranger its Truck of the Year for 2025, that comment alone wouldn’t necessarily implicate the ID Buzz, but he then called the Volkswagen out by name:
Gilbert explained: “If you look at North American Utility of the Year [for 2025], it was the VW ID Buzz, which was a fun vehicle to drive, but the mere fact that, okay, Volkswagen has pulled that from the market this year… I think if jurors knew what the sales output was gonna be for the vehicle, maybe they would have decided differently. That was an extremely close vote; only a couple of points separated the ID Buzz from the Hyundai Santa Fe, and y’know, in hindsight, if that vote was taken today, I don’t know if it would have come out the same way. But hindsight is 20/20, you take your best shot.” The ID Buzz suffered from defects that earned it last place in the 2025 J.D. Power Dependability Study, so poor sales aren’t the only blot on its American ledger.
ID Buzz out
Whether you would consider a NACTOY award when shopping for a new car or not, this does serve as a great reminder that all awards have their limitations. No matter how great a new car is to drive, it takes time to learn how reliable it actually is, and there’s always the possibility that it could be canceled the next year. It’s also entirely possible for a car to be better than that year’s competition, while still not being the best in the segment, simply because the superior choice wasn’t eligible for the competition that year. And that’s before you get to cars sometimes being extremely difficult or impossible to obtain.
As great as it would be to fix the problems with car awards, comparison tests, and reviews in general, practically speaking, I also don’t really know how you’d actually do that — mostly because most suggestions require far more time and money than is ever available. Plus, the more manufacturer support you get, the more influence they’re going to have over the results. Heck, Consumer Reports even goes as far as to buy the vast majority of the vehicles it tests and surveys hundreds of thousands of owners every year to gather as much reliability data as it can, and yet, people still love to complain that they’re doing it wrong.
That’s also one of the reasons I’m a big fan of Tyre Reviews. The team over there reviews tires, not cars, but they also acknowledge that different drivers have different priorities and allow you to adjust the weighting of each category to fit your particular situation. For example, if it rains a lot where you live, you can give more weight to the wet performance results, which may lead to buying a different tire than the one that won the latest comparison test. Having something like that for cars would be great, but, of course, good luck finding the money to make that happen.
