How Did The Honda Prelude Become A Finalist For An Award Before Anyone’s Ever Driven It?

Equally valid question: How did the new Nissan Sentra become a finalist for an award before anyone’s seen it? Yes, we’re doing inside baseball today on The Morning Dump! This is partially because actual baseball has gotten less fun to me roughly at an inverse proportion to Cal Raleigh’s OPS.

If he weren’t playing for the Seattle Mariners, and the Mariners weren’t in the same division as my pure and innocent Houston Astros, I would probably enjoy Raleigh’s impressive run a little bit more. Should he get some awards? He should definitely get some awards this year. Rivalry aside, he’s been extremely fun to watch.

I’m going to start with the list of award finalists for the North American Car & Truck of the Year, or NACTOY. It’s a bit weird! I gotta talk about it. Credit to Nissan for getting one of the cars it designed on this list, because that might not happen again, given that the company is cutting design studios around the globe.

It’s do-or-die for Rivian, which is breaking ground on a plant in Georgia in hopes of being one of the survivors. Will Michigan’s One Next Energy survive? Maybe not.

What Is Going On With The NACTOY Finalist List?

I have a natural, instinctual aversion to “Of The Year” lists and accolades. There’s just too much money wrapped up in it, especially when some organizations require you to pay them to mention the award. While there’s probably less of the nefarious pay-to-play than you might expect in most of these awards, I have heard of at least one instance where someone from one publication likely lost their job after not picking the “right” company, which was intending to buy a big ad campaign tied to the award.

One of the most intriguing awards to me, always, is the North American Car, Truck, and Utility Vehicle of the Year™ award, which is an organization that ostensibly exists only to give this award. The pitch is that “The awards are unique because they are given by an independent jury of automotive journalists from the United States and Canada instead of by a single publication, website, radio or television station.”

There are a lot of legitimate and very good journalists who serve as jurors, including people who sometimes contribute to this website. There are people you’ve never heard of, writing for websites you’ll never read, but at the same time there’s John Davis, so by that measure, at least, you have to consider it legitimate. Automakers also crow about winning the award, and I’m writing about it, so clearly some people care.

This year’s list is super weird, I think.

Let’s start with the most obviously weird one to me. No one has driven the 2026 Honda Prelude. I think it looks awesome, and I am quite hopeful it’ll be great. Drives do seem to be coming early next year, but the winners are going to be announced January 14th at the Detroit Auto Show. That’s kinda tight!

Here’s another weird one. The current Nissan Sentra is good, but not superlative in any way other than maybe value. No one has even seen the new Nissan Sentra for North America, unless it’s going to look like the Chinese version. How is a car a finalist if no one has seen it?

The K4 Hatch is another car I’m quite excited about, although it’s also something no one has driven yet.

I did reach out to the PR person for the organization, who explained it this way:

My understanding is that the OEMs advise NACTOY on which vehicles will be on sale by the end of the year, so jurors base the list on those assurances. It’s happened before that we’ve had to pull a vehicle off the list because of unforeseen production delays, but that’s very rare.

I’m fairly certain I remember hearing that cars had been pulled aside just to get NACTOY jurors in them, which might need to happen here. This is, to some degree, just a list of the “new” cars for the year. By being a new car, you’re automatically a finalist, I suppose.

It’s worth noting, as well, that jurors on this panel — and honestly, many car journalists who go to any press event — often receive tens of thousands of dollars of free travel associated with doing this job. Presumably, they could keep all the miles and points they earn for themselves (I have seen autojournalists brag about their status because this is a common practice. I don’t take many of these trips, but I’m sure I’ve harvested at least a few.).

The trucks, too, are odd. The F-150 Lobo and Maverick Lobo are cool, but those are just trims. The Ram 1500 Hemi and R1T Quad Motor are just powertrain upgrades. Where is anything else?

As a sign of the times, the Utility List is huge. Also, how can you have six “car” finalists and 19 “utilities”?

The NACTOY org today also announced that it gave a $100,000 gift to the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) for a scholarship supporting folks seeking careers in the automotive and journalism fields. That’s nice! You can get more info here.

Nissan Is Closing Design Studios

Nissan, as an automaker, is in trouble. It’s having to make hard decisions in order to survive without being subsumed by some other company, which feels like the most obvious outcome.

I think an independent Nissan could be better for enthusiasts, and so I’m pulling for the automaker to figure out a way to make it work. While it plans for a more exciting future, it has to deal with a depressing present, which means layoffs.

Up on the chopping block are design studios, with facilities in Brazil and the United States, closing, and operations in other countries being scaled back.

Per Reuters:

The Japanese automaker said the restructuring, which will be completed by the end of fiscal 2025, is aimed at streamlining its design operations.

The changes, part of its broader “Re:Nissan” plan, will consolidate its design organization into five hubs: Los Angeles, London, Shanghai, Tokyo and Japan’s Atsugi.

Nissan said its Los Angeles “Studio Six” will become its primary U.S. design hub, while London will continue to support the automaker’s Africa, Middle East, India, Europe and Oceania regions in collaboration with partner Renault.

Is “Studio Six” like “Seal Team 6” or are there five other design studios? That seems inefficient.

Rivian’s ‘Do Or Die’ Moment

Rivian finally broke ground on its Georgia facility, and it’s a little amusing that a lot of the people in these photos are the same ones in the photos of the opening of Hyundai’s Metaplant, now at the center of a big immigration debate.

Will the company need foreign workers to set up the plant? At the very least, they’ll need some from Illinois and California, which may be foreign enough to some Georgians.

It’s a big deal, as CEO RJ Scaringe and others told the Associated Press:

Scaringe said the Georgia operation, able to make 200,000 vehicles yearly starting in 2028, is the “foundation for our growth.” Rivian plans another 200,000 in capacity in phase two, volume that would spread fixed costs over many more vehicles.

The projections would be a big leap from the 40,000 to 46,000 vehicles Rivian expects to deliver this year, down from 52,000 last year. The company says it’s limiting production in part to launch 2026 models.

“For Rivian, it’s do-or-die time,” said Alex Oyler, North American director of auto research firm SBD Automotive. “We saw with Tesla that the key to profitability is scale, and you can’t scale if your cheapest vehicle is $70,000. So they need that plant online to achieve a level of scale of R2 and ultimately R3.”

[Ed Note: I still think trying to be Tesla is futile, and right now everyone needs to consider hybrid technology to hedge their bets, but I know EV companies like Rivian and Lucid can’t go down that route due to their brand being specifically an EV brand. It’s a tough spot. -DT]

I respect the big swing.

Our Next Energy Is Getting Rid Of Most Of Its Factory Space

I remember going to visit Michigan-based battery developer Our Next Energy early on (I produced a video for them at my old gig), when it was just a small operation in a tiny building outside of Detroit. A few years later, about the time the company made that long-range iX, the company was in a second building, and the parking lot was so cramped that they needed a valet to park the extra cars.

When it became clear that the company’s LFP battery product wasn’t going to see the demand it would need in the United States, a failed round of funding followed. Even with a lot of taxpayer dollars behind the project, it’s just barely hanging on as Crain’s Detroit Business reports:

The battery manufacturer is in talks with landlord Ashley Capital to exit 450,000 square feet, or just more than two-thirds of the plant. A deal has not been finalized, though the space is being marketed for lease by CBRE.

The Michigan Economic Development Corp., which has so far disbursed $70.2 million of taxpayer funds to the company, said no further payments will be made under its current agreement to support the project.

Our Next Energy founder and CEO Mujeeb Ijaz told Automotive News affiliate Crain’s Detroit Business on Sept. 16 that the move is the result of EVs failing to launch in the U.S. at the previously predicted scale.

“Our contracting effort on automotive looks to be delayed by several years based on the current macro condition, and we’ve just adjusted our business to manage that,” Ijaz said.

Even if solid-state batteries become more of a thing in the future, there’s probably a large remaining use case for LFP chemistry. ONE’s timing was probably wrong, but the idea still makes sense. Whether or not ONE makes it long enough to secure a contract to prove that is an open question.

What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD

I couldn’t help it, here’s Japanese Breakfast doing a live version of “The Woman That Loves You.”

Don’t you think, don’t you think
You should try to do as little harm as you can
To the woman that loves you?

The Big Question

Do you care about awards?

Photo: Honda/NACTOY