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With the possible exception of Toyota's excellent new Avalon, the big surprise of this year's contest was the Ford C-Max Hybrid. Our crew wasn't expecting a rock-solid hybrid that not only made it to the finals, but received several second- and third-place votes. Seabaugh summed up the C-Max's attributes thusly: "It's as if a Ford Focus and Escape had a menage a trois with a Toyota Prius and the best of each made it into the C-Max.

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Seabaugh summed up the C-Max's attributes thusly: "It's as if a Ford Focus and Escape had a menage a trois with a Toyota Prius and the best of each made it into the C-Max.

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“I’ve seen your ‘Car of the Year’ announcement and realize how fully and completely hollow your rag is. You pass your biases off as fact and outright lies to push your liberal agenda. The Volt is garbage and you know it, but you have crawled in bed with the gutless wannabe dictator Obama. I’m an electronics design engineer by trade, for 32 years, so I know what a crock the Volt is. Americans are not European pussies, like evidently you folks are. No one wants this piece of crap, and darn few will be sold. Only a social and political whore could have so completely sold out their integrity for a joke of a car no man with any balls could possibly want. It is not a triumph nor milestone, just a political waste of time and money.”

This vehement note, from a Mr. Kerns in Wyoming, pretty much sums up the tone of the avalanche of email we received in the aftermath of naming the Chevy Volt our 2011 COTY. In fact, it’s one of the more polite ones, with no egregiously nasty homophobic slurs, no sullen threats of grievous bodily harm, and no suggestion we’re acolytes of either Adolf Hitler or Karl Marx (hey, political theory is complicated stuff, y’know). Good, bad, and ugly, I’ve kept all the Volt email in a file I’ve nicknamed “The Volt Chronicles.” Who knows, they might make interesting material for a book one day.

I thought about that file as I cast my vote for the Tesla Model S at the end of our 2013 Motor Trend Car of the Year evaluation process. Would this electric vehicle be as controversial a winner as Chevy’s intelligent hybrid? Would the reaction against it be as virulent and visceral? Would reason again be shot in the head by ideology? (I’m still trying to figure any connection between Obamacare and a Chevy designed during George Bush’s presidency, because, according to many Volt Chronicles correspondents, there is one.)

Yes, our 2013 COTY choice will raise eyebrows, and not the least because we don’t know what we don’t know. We can’t tell you anything about the long-term durability or reliability of the Model S. There is simply no available data to guide us. We can’t tell you anything about the long-term viability of the Tesla company, either, other than to caution that history shows automotive start-ups have notoriously poor survival rates. Elon Musk wants to be the next Henry Ford. But he could also be the next Preston Tucker.

I expect we’ll get grumpy email from folks who simply hate the idea of an electric car like the Tesla. That’s OK. They haven’t driven this one, so they can’t possibly comprehend that it’s nothing like a golf cart. We’ll probably also hear loud and clear from free-market drones complaining that, because Tesla has taken federal funds and Model S buyers will be eligible for up to $7500 in federal tax credits, the whole enterprise is somehow flawed and worthless. But unless they’re also prepared to take a swing at corporations like ConAgra, which pockets billions in taxpayer-funded farm subsidies every year, or ExxonMobil, which benefits from a bunch of juicy tax breaks, their moaning simply can’t be taken seriously. The free market doesn’t exist.

I was a Tesla skeptic, having once penned a scathing column suggesting the Model S was essentially vaporware and that the Tesla business plan didn’t add up. I was wrong about the Model S, and while I’m still concerned about Tesla’s financial fragility, I wouldn’t bet against company founder Elon Musk. He’s put most of his own money into two of the riskiest businesses imaginable — space and automobiles — and in the same year he sent his own rocket to the International Space Station and back, he released one of the world’s most impressive new luxury cars.

I’m hoping most people will see this new Tesla for what it is, and what it represents. The Silicon Valley-born Model S is a genuinely remarkable achievement bred of optimism and entrepreneurial spirit. It is, therefore, a quintessentially American automobile.

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No one wants this piece of crap (Volt), and darn few will be sold

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