America Just Embarrassed Germany At Its Own Car Of The Year Awards

A luxury SUV from Cadillac has been named Germany’s Luxury Car of the Year.
GCOTY judges awarded the Performance title to a high-powered Lucid.
Other category winners included models from Dacia, Skoda, and Hyundai.

You’d expect Germany’s own automakers to dominate the German Car of the Year (GCOTY) awards and not necessarily because the judges are partisan. BMW, VW and Mercedes cars work well on German roads because they’re developed both for them and on them.

It’s a home-field advantage that usually shows. Yet like a WWII GI cutting in on a beaten German soldier’s dance to steal his girl, two American cars have just walked away with major wins in the 2026 competition.

The awards, which group contenders into five categories, including Budget, Compact, Premium, Luxury and Performance, are voted on by a panel of 40 German and international motor journalists. While the overall winner won’t be revealed until November 17, we already know the victors in each category.

American Upset

The Lucid Air Sapphire, America’s electric interpretation of a luxurious hyper-sedan, took home the crown in the Performance segment. That’s hardly a shock once you’ve looked at its numbers.

With 1,234 hp (1,251 PS / 920 kW) and an ability to break 2 seconds to 60 mph (97 kmh; with rollout) the Sapphire is like a four-seat physics experiment. One that makes German heavy-hitters like the BMW M5 and Porsche Taycan Turbo GT look slow.

Meanwhile, over in the Luxury category, Cadillac’s 615 hp (624 PS / 459 kW) Vistiq took top honors. Cadillac only recently returned to Europe, but the sleek Vistiq is proof that Cadillac’s EV push isn’t just resonating in the States.

And this isn’t the first time GCOTY judges have had their heads turned by a Caddy. This year’s Luxury win follows last year’s success for the Cadillac Lyriq, which won the same class, but was beaten to the overall GCOTY title by the BMW 5-series and i5. Maybe the Vistiq can do better.

America Just Embarrassed Germany At Its Own Car Of The Year Awards — Lucid

To take outright gold, Cadillac’s three-row EV will have to beat not only the Air, but three strong European and Asian entries. Dacia’s Bigster is the 2026 GCOTY Budget Car of the Year, the electric Skoda Elroq scooped the Compact award and Hyundai’s Ioniq 9 was named best Premium car.

Changing Currents

In case you hadn’t noticed, that means four out of the five class winners are EVs, and it’s that shift to electric power that has helped American cars up their relevance game in Europe.

Perhaps most telling of all, not a single German brand made the winners’ list this year, with the nearest contender being Skoda, a Czech marque under the VW Group umbrella.