The history of “automotive awards” in the United States is a long and not particularly distinguished one. The one that is most familiar to the man in the street — Motor Trend’s “Car Of The Year” — is an ethically vacant and artisically despicable promotional product that costs the “winner” an absurd amount of advertising commitment and direct payment to “win”. Car and Driver long claimed to have no external influence on their “10 Best” choice, but that didn’t stop them from charging to license the “award” in marketing or promotional communications.
The North American Car and Truck of the Year (NACTOY) was supposed to be a little better than that. Instead of a single media organization that could be subject to any number of external pressures, it used a jury composed of diverse voices from across automotive and mainstream media. While it’s not cheap for a manufacturer to participate in NACTOY, the fees are generally believed to be a fraction of those commanded by Motor Trend, and the voting process is independent of financial considerations.
When it’s operated correctly, NACTOY has been great value for everyone. The consumer gets what feels like (and should be) an impartial recommendation. The manufacturer gets to publicize the award for less than the cost of a back-cover ad in Car and Driver. And the journalists themselves are theoretically improved by being exposed to the bulk of the year’s new cars in a fair and informative environment.
Unfortunately, if the multiple conversations I have had with various NACTOY jurors past and present can be believed, the organization has run dangerously off the rails, and faces what amounts to an existential crisis in the year to come — one that will be exacerbated, not ameliorated, by their likely next leader.
The money problem
Until recently, NACTOY was led by local radio personality Jeff Gilbert and mommyblogger Nicole Wakelin. According to my sources, the two have made several choices that have both reduced NACTOY’s potential income and drastically increased its expenses. As a result, the organization has spent more than half of the nest egg inherited by Gilbert and Wakelin.
“This shouldn’t be hard,” one juror commented. “You sell the NACTOY name for five figures, and you sell the actual trophies at 100% markup. Against that, you have one annual event, the PR budget, and whatever you spend on little extras.” Yet Gilbert and Wakelin have consistently run in the red despite the lemonade-stand level of financial acumen required.
Gilbert’s decision to retire, which followed the tragic suicide of a NACTOY juror and the departure of other jurors, led the jurors as a whole to assume that Wakelin would take over. However, it’s my understanding that she is leaving autowriting due to a lack of opportunities to make money. Which leaves the field wide open — or should leave it wide open, anyway.
If you’re left, you’re right
Something I have heard from NACTOY jurors on both sides of the political fence is that the organization leans drastically, almost catastrophically, to the left. This is not a credibility builder with enthusiasts or with the PR staff at automakers, one of who was reported to have said '“[senior left-leaning NACTOY member] is an utter idiot and killing the brand with the political BS.” While there’s no requirement that an autowriter be from the “truck nuts” or “coal rolling” side of the aisle, it’s difficult to judge cars if you hate the car as it currently exists. To misquote Michael Jordan (the ballplayer, not the autowriter!): Republicans buy cars too. And Republicans build cars.
The loudest voice, but is she the sanest one?
If you’ve never heard of Jill Ciminillo, I can’t blame you. She’s not exactly a famous autowriter, nor is she an automotive competitor. She did obtain some notoriety around this time last year, however, when she made a deranged-sounding post on X reading:
“Dear \@realdonaldtrump … I’ve been carjacked in Chicago with my arm broken. I still don’t want you or your troops here. TIA. BTW there are no red hats here.”
The gross authorial incompetence of writing “TIA” when it was, not, in fact, all aside, this post doesn’t sound like anything a sane person would write. Are we supposed to believe that she enjoyed her carjacking and arm-breaking? Did she enjoy it so much that she disapproves of any effort to stop other people from getting the same treatment? It’s her right to not want troops in Chicago, the same way it would be someone else’s right to want to have fewer than 1,392 people shot in Chicago from January 1 to today, but does her status as a carjacking victim mean that she gets more say than someone who has yet to be carjacked?
The NACTOY jurors with whom I spoke have a low opinion of Jill, both professionally and personally. I can’t personally remember anything she’s written, but maybe there’s some Paul Frere style brilliance in “Here Are the 4 Best Small SUVs for Short Drivers, From a 5’0″ Reviewer”. One juror pointed out that she has a habit of photographing herself portraying some sort of kidnap victim in the trunk of the cars she reviews:
Indeed, she maintains a separate fetish-style account for her trunk material, called “girlinthetrunk”.
“It’s highly disturbing that she keeps making this content, and she’s been asked to stop,” the juror said, noting that the combination of “girlinthetrunk” with her apparently conflicted attitude towards carjacking ventures dangerously close to encouraging fetish behavior on the part of NACTOY media consumers.
Now, you might wonder why we’re talking so much about Jill here. Doesn’t NACTOY have other jurors? They sure do, like Jodi Lai, a woman who once whipped up a public firestorm of online bullying against a Nissan mechanic (and single parent) who dared to criticize her work on Twitter, said bullying reportedly resulting in the mechanic losing his job after several journalists harassed the dealership where he was employed. Then there’s Gary Vasilash, who recently claimed that the spread between MSRP and invoice has vastly increased since COVID, a claim of such staggering ignorance that I cannot imagine someone being willing to publish it.
NACTOY also has plenty of competent, credentialed writers with industry or competitive backgrounds — but we’re talking about Jill here because she is believed to be the heir apparent to the organization’s top slot.
The challenges she’ll face
Ms. Ciminillo will inherit an organization that is losing money, losing credibility, and rapidly gaining a reputation as a left-wing echo chamber. Can she turn it around? There’s nothing in her background to suggest that she can balance a checkbook, let alone run an organization that has six figures’ worth of annual travel expenses. The jurors with whom I spoke seemed confident that NACTOY will be out of money within two or three years, at best. “And there’s no one coming to save us, because no one in the industry has any respect for Jill. She won’t be able to negotiate our deals or ensure that we have revenue from the awards.”
The average age of a NACTOY juror, based on my rough examination, is probably north of sixty. Many of these folks aren’t particularly concerned with the organization’s future. But the younger members are concerned, and there doesn’t appear to be much confidence that the expected new direction is the right one.
The worst time to have a bad president
NACTOY has other headwinds besides bad leadership. The average consumer’s interest in new cars has declined sharply. The annual release cycle that used to captivate the country and sell out the Detroit Auto Show in the dead of winter is no more. NACTOY juror and SCCA winner Henry Payne details some of the problems in a recent article on the subject. One of the more pressing issues: there are very few cars left to win a “Car of the Year” award.
Meanwhile, the automakers are increasingly reluctant to pay to use the NACTOY name or participate in the events. They’re all searching under the couch cushions for money to pay influencers. It’s a simple equation, really. In 1975, Car and Driver had audience and credibility. In 2025, someone like Jill Ciminillo has no audience and no credibility. So you’re better off hiring an Instagram or TikTok personality to deliberately and openly promote the product; that person has an audience, and she has credibility with that audience. I mean, come on — whose advice are you gonna take on your next purchase? Some person of whom you’ve never heard, or the TikTok star whose content you consume twice a day?
How to make it right
It would be uncharitable to complain about the state of affairs without suggesting a resolution. Therefore, I have formally applied to join NACTOY as a juror, hoping to effect worthwhile change from within. This is the first time in fifteen years I’ve even considered being part of an automotive association beyond the nonpartisan and highly credentialed German Car Of The Year awards.
As a NACTOY juror, I will push for detailed financial accountability, a return to the high standards of selection, and trophies that more obviously justify their new-motorcycle price.
Although I have a total audience approaching 10 million readers across my current outlets, I doubt my application will be approved. I’m insufficiently left-wing, having only campaigned for one Clinton, and I’m also notorious for demanding strict adherence to ethics in automotive journalism. So the most I can continue to do is to call attention to the problem, in the hopes that the membership will fix their wagon with or without me. If they don’t, then Motor Trend will once again be the only “Car of the Year” in this country. That’s a sad state of affairs, and one that can be avoided. Let’s hope.
All of this is brilliant to my best knowledge Volkswagen of Naples managed to repossess all of the GTI’s. We had to land motor trend in exchange for the award.
I was TRIGGERED by seeing the 3 cars on that graphic at the top. Now you need to provide me with some better meds to let me sleep at night!