Each year since 1949, the editorial staff of Motor Trend has evaluated eligible vehicles based on four key categories: significance, superiority, value, and how much money the auto maker pays in advertising. This year, the bread-winner was the Land Rover LR3.

Now don't get us wrong, the Land Rover is a fine SUV, but Motor Trend severely limits the entries by accepting only "new or substantially redesigned sport/utilities scheduled to be on sale by January 1, 2005." This narrows the scope to the Chevrolet Equinox, Ford Escape Hybrid, Ford Freestyle, Jeep Grand Cherokee, Infiniti QX56, Land Rover LR3 and Nissan Pathfinder. Maybe the SUV market is on the decline, but these are hardly the cream of the crop.

While the tests seem fair, we are skeptical of these "Car of the Year", "Truck of the Year", "SUV of the Year" awards because of bribing in the past. Who says advertising dollars aren't well spent? On a related note, Truckblog is now taking bribes for our upcoming 2005 Truck of the Year award. Inquiries welcome.

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