There were plenty of big launches across the Philippine automotive industry in the past year. We saw the arrival of many heavy-hitters, which made voting and deliberations for the Top Gear Philippines Magazine Car of the Year Awards 2026 almost stressful.
Emphasis on almost, because there was a clear winner for our Car of the Year. In case you missed it, the big award went to the Toyota RAV4. We’ll dive deeper into the final scores in a separate article, but you can see the photo from the awarding ceremony below.
The all-new RAV4 landed in the market earlier this year, and we’ve had our fair share of seat time with it. All of us who’ve been lucky enough to try out the RAV4—whether it’s the ADV or the LTD—have been raving about this next-generation hybrid. It’s that good. Personally, I gave the Toyota RAV4 Adventure a perfect 10 out of 10.
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I previously said the RAV4 was a clear winner only because of the outcome of the votes, but this doesn’t take away from the fact that there were other potentially deserving new models from the past year. The likes of the Honda Prelude and Mitsubishi Destinator—personal favorites of mine—were also in consideration. The other Japanese vehicles didn’t go home empty-handed, however, as the Prelude and Destinator both nabbed awards of their own.
For the full list of winners, you can scroll down below. Again, we’ll talk more about the winners in a separate story. As with recent years, the winners from the 2026 Awards also got their own magazine covers for trophies—stay tuned to see more of those.
Top Gear Philippines Magazine Car of the Year Awards 2026 list of winners:
- Car of the Year – Toyota RAV4
- Underrated Car of the Year– Mitsubishi Destinator
- 4x4 of the Year – Ford Ranger Wildtrak-X
- EV of the Year – Kia EV3
- Hybrid of the Year – Honda Prelude
- Plug-in Hybrid of the Year – Jetour T1 Lightning i-DM
- Luxury Car of the Year – Denza D9
- Performance Car of the Year – Toyota GR Corolla
- Breakout Brand of the Year – VinFast
- Best in Marketing – BYD Cars Philippines (Love Pinas Campaign)
- Hypebeast Award – Toyota Land Cruiser FJ
- Best New Tech Implementation – Tesla (Grok)
- Love the Planet Award – Suzuki Philippines
- Big Bike of the Year – BMW F450 GS
- Small Bike of the Year – CFMoto 150 Aura
