One of these 16 finalists will become Business Insider's 2019 Car of the Year

Shayanne Gal/Business Insider

• For the past five years, Business Insider has selected 15 finalists for its Car of the Year competition. For 2019 we added a 16th.
• The cars are chosen from the more than five dozen we road-tested during the year.
• The vehicles include family SUVs and sedans as well as supercars and electric vehicles.
• Brands represented this year are Audi, BMW, Cadillac, Ford, Honda, Lamborghini, Mazda, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Porsche, RAM, Subaru, and Toyota.
• One of the 16 finalists will be named Business Insider's 2019 Car of the Year.

You might not believe this, but Business Insider's annual Car of the Year awards, now in its sixth installment, started out as a bit of a goof. When I was transportation editor and Ben Zhang was a newly hired reporter, we'd reviewed all of a half-dozen vehicles in 2014. I said we should pick one and name it car of the year. The best thing we'd driven at that point was the new Chevy Corvette Stingray. Presto! Our first Car of the Year!

The following year we got ambitious, and we haven't looked back. In 2015, our Car of the Year was the Volvo XC90. In 2016 the Acura NSX captured the trophy. In 2017, we chose the Porsche Panamera. In 2018, the Kia Stinger took home the prize.

Our review pace for 2019 matched 2018: about 60 sedans, sports cars, supercars, pickup trucks, and SUVs, luxury brands and mass-market vehicles, machines that run on gas, electricity, and a combination of both. In all, we estimated that something like $5 million to $7 million in four-wheeled fun rolled through the driveway of our suburban New Jersey test center.

Zhang and I wrote most of the reviews. (Zhang graduated to transportation correspondent before moving on from Business Insider earlier this year to try his hand at working for an actual carmaker.) We got an assist, as usual, from senior transportation editor Bryan Logan, based in Los Angeles. Photographers Hollis Johnson and Crystal Cox produced our distinctive, urban-tinged vehicle images, and designers Skye Gould and Shayanne Gal added compelling graphics to 2019's Car of the Year package.

Our Car of the Year methodology is straightforward, focused on basic questions:

• Is there a strong business case for the vehicle?
• Did our reviewers agree that the vehicle should be included? We have to come to a consensus, even though we might disagree on some particulars.
• Was the vehicle objectively excellent? There has to be some sort of wow! factor.
• Did the vehicle stand out from the sea of competition, particularly when it comes to technology? A Car of the Year finalist has to be special.
• Can we strongly recommend buying or leasing the car? We demand to know whether we'd buy the vehicle ourselves if we had the resources.

We'll announce the 2019 Car of the Year on November 23 and prepare you for the big event by revealing our five runners-up the week before.