Normally, an interview with a car company CEO is a highly coordinated affair, something that will have been weeks or even months in the planning and then carefully choreographed in its execution.
Yet there was Denis Le Vot, the Dacia CEO, sitting at a trestle table along with two colleagues in a makeshift conference room that had earlier hosted the overflow guests from the breakfast buffet, rain battering against the windows and making the decor inside feel even more dated.
He was there for a two-hour speed-dating-style ‘interview session’, alongside multiple other brand representatives, approachable by and accessible to anyone who wanted to ask anything about the cars assembled for Tannistest.
In case you didn’t know, Tannistest is a large annual comparison event that enables Car of the Year jurors to filter down the long list of cars launched that year into a shortlist of finalists for the annual COTY contest.
The presence of the likes of Le Vot shows how significant Tannistest is and how seriously the car makers take it. As I recounted in my report on this event last year, the beauty of the test is that it lets you compare the cars on your own test routes, back to back against their peers and rivals on neutral ground.
It’s a no-frills event: cars and people assemble at the Hotel Tannishus at the very edge of northern Denmark and which, for people of a certain postcode, looks a bit like the Coppid Beech Hotel next to the old dry ski slope at the John Nike Leisure centre in Bracknell.
The cars assembled this year totalled a remarkable 80 from 22 brands, and it felt like there had been a step up both in quality and in terms of stories of cars from last year.
The Renault Scenic emerged as the cream of last year’s crop 12 months ago, but while it’s a good car, those at Renault would admit the all-new 5 is the one they would rather wear the crown in 2025 over the Scenic in 2024, if they could choose.