Get Ready, The 2011 Winding Road Involvement Index Awards Are Almost Here

If you’ve spent any time as a consumer of Winding Road content—be it in the form of our digital magazine or right here on the home website—you probably have caught wind of the fact that we’re pretty intense about this whole “driving involvement” thing. At the heart of all of the reviews we write is the idea that a car which provides an engaging, enthralling, feedback-rich environment is something to be prized and sought after.

To back up that concept, and to give it some body in the form of statistical data, we created the Winding Road Involvement Index 18 months ago. Knowing that we were directionally correct, but with tools that didn’t allow us to analyze deeply enough, we then completely revised the index and unleashed our 2.0 version on the world.

Today the Involvement Index has grown to accommodate over 150 cars, from just about every manufacturer doing business in North America. And though we are constantly updating, revising, and tweaking the data that goes into our final rankings, we’re damn proud of the work that we’ve done to date; bringing an easy-to-grab-hold-of ranking to a difficult, but critically important subjective area for drivers.

It’s about time we started handing out some hardware for this.

Around this time next month, you’ll be able to tune in and read our first ever Involvement Index Awards feature. We’ll give over the brass ring to those cars that offer the very highest levels of driver involvement in their respective categories. To get all of us fired up for this significant new award, we’ll be using Index data to put together a series of lists and articles over the coming days and weeks.

We hope you enjoy the lead-up material in the works, as well as the full 2011 Involvement Index Awards in next month’s issue of Winding Road.