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.

Tannis was the first time we got to test the Renault 5, and on first impression, it lived up to the hype. It also felt like the headline act at the Tannistest, its prime parking spots opposite the entrance to the hotel only adding credence to a view that it’s the car to beat.

If that proves true, it would be only the second time a car maker had won back-to-back Car of the Year titles, after Fiat did so with the Punto and Brava/Bravo in 1995 and 1996.

Other Tannistest first drives included the Ford Capri, which felt like more of an electric successor to the Mondeo than the iconic coupé with which it shares its name.

The Cupra Terramar was a rare non-electric car, with the hybrid having more character than most for being based on the Volkswagen Group’s ubiquitous MQB architecture.

The Hyundai Inster was a rather curious proposition, packed with big-car technology but very much a city car, then priced alongside larger models such as the 5. Likeable in so many ways, it’s still a car with caveats.

No such caveats were needed for the Range Rover-sized Nio EL8, which is forbidden fruit for us in the UK. We’re not missing anything: its suspension is so soft that in trying to be comfortable it actually becomes uncomfortable.

Vauxhall answered questions of its desirability with the new Grandland, a far more luxurious proposition on the inside than anything we’ve yet seen from the brand, but dynamically it was middling to the point of anonymity.

As well as the all-new stuff, there was a chance for road tester Illya Verpraet and I to get reacquainted with some other stars of 2024.

It was only in May that I drove the new Citroën ë-C3 and its UK launch is only happening now, yet it’s remarkable how rapidly the market has evolved to the point that it felt quite plain on this second acquaintance. Things move so quickly in the car world these days.

It was good to track the evolution of Polestar with drives in the 3 and 4: it felt like the Swedish firm had been stuck with just the 2 for longer than was healthy, given that it’s still looking to establish its brand. A clear lineage is now emerging between its models.

The Lotus Emeya left me scratching my head, given how one-dimensional it felt as a ‘point and shoot’ model. It’s just so heavy and brutish and all about speed rather than driver interaction. After a go in this and the related Lotus Eletre, I can’t see any common ground with the sports car models, to the point that it feels like a different company.

Le Vot’s Dacia Duster felt like a real antidote to so many of the models in Tannis, thanks to its simplicity and how considerately and subtly it has evolved. Sometimes, it seems, staying largely the same can still move you forward.

Good, bad or indifferent, it felt that every car at Tannistest had a story attached to it, rather than being just another new model from the sausage factory.

Whether or not these are the best of times for an industry facing pressures like never before, the past 12 months have certainly yielded one hell of an interesting crop of new cars, and now I’m off to cover every inch of ground.