Normally this award category gives rise to long and often heated discussions among the judging panel but this year our deliberations took just a smidge over 35 seconds and that due to Zoom conference time lag.
The Hyundai Staria took line honours this year in much the same way that “The America’s Cup is New Zealand’s Cup” challenger Black Magic took line honours back in 1995. There simply wasn’t anything like it.  
Staria has gone against the grain of taking a streamlined shape and turning it into a cube and has basically reversed the formula even against its own very popular but boxy, iMax/Load.
And furthering development changes have seen Staria equipped with a smaller displacement engine while at the same time, taking some critical design elements from its passenger vehicles, fusing them into an immensely enjoyable and efficient commercial vehicle.
Hyundai has proven with Staria that there is more to vans than making them efficient cargo haulers or making them car-like in various characteristics.
You can have a van that looks – well, this is subjective, so I should be careful – strikingly different to anything that has gone before, and yet is so incredibly practical, fuel efficient and, probably most tellingly, safe, that other vans will seem truly like whiteware on wheels.
Hyundai has embedded its Smartsense, advanced driver assistance systems into the Staria and mounted an eye-catching bonnet forward body on the chassis of a five-star ANCAP awarded SUV.
If that’s not a winning safety combination, I don’t know what is.       
The crew cabin is equally as game-changing in terms of its design. It redefines everything you know from other vans with a cockpit that looks to have been designed by someone who has spent too much time in front of Star Trek videos, but it all works so amazingly well.
And there is more than a passing consideration for the crew member who is not the pilot... erm driver, and while this has not been a criterion for vans in the past, it will most assuredly be a consideration for vans to come.
As will sound, or rather the absence of it. Inside the van, the Staria is a serenely quiet environment with the fabulously responsive 2.2 litre turbo diesel being whisper quiet. It’s easier, in fact, to hear other vehicle’s engines at idle with the Staria’s windows up.
Staria is truly a next generation van, and one which is going to be hard to challenge. An easy award winner for 2021 and beyond.