Samantha Stevens

PRODUCT DESIGN JUROR

Samantha is a Senior Car Reviews Journalist at Drive with a 25-year career spanning the newsroom, the workshop and the racetrack.
A two-time national racing champion who builds and tunes her own cars, she brings a deep mechanical literacy to her roles as an automotive expert and as a many-time juror in the Automotive and Transport category of the Good Design Awards.
Her judging philosophy follows a mantra credited to her late and great colleague Paul Cockburn: “Good design is the absence of vice: Great design is the presence of brilliance.” Samantha seeks out the rare machines that go beyond meeting the rigid directives of safety, sustainability, and function; true brilliance is found when a vehicle or piece of engineering transcends steel, plastic and fabric to evoke a genuine emotional response.