Tesla Inc. vehicles have won two ‘car of the year’ awards this week, with a U.K. magazine using an popular British compliment to describe the Model 3 mass-market sedan and a U.S. magazine calling the Model S sold a few years ago the “ultimate car.”

U.S. auto magazine Motor Trend spared no superlative for Tesla’s TSLA, +3.86% 2013 Model S, which to its judges is a “testament to innovation and entrepreneurship, the very qualities that once made the American automobile industry the largest, richest, and most powerful in the world.”