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The Fiat 500 has won the most prestigious of
all awards, European Car of the Year 2008,
by a clear margin according to a credible
report posted on the website of Autovisie
magazine. |
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The Fiat 500
has won the most prestigious of all awards, European
Car of the Year 2008, by a clear margin according to
a report posted today on the website of Autovisie
magazine, which is one of the founder members of the
long-running Car of the Year awards.
Fiat is the
most successful car manufacturer in the contest with 9
wins now (plus two gained by Alfa Romeo and one for
Lancia) and last won the award in 2004 with another very
significant small car, that time it was the little Panda
that came of on top - the first time that a Car of
the Year winner had been drawn from A-segment. Fiat
is well ahead of the next most successful brands:
Renault with 6 wins and Ford on 5. Last year's winner
was the Ford S-Max.
Lending
credibility to the report that the 500 has won is the
fact that Autovisie, Stern and
ViBilägare were amongst the founders of the award,
while Spanish magazine Autopista was invited into
the group in the 1980s, and some sponsor changes took
place with further new members arriving from UK (Autocar),
Italy (Auto) and France (L'Automobile).
The Fiat
500, which was launched on 4th July during dramatic
celebrations in Turin, has had an exciting entrance to
the market. Its order book reached 100,000 by the end of
last month, and around 40,000 have been so far delivered
to customers. Next year's production at the Tychy
factory in Poland where it is built could hit as much as
190,000 units.
According to
the Autovisie website report today it was in the
end a very comfortable win for the Fiat 500 which
notched up 385 points from the 58 journalists who make
up the jury and who are drawn from leading publications
across Europe, which put it 60 points clear of the
Mazda2, and a massive 183 points ahead of the third
placed Ford Mondeo.
Car of
the Year 2008 final points (according to Autovisie):
1. Fiat 500
- 385
2. Mazda2 - 325
3. Ford Mondeo - 202
4. Kia Cee’d - 166
5. Nissan Qashqai - 147
6. Mercedes C-Klasse - 128
7. Peugeot 308 - 97 |
