Hot on the heels of the announced winner of EVO's Car of the Year award comes the revelation from the bigger European Car of the Year, which bestowed the citation for 2008 to the impossibly charming Fiat 500. While EVO's, like Motor Trend here, is awarded by one magazine, the European Car of the Year is named by a collection of several major European publications in several different languages from several European countries.
As we reported earlier, the 500 made the short-list of seven finalists from a pool of 33 nominees. Ultimately the retro Italian hatch beat out some stiff competition from Ford (Mondeo), Kia (cee'd), Mazda (2), Mercedes (C-Class), Nissan (Qashqai) and Peugeot (308).
Not only did the 500 take it by a wide margin – 385 points to the runner-up Mazda2's 325 – but the recognition pushes Fiat even further ahead in the annals of the award's history. Fiat itself has won the contest no less than nine times, while its subsidiaries Alfa Romeo and Lancia add another two and one, respectively. Now if they'll only start bring the 500 stateside, it can start racking up the awards here, too.
[Source: Autovisie via Italiaspeed]
Sign in to post
Please sign in to leave a comment.
Continue