Fiat Group cars receive praise in Italy, Germany and the United Kingdom

Image by Spillone via Flickr

Image by Spillone via FlickrThe Fiat Group starts the new year by winning a number of coveted prizes awarded by the public or by authoritative panels of judges consisting of trade journalists. Readers of the Italian auto. magazine Quattroruote have taken part in two surveys (“Novelty of 2008” and “The Cars I Prefer 2008”) exceeding 157,000 votes received by telephone, the web or postcard. The prize for “Novelty of 2008” was assigned to the Alfa Romeo Mito which obtained 31.28% of the votes. Second was the Lancia Delta with 17.1%, and third was the Audi Q5 with 11.46%. The precious trophy was collected by Sergio Cravero, CEO Alfa Romeo Automobiles SpA, during the "Quattroruote Day" held in Milan.

Extraordinary success for the Fiat Group also in the second event - “The Cars I Prefer” – organized by Quattroruote jointly with other trade magazines of 17 different countries (scoring being monitored nationally). In the 10 categories envisaged, there were 6 Italian cars, namely the Fiat 500, which was first of the city-cars (51.7% of votes), the Alfa Romeo MiTo in the small car class (46.5%), the Lancia Delta in the medium-small class (24.7%), the Alfa Romeo 8C Spider in the cabrio class (25.9%), the Maserati Quattroporte in the flagship class (41.5%) and the Ferrari F430 Scuderia in the sports car class (14.3%).

The Fiat 500 won the “City Car of the Year” award sponsored by the “BusinessCar” magazine and, for the second time running, the coveted “Die Besten Autos 2009” sponsored by the German journal “Auto Motor und Sport” which mustered the opinion of 445,000 readers. In particular, this last award saw the small Fiat ahead of the Alfa Romeo MiTo (29.5%) in the imported vehicle category with 38.9% of the votes.

The Fiat Grande Punto Natural Power won the “Clean Car of the year 2008” award sponsored by “Autoambiente.com”, the on-line periodical entirely devoted to eco-sustainable mobility. The jury, consisting of trade journalists, expressed their opinion based on CO₂ footprint, performance, fuel efficiency and sales price of 35 cars – all marketed in Italy during 2008 – according to seven classes, namely Diesel, Gasoline, Dual-fuel LPG and Dual-fuel NG, the first three classes divided into categories up to 1.5 liter and over 1.5 liter respectively. The trophy – a wooden sculpture carved by the artist Fausto Lancini – will be presented to Lorenzo Sistino, CEO Fiat Automobiles, at the forthcoming Geneva Motorshow.