Monday, December 03, 2007

Auto-Future's best of the year I: cars

In a not original move Auto-Future presents its awards for the best cars/concepts/stuff of the year 2007. But, considering how special this blog is, some of the winners are already known for some time...
Concept car of the year
The Chevrolet Volt was awarded Concept Car of the year back in January. Please read the original post for the reasons, of course this concept is highly relevant and was the most talked car of the year. In 2008 it will be one of the most photographed mule/prototype... and later our car of the year 2010... unless Toyota arrives first with a plug-in hybrid in the market.
















Car of the year
In June 2007 we awarded the Audi R8 as Car of the Year. See the original post for the reasons. We also decided that the R8 is the sportscar of the decade. We totally forgot about the Nissan GT-R... but it is not actually on sale in 2007 and it will have its own very special award in about 5 years... wait and see!













Best surprise of the year
That will be the new Citroen C5. I believe Auto-Future didn't even cover its development phase or presented spy-shots of the prototype. And plenty were available... the thing is the current C5 is so boring that we didn't really care about its replacement. But when the official photos were made available...WOW!... what a gorgeous car. Clearly a follower of the 4-door coupe trend that Auto-Future predicted almost a couple of years ago. This car is really what Citroen needs right now.











Biggest disappointment of 2007
The new Hyundai i30 was an easy task to report: it would be more upscale that its twin, the Kia Ceed, with more mature styling, improved interiors, etc. However, the Hyundai model turned out with a front design clearly uninspired and old-school Korean, the same interiors with just some blue light scheme, and unlike the Kia it only got a 4-star rating in the EuroNCAP crash test.









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