A JURY of a dozen motor journalists chose the new Mazda 2 as the Car of the Year for Slovakia after evaluating almost 50 cars at the end of last year.
As expected, small cars were the most favoured. The new Mazda 2 was the only finalist to receive a vote from every jury member. It won by a single point over the Fiat 500. In third place was the Ford Mondeo, the Hospodárske Noviny wrote.
The criteria for the contest were that the model must be new on the market, accessible to dealers at the time of vote and more than just a body modification.
This year, a very balanced group of cars made it to the finals. In alphabetical order, they were the Fiat 500, the Ford Mondeo, the Mazda 2, the Mercedes-Benz C-Class, the Peugeot 308, the Renault Laguna, the Renault Twingo and the Toyota Auris.
Every member of the jury was given 25 points to allot to the competing cars, with a top limit of 10 points and a bottom of zero for any one car.
The journalists knew which cars would be competing before choosing, and took them on test drives through cities and the village of Chorvátsky Grob, where the evaluation took place.
The event's final top eight were: the Mazda 2, the Fiat 500, the Ford Mondeo, the Renault Laguna, the Peugeot 308, the Toyota Auris, the Mercedes-Benz C-Class and the Renault Twingo.
