Female judges from eleven countries (two in the UK) have submitted their own personal shortlist with the aim of identifying the ‘car of the world for women’ in 2012. They all share a professional automotive background with a few racing drivers and journalists in there for good measure.
Some 300 models were then whittled down to form a female friendly list of 32 cars in terms of global popularity and judges are now required to allocate points per car by criteria…
Clearly these are ‘female industry’ oriented awards (ie family car, luxury car, sports car and economy car) more than ‘female motorist’ lifestyle motoring awards (as in first car, motoring mums, business women, solos perhaps) but one important concession to women this year is the criteria called ‘child friendliness’ because women are more likely to have children in their cars than men. Presumably this won’t penalise scores for (most) sports cars…
Twenty female judges are now finalising their secret ballot votes to be collated by Grant Thornton in New Zealand. The car with the most points in each category wins that category award and the vehicle receiving the most votes overall will win the 2012 Women’s World Car of the Year’s supreme award.
The awards will be announced later this month and involve the following shortlisted models.
ECONOMY CAR
VW up! Kia Rio
Kia Picanto Honda CRZ
Honda Civic Mazda 3 Skyactiv
Ford Fiesta Econetic Hyundai Accent Diesel
FAMILY CAR
Ford Focus Audi Q3
Kia Optima Subaru XV
Mercedes-Benz B-Class BMW X1
Mazda CX5
LUXURY CAR
Range Rover Evoque Mercedes-Benz C-Class
Audi A6 Bentley Continental
Audi A7 BMW 6 Series
BMW 3 Series Peugeot 508
Jaguar XJ
SPORTS CAR
Porsche 911 – 991 Jaguar XKR
Audi RS5 Renault Megane III
Ferrari FF Ferrari 458 Spider
BMW Series 1 M VW Golf R
Lamborghini Aventador Mercedes-Benz SLK
Mercedes-Benz CLS AMG
Despite running a motoring club for women I must confess I don’t know all and haven’t driven many of these cars. Sadly I am clearly not in the income bracket for most of the luxury or sports car contenders…
Having said that, I am surprised to see the BMW 1 series in the Sports Car category, we’d certainly have voted Mazda’s MX5 in there, the VW Up is too new for us to comment and we’d have added some more mundane GM, Renault and Citroen models given the opportunity…
But if marketing and feedback in the UK is anything to go by, a foxy tip would be to back the Range Rover Evoque as the most likely candidate for the most votes and to become the supreme female success car story in 2012.
Keeping her insider knowledge close to her chest, Women’s World Car of the Year‘s Sandy Myhre (from New Zealand) admits
“In past years it’s been quite hard to tell at this stage what cars have a good shot at winning the overall title but this year it’s evident that at least four cars are definitely in the running.”
We’ll keep you posted about the outcome of course.
FOXY Steph
