Car of year awards for Mazda, Nissan
The new Mazda MX-5 has won the Car of the Year Japan award.
The MX-5 tallied 442 votes, pipping the Honda S660 minicoupe by 41 votes when the last of the 60 juror’s votes were revealed. The BMW 2-Series, which finished in third place, totalled 177 votes to pick up the Import Car of the Year gong.
This win gives the Hiroshima based carmaker back-to-back car of the year trophies after it captured the major prize last year for the Mazda2. In accepting the award, Mazda’s vice president in charge of product planning and head of the company’s Skyactiv technology R&D, Kiyoshi Fujiwara, said: ‘‘We went through some tough times during the financial crisis and 2011 earthquake, but we stuck to our founding principles and created a winning formula. We think the jurors’ response to our MX-5 shows that sports cars are making a strong comeback in Japan. This award means a lot to our development team.’’
The Suzuki Alto picked up the Small Mobility award, while the Tesla Model S, entering the award process for the first time in Japan, won the Innovation award. A split in the voting between several sporty models including the MX-5, S660 and Model S saw no model gain the necessary 200 votes to win the Emotional award, so that trophy was not awarded this year.
Meanwhile, the Nissan NP300 Navara has won the European 2016 International Pickup of the Year award at a ceremony in Lyon, France.
Philippe Guerin-Boutaud, corporate vice-president of Nissan’s Light Commercial Vehicles Busines Unit, said: ‘‘This award celebrates Nissan’s 80 years of pickup expertise. Rigorous testing . . . illuminated the tough and innovative character of the allnew Navara.’’