The Winner Takes the…Car of the Year Award!

This fabulous model is well-known as a Holden in Australia and a Vauxhall in the UK. Chinese customers usually get to call it the Buick Verano hatchback, and it commonly goes under the Opel name for the owners from continental Europe. For the U.S. automotive market, it was marketed as a Saturn Astra (worse luck, but it is not currently available for the American buyers). Whichever way you slice it, just this model has even now been awarded the 2016 Car of the Year prize, and this is for 2016 Opel Astra, it rocks!

A skillful jury of respected automotive European journalists representing a wide range of world leading motoring websites and magazines (it comes to Autocar in the UK, Stern in Germany, Autopista in Spain and L’Automobile in France and lots of other motoring publishers as well) voted in favour of this tech-savvy C-segment hatch. The Opel Astra pulled away having earned 312 votes. The shortlist of runners consists of such models and marquees as Skoda Superb, Jaguar XE, Audi A4, Mazda MX-5 Miata. The latter has been considered to be the most probable winner; however, the Japanese enthusiast roadster earned only 202 points. The Sweden well-suited Volvo XC90, a runner-up SUV, got 294 votes.