In addition to winning the Car of the Year 2008 award outright, the super-compact Fiat distinguished itself by obtaining votes from most members of the jury: 57 out of 58 included it in their short-list, and 33 made it top in their personal rankings.

This is the second time – the first was the Fiat Panda in 2004 – that an A-segment model has won the most prestigious award in the world car industry. This extraordinary record brings total Fiat Group Automobiles wins to twelve.

Launched on 4 July this year, the new Fiat 500 immediately aroused huge interest and very favourable comments made by more than 7,000 people from 63 countries who homed in on Turin for its début: institutional authorities, financial analysts, businessmen and celebrities from the worlds of entertainment, fashion and sport.

The Fiat 500 is the manifesto of ‘new Fiat’, a model that is in all respects the physical demonstration of the company’s new approach, the renewed strategies of the brand, a different way of interpreting the car. That is why the Fiat 500 has set new benchmarks in its segment. For example, this is the first time that a car barely 3.55 metres long has been awarded a 5 star crash safety rating by Euro NCAP, and this is the first time that a car in this segment has seven airbags fitted as standard (it is also the only super-compact to fit a knee-bag), with the advanced ESP available on all models (standard on the 1.4 16v 100 bhp).

In addition, this is the first time that a model has been launched with the entire range of power units (1.2 69 bhp, 1.3 MultiJet 75 bhp with DPF and 1.4 16v 100 bhp), built to respect emissions limits set by Euro 5, and all this more than two years in advance of the legislative deadline.