The European Car of the Year award was established in 1964 by automobile magazines from different countries around Europe. It is one of the most prestigious and important awards in the automotive industry.

The voting panel of the award is composed of motoring journalists from publications all across Europe. The number of representatives per country is based on the car manufacturing industry and its car market. There are no categories for the European Car of the Year award because its sole purpose is finding a "single, decisive winner" among those cars competing for the award.

On the eve of Geneva Motor Show, the winners of the European Car of the Year 2017 were announced. And this year, it was Peugeot 3008 who managed to reach the top and win the award as it scores 319 points, as per The Telegraph. The second place goes to Alfa Romeo Giulia which accumulated 296 points. And the third place went to Mercedes E-class which attained 197 points.

Peugeot 3008 became the first ever SUV to win the prestigious award. It is a spacious and stylish French SUV which has one of the best interiors of any brand of family cars. It is arguably the best model of Peugeot and challenges Seat Ateca and Nissan Qashai in small SUV segment.

In 2015, the annual sales of Peugeot 3008 were at 67,079 sold cars. Last year, it went up to 75,032 cars sold, as per Car Sales Base. And just on January of this year, the total cars sold were at 11,940. If this pace continued, they might end up selling around 140,000-150,000 cars in 2017. And given the fact that Peugeot 3008 won the European Car of the Year, it is very much possible.

Second place Alfa Romeo Giulia had a total sales of 10,475 cars sold in 2016 while third place Mercedes E-class sold a total of 99,494 sold cars in 2016. But since these two car models won second and third place respectively, it is also expected that their sales would eventually increased.

Aside from the top three, four other cars made it to the final list. The cars that's included in the top seven finalists are Volvo S90 (172 points), Citroen C3 (166 points), Toyota C-HR (165 points) and Nissan Micra (135 votes).

Related