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Focus, Passat and Elantra to fight for Car of The Year Award

The 2012 North American Truck and car of the year finalists are out at last, which shows that Jury’s center of attention was on ‘small’. The finalists in cars are Ford Focus, Volkswagen Passat and Hyundai Elantra, whereas in the trucks, BMW X3, Land Rover Range Rover Evoque and Honda CR-V made it to the finale.

Car and Truck of the Year are short listed by a jury of 50 auto aristocrats from several newspapers, publications, websites and broadcast outlets. In the preceding year, Ford Explorer and Chevrolet Volt were bestowed with the North American Truck and Car of the Year respectively. Winners for the year 2012 will be unfolded at Detroit Auto Show, next month.

The jurors have had to face no hard time around this year in short listing as they found small and fuel efficient cars to be dominating this year and the truck category has not even got a single ‘real truck’.

At a time where, fuel scarcity is a constant crisis, value and fuel efficiency in the vehicles have become so very imperative. The auto critic and one of the judges, Mark Phelan says that the Elantra and Focus are the two cars to offer variety of features at affordable prices. Volkswagen have succeeded to hit with their Passat, which has been developed giving more room and lesser price to charm the buyers in China and America.

Hyundai’s Elantra has been amongst the most appreciated car by auto critics, which has also helped the company to escalate its market share. According to the statistics provided by sources, Elantra’s sales have increased by up to 46 percent through November.

This is the 19th year of the North American Car of the Year Award. In the past 18 years, domestic auto giants have won the title for 10 times, European four times, Japanese three times and Korean automaker Hyundai made it once.

Getting successful in short listing Elantra this year, Hyundai has got a strong possibility of winning it once again.