Mazda MX-5 Car of Year

Mazda's MX-5.

Mazda's popular roadster MX-5 has taken the New Zealand Car of the Year title, 16 years after the original car took the same award and weeks after this paper named the car as its pick of the year.

The country's top award is made by the New Zealand Motoring Writers Guild, which represents the main automotive media outlets, including daily and weekly papers, car magazines, websites, and radio and television channels, with members spread throughout the nation.

The MX-5 took the award by a clear margin from 10 other finalists: the BMW 3 Series, the C4 from Citroen, Ford's Focus II, Hyundai's Sonata, the Land Rover Discovery III, the Lexus GS, Mercedes-Benz's CLS, the Mitsubishi 380, Nissan's Murano, and the Suzuki Swift.

Every finalist was rated on criteria such as performance, design, ride and handling, safety and value for money, and every finalist received an extensive drive on each journalist's home turf.

In the past few years the award has been made to a series of sensible family sedans, last year's Nissan Maxima following Honda's Accord Euro, the Mazda 6 and Ford's Mondeo.