The Volkswagen Passat has been named the 2015 Car of the Year at the Geneva motor show.
The German car topped a shortlist of seven vehicles, beating the BMW 2 Series Active Tourer, Citroën C4 Cactus, Ford Mondeo, Mercedes-Benz C-Class, Nissan Qashqai and Renault Twingo.
The award is decided by a jury made up of prominent motoring journalists from across Europe, including Autocar's head of video and features Matt Prior and senior contributing writer Andrew Frankel.
The jury consists of 58 members, representing 22 European countries. National representation on the jury is related to the size of the country's car market and its importance in car manufacturing. France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy and Spain each have six members, while other countries have proportionally fewer.
Volkswagen's Passat received 340 points from the judges, comprehensively beating its rivals.
The Citroën C4 Cactus garnered 248 points, ahead of the Mercedes-Benz C-Class on 221. Fourth was the Ford Mondeo with 203, with the Nissan Qashqai (160), BMW 2 Series Active Tourer (154) and Renault Twingo (124) rounding out the scoring.
The Passat succeeds the Peugeot 308 as the Car of the Year.
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VW Haters
Yawn......
Not very strong competition this year.
The rest of the list isn't particularly exciting either but I'm surprised the C4 Cactus didn't win. It's not perfect, but it's faults seem more forgiveable.
Still, next year's award is shaping up to be more exciting.