The Mazda MX-5. Credit: Newspress
iafrica.com – December 9, 2015 – The Mazda MX-5 has driven away with the Car of the Year Japan award for 2015, handing the automaker back-to-back victories.
In 2014, the Mazda2 was awarded the honour.
This year, however, the MX-5 scored 442 votes, pipping the Honda S660 by 41 votes when the last of the sixty juror’s votes were read out. The BMW 2 Series Active Tourer, which finished in third place, totalled 177 votes to pick up the Import Car of the Year gong.
“We went through some tough times during the financial crisis and 2011 earthquake, but we stuck to our founding principles and created a winning formula. We think the jurors’ response to our MX-5 shows that sports-cars are making a strong comeback in Japan. This award means a lot to our development team,” said Mazda’s Kiyoshi Fujiwara.
The Suzuki Alto picked up the Small Mobility award, while the Tesla Model S, entering the award process for the first time in Japan, won the Innovation award.
A split in the voting between several sporty models including the MX-5, S660 and Model S saw no model gain the necessary 200 votes to win the Emotional award, so that trophy was not awarded.