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Volvo XC40 Named 2018 European Car of the Year

In the hours preceding the start of the 2018 Geneva Motor Show, the Car of the Year organization announced the winner of this year’s title for the most coveted car in Europe.
Volvo XC40 gets European Car of the Year Award 26 photos
Photo: Volvo
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The Volvo XC40 managed to beat Seat’s Ibiza (ranked second) and BMW’s 5 Series (ranked third) in a race that brought the Swedish manufacturer its first title of this kind. The XC40 managed to get 325 points in the organization’s ranking system, as well as 20 individual top votes.

Volvo’s small SUV is the first to be based on the carmaker’s new compact modular vehicle architecture (CMA) that will be used on all future cars of the 40 series, both combustion and electric-powered.

The award in itself is also a recognition of Geely’s engineering capabilities and a signal that the Chinese company did well when it decided to go the European way, as the CMA platform was developed with their expertise as well.

“Winning this award with our new XC40 is perfect timing,” said Håkan Samuelsson, president, and CEO of Volvo Cars.

“Volvo now has three globally available SUVs in its range for the first time. The XC40 will be a strong contributor to further growth, taking us into a new and fast-growing small SUV segment.”


The main traits which landed the Volvo model the European Car of the Year award are, among others, quality, looks, ruggedness and, of course, safety.

Volvo expects the new XC40 to be a real success, saying the model has already received more than 20,000 early orders for the SUV across Europe and the U.S. Soon, the car will also be introduced on the Chinese market, with similarly high expectations.

Aside from the Ibiza and the 5 Series from BMW, the race to win the title also saw competing the Alfa Romeo Stelvio, the Audi A8, Citroen C3 Aircross and Kia Stinger.
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About the author: Daniel Patrascu
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Daniel loves writing (or so he claims), and he uses this skill to offer readers a "behind the scenes" look at the automotive industry. He also enjoys talking about space exploration and robots, because in his view the only way forward for humanity is away from this planet, in metal bodies.
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