By EWAN KENNEDY
27 November 2006

When it launched its all-new VE Commodore in August this year, Holden made no secret of the fact that it benchmarked it against some of the world’s best cars. Now the Australian maker has put its money (over a billion dollars of it) where its corporate mouth is – because the VE Commodore has been announced as an entry in the World Car of the Year contest.

The VE Commodore has been nominated for WCOTY 2007 by the only Australian judge of the 52 on the international panel, Mr. Bill McKinnon.

McKinnon is the Sydney Morning Herald’s chief road tester, as well as the editor of Australian New Car Buyer, and 4WD Buyer magazines, so is highly regarded on the local motoring scene, and now the global one as well.

To be eligible for the World COTY award a car has to be on sale in at least five countries on a minimum of two continents. VE Commodore does this with ease, currently being on sale in 13 countries on three continents (Australia, Asia and Africa) as well as in some Pacific islands.

Some 28 new cars are in the running for the 2007 WCOTY awards, many of them already familiar to Australian buyers, or due to be launched here very soon. Amongst them are the Audi TT, Audi Q7, BMW Z4 coupe, Fiat Grande Punto (simply called Punto in Australia), Honda CR-V, Jaguar XK, Mercedes R-Class, MINI and Volkswagen Eos, the latter one of the most fascinating of all coupe-convertible designs.

As well as the overall World Car of the Year competition, there are also categories for Green Car of the Year, Performance car of the Year and World Car Design of the Year.

Jurors will spend the next few months analysing the many and varied entrants on many aspects, including style, performance, utility, safety and environmental impact.

The top 10 will be announced in February 2007 and the announcement of the winners will be made at the New York Motor Show in April.

Further information on the World Car of the Year awards can be obtained from the website www.wcoty.com/

We wish Holden well with the VE Commodore on this major excursion onto the world motoring stage. In the last few months we have spent a lot of time with many of the people involved with the design of big Holden family car and are most impressed with the way they have put their hearts and souls into it. For their car to place highly in a competition like this would be a great reward to them.