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First pic: Skoda Citigo

Earth-shattering news: the Czech Republic has announced its 2009 Car of the Year, and the winner is… the Skoda Superb!

Now then. The Superb is, indubitably, a fine car: sensible, spacious, good value. But Car of the Year? In a year that saw the launch of the VW Scirocco, the Toyota iQ and the KTM X-Bow (all of which we just happened to give TG Car of the Year Awards to – take a look at our full list for more)?
The Superb’s victory was decided, we’re told, by a 700,000-strong public vote and a 23 member jury of prominent People from the Czech Republic. People from the Czech Republic must care an awful lot about having a saloon-hatch dual bootlid system.

We wouldn’t want to accuse the fine, upstanding Czechs of being any other than completely impartial and non-nationalistic in their voting choice, but it does reek a little bit of the Eurovision points-giving, doesn’t it? What next? The Italians voting the Fiat Sedici as their car of the year? In fact, that’s quite possible.

In the name of national pride, next year we’re handing out all our awards to, er, the Lotus Evora, Aston One-77 and the Jag XF-R. Actually, that doesn’t look like a bad list, does it?

NB: We’ve just been informed that the Superb was also named as the Caravan Club’s ‘Towcar of the Year 2008’. We apologise for any previous scepticism.