At the ongoing 2018 New York Auto Show, the 2018 World Car Awards were announced. While the Volvo XC60 won the 2018 World Car of the Year, the new Audi A8 won the 2018 World Luxury Car Of The Year. Now, it has been announced that the new BMW M5 has won the 2018 World Performance Car Of The Year.
The new BMW M5 was chosen from an initial entry list of 11 cars from all over the world then a short list three finalists as announced Geneva earlier this month: the BMW M5, the Honda Civic Type R and the Lexus LC 500. Candidates eligible for World Performance Car must be produced in volumes of at least 2,000 units/year, must be overtly performance focused in nature, and must be available for sale on at least two continents during the period beginning January 1, 2017 and ending May 31, 2018.
This is the seventh time that a BMW has won a World Car award in their 14 year history. Previously, the company won the inaugural World Urban Car award in 2017 (BMW i3); the 2016 World Luxury Car award (BMW 7 series); two back-to-back World Green Car awards (BMW i8 – 2015, BMW i3 – 2014) as well as another World Green Car win in 2008 (BMW 118d with Efficient Dynamics). In 2006, the BMW 3-Series captured top honours as the World Car of the Year.
BMW released an official statement that said “We at BMW are very excited to receive this award from the World Car of the Year organization. The BMW 5 Series has always played an important part of the BMW product portfolio. With this 6th generation BMW 5 Series we are able to offer our customers a broad range of variants ranging from the extremely efficient BMW 530e plug-in hybrid, all the way to the BMW M5, which is the quickest BMW ever built, reaching 0-60 in under 3.2 seconds.”