There are numerous car awards that are handed out during the course of a year, but there is one in particular that every automaker dreams of getting their hands on. That would be the North American Car of the Year award, and the 2012 version of the award was recently presented to the Hyundai Elantra.

The Korean automaker has been piling up the awards all year long, but this one is the award that means the most, and may very well represent the icing on that cake that is the re-branding effort that Hyundai have put forward in recent years.

The worthy winner was chosen by a panel of 50 esteemed North American auto journalists who rated all of the new vehicles that were released last year. The field was narrowed down to a final three of the Elantra, the Volkswagen Passat, and the Ford Focus, with the Hyundai entry coming out on top.

This is the second such award for the car maker after the Genesis received the same award back in 2009. Those two awards now serve as the bookends in what has been a miraculous transformation for Hyundai.

The jury looks at a number of different factors before deciding on the best vehicle, with design, safety, driver satisfaction, handling, and best value for the dollar all considered to be the most important of those.

John Krafcik , president and chief executive officer, Hyundai Motor America expressed his delight at receiving such a prestigious award, and was particularly pleased that the judges recognized exactly what Hyundai is trying to do with their entire line-up in regards of quality and value for money. He was also pleased that the award came in a year when high standards in auto making where being set across the board.

Perhaps the components of the 2012 Elantra that were most appealing to the jury were the design, which Hyundai describes as “Fluidic Sculpture.” The basic premise behind that ideal is in the way that the wind plays along the rigid surfaces of the vehicle, with the end result being an illusion of constant motion.

The whole look and feel is very aerodynamic, which may in turn assist with the second feature that wowed the judges. That would be the fuel economy of the Elantra which, at 29 mpg city and 40 mpg highway, and 33 mpg combined, is a major plus for drivers, especially with gas prices slowly starting to creep back up again.

It would appear that consumers are in total agreement with the 2012 North American Car of the Year jury, as Hyundai Elantra accounted for 186.361 of the 645.591 units that the carmaker moved in 2011. This prestigious award will undoubtedly go a long way in helping those sales figures climb even higher in the coming months.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 24th, 2012 at 7:00 am and is filed under Hyundai. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.