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Car Design of the Year 2009

Last chance to vote for your favorite concept and production design of 2009! While 2009 will most certainly be remembered as a gloom riddled year - with the automotive industry stricken by the economic downturn and a slew of cutbacks - we encourage you to remember the few gems that graced the auto show circuit. So what was your favorite car design from 2009?

BMW i3 EV revealed. It’s clever, but it’s not exactly pretty

The BMW i3 electric city car (pictured) has been officially revealed The BMW i3 – the first of BMW’s production ‘i’ electric cars – has finally been revealed at events in London, New York and Beijing as BMW plots its course to bring a premium electric city car to the world. Looking much like the original Mega City Concept, the i3 debuts a number of innovations from BMW – which are very clever – but it also debuts perhaps the worst looking BMW we’ve ever seen, with its incongruous lines, bulging bonnet, odd shapes on the flanks and slab-backed rear view. But what underpins the i3 is clever indeed, with a lightweight inner body made from carbon fibre and carbon fibre reinforced body panels providing the skin, all conspiring to make the i3 light – 1195kg, despite 25 per cent or so of that being batteries – and very rigid.

Infiniti demands luxury look for Leaf variant

Infiniti executives are taking pains to ensure that their luxury version of the electric Nissan Leaf hatchback will be markedly different and more upscale. This year, U.S. officials of Infiniti reviewed initial designs at Nissan's San Diego styling studio and complained that they simply looked like another version of the Leaf, say people who were there.