Chinese Oriental Car magazine has honoured the Ferrari California with the Best Car Design Award 2009. For Shanghai’s influential car magazine the new 8-cylinder from Maranello has a perfect design, excellent aerodynamics, powerful performance, flexible drivability and master-class interior colours. It therefore is an outstanding car and the winner model of the Advanced Design Award.

According to the strict selection criteria the award's judging team, composed of eighty of China's senior designers and the whole of Oriental Car editors, chose the thirteen best designed cars out of the cars present at the last edition of the Shanghai Auto Show in April (exactly 918 models) and they then voted for the California as the overall winner for the following reasons:

"As the first Ferrari Granturismo with a mid-front 8-cylinder engine the innovative vehicle power system makes the Ferrari California’s drivability even more trenchant and overwhelming. The excellent aerodynamic development is always related to the definition of Ferrari’s styling. The Cx value is a mere 0.32 when the hard-top is closed, which ensures a maximum air resistance while maintaining the vertical load needed to guarantee the highest levels for the California’s road-holding. The brand-new dual-clutch with 7-gear-transmission system is used in the California for the first time, while the gear changes occur in close-to-zero times. Innovative technologies, such as the SCM Magnetorheological Suspension Control System, provide a perfect relation of technical performance and styling for the Ferrari California."

Oriental Car magazine was founded in 1993 and today it is one of the most important car magazines on sale in China. With a circulation of 308,800 copies, the monthly magazine has a readership drawn from the middle/upper classes aged between 35 and 45 with 83 percent of its readers being men. Oriental Car is available in more than 30 cities all over the People's Republic of China.