The Fiat 500 has received its first important award in India after Overdrive magazine honoured the car as Import of the Year in its prestigious annual awards.

The Fiat 500 has received its first important award in India after Overdrive magazine honoured the car as Import of the Year in its prestigious annual awards. It is the latest in a whole host of awards that the small car has collected, led out by the most important of all prizes, that of Car of the Year 2008.

The Fiat 500 was presented in India for the first time a year ago and since then the car has gone on sale in very small numbers. Imported wholly built, this sees it is subject to tariffs that mean it has had to been positioned as a car reserved for the fashion conscious; however sales targets have been easily met. In a double win for Fiat India, the locally-built Linea, which has gone on sale across the country in recent days, scooped the magazine's Car of the Year award.

"Cuteness and adorability aren’t on our list of testing parameters," commented the Overdrive jury about the Fiat 500 in its summing up. "The 500 says they should be. It’s the only car we’ve, to a man, wanted to pull the cheeks of. The cheeky Fiat beat off the competition from some serious cars like Audi’s smashing R8 and Suzuki’s gobsmacking Hayabusa. You see, the 500 transcends the usual testing parameters and goes straight for your heart. There’s something spectacularly endearing about this car that pushes everyone who drives it, or sees it over the edge. But it really wins this award not just for being great to drive and emotive to the core, it wins it for being soulful enough to inspire gushy-mushy articles from seasoned, jaded, hardened journalists," the magazine concluded.

The jury was made up of the magazine's team, Overdrive editor Sirish Chandran was joined by rising India TV star and tester for the magazine Bertrand D’souza. Next up was Hari Singh who has won no less than five national rally championships as well as the inaugural Asia Zone Rally Championship. The Flying Sikh is today, perhaps the most respected name in automotive testing circles, while another tester has a strong rallying background: Gaurav Gill is one of India's young rising stars of the dirt tracks. More motorsport input on the team came from Karun Chandhok who is aiming to become an F1 driver. Tutu Dhavan is an ex-Himalayan Rally firecracker, noted car restorer and historian and an all-round automotive expert. The jury was completed by biker testers Shubhabrata Marmar and Vijayendra Vikram.

This year’s test course was laid at the spacious Amby Valley airstrip, near Lonavala in Maharashtra. Keeping in mind the magazine's enthusiast focus, the course would bring out the contenders’ abilities in all dynamic areas. The 1.2km course included a tight and twisty handling section, corners, two braking areas, one double lane change, two extended acceleration areas and a slalom. A rapid run through the course would give the judges the space to analyse every aspect of a car’s dynamics. With all the contenders assembled, fuelled and ready to run, the judges went to work.

Each judge was given a maximum of 25 points per category for their evaluation. The scientifically designed, internationally recognised methodology ensures not only that all the cars got their due, but that impartiality was central to the scoring. Each judge could give a maximum of ten points to his favourite car and there couldn't be a tie for their pick of the categories cars. The judge had also to ensure that at least four cars per category received points. Scoring for each judge was confidential and the magazine's validation partners Ernst & Young observed the entire judging process before whisking away the score sheets to their super secret facility for final tabulation.

Other category winners, aside from the Fiat 500 and Linea, in the Overdrive 2009 awards include the Skoda Fabia (Compact Car of the Year), VW Jetta (Premium Car of the Year), Chevrolet Captiva (SUV of the Year), Honda Civic Hybrid (Green Award), Suzuki Maruti (Manufacturer of the Year), Pawan Kant Munjal (Hall of Fame), Pulsar Mania (Commercial of the Year) and Maruti Suzuki KB 10 Engine (Technology of the Year).