As well as the Giulietta and the 458 Italia, the other six finalists bidding to win the 2011 World Car Design of the Year award are the Aston Martin Rapide, the Audi A7, the Citroen DS3, the Honda CR-Z, the Kia Sportage and the Nissan Juke.

This is the fifth time that a Citroen design has been in the top finalists’ position for the World Car Design of the Year award having won the inaugural overall title in 2006 for its C4 design. It is the second time for the Kia design team; the Kia Soul reached the “top three” finalist position in 2010. And it’s the third time for Audi having captured the overall 2008 and 2007 World Car Design of the Year honours.

The eight cars eligible for the 2011 World Car Design of the Year award were taken from the list of fifty-one candidates. Those candidates can either be on the overall World Car of the Year list or included as a stand-alone entry provided the vehicle was introduced and available for sale in at least one major market during the period beginning January 1, 2010 and ending May 30th, 2011. The World Car Design of the Year category, and the corresponding award, is meant to highlight new vehicles with innovation and style that push established boundaries.

A design panel consisting of five highly respected world design experts asked to first review each candidate, and then establish a short-list of recommendations for the jurors. The design experts are:   

Masatsugu Arimoto: as Japan's foremost automotive design commentator, Arimoto is chairman of the Japan Auto Colour Award program, and a juror on Car Styling's "Car Design Awards" as well as judge on the Japan Car of the Year awards. Silvia Baruffaldi: as Managing Editor of Auto & Design magazine, Silvia Baruffaldi has contacts with design centres of car makers and consultant studios the world over. Gernot Bracht: former designer at Renault who now teaches at the Pforzheim design school in Germany. Sam Livingstone: Director of the consultancy Car Design Research, Senior Tutor in Vehicle Design at the Royal College of Art and Associate Editor of Car Design News. Tom Matano: currently the Executive Director, School of Industrial Design, at Academy of Art University, San Francisco. From 1983 to 2002, Matano worked at Mazda managing the Chief Designers group that created the entire Mazda car line designs. Judges on many Concours d’Elegances including Pebble Beach 

The sixty-six World Car Awards jurors will now vote on the expert’s recommendations this month and their ballots will be tabulated by the international accounting firm KPMG. The top three design finalists will be announced at the Geneva International Motor Show on Tuesday, March 1st during a press conference co-hosted by Bridgestone Corporation and the New York International Auto Show.

Now in their eighth year, the annual World Car awards have become one of the world’s most prestigious, credible and significant programs of its kind. The awards were inaugurated in 2003, and officially launched in January 2004, to reflect the reality of the global marketplace, as well as to recognize and reward automotive excellence on an international scale. The awards are intended to complement, not compete, with existing national and regional Car of the Year programs. Previous winners of the World Car Design of the Year award were the Chevrolet Camaro in 2010, the Fiat 500 in 2009, the Audi R8 in 2008, the Audi TT in 2007 and the Citroen C4 in 2006.