Toronto, Ontario – The Automobile Journalists Association of Canada (AJAC) and the international accounting firm KPMG today announced the top three finalists for the 2009 Canadian Car of the Year and the Canadian Utility Vehicle of the Year. AJAC also announced the top three finalists for the Best New Design award and the Best New Technology award.

The top three finalists for 2009 Canadian Car of the Year are the Hyundai Genesis, Mazda6, and Toyota Corolla.

The top three finalists for 2009 Canadian Utility Vehicle of the Year are the Ford Flex, Mercedes-Benz M-Class, and Subaru Forester.

The top three finalists for 2009 Best New Design are the Honda Fit, Jaguar XF Supercharged and the Volkswagen Passat CC.

The top three finalists for 2009 Best New Technology are the General Motors OnStar Stolen Vehicle Slowdown, the Infiniti Around View Monitor and the Mitsubishi Super-All-Wheel Control.

The overall winners will be declared on Wednesday, February 11, 2009 during media day at the Canadian International Auto Show in Toronto.

AJAC’s annual Canadian Car of the Year awards program was created by automotive journalists in 1985 for the purpose of providing consumers with a valuable resource to assist them while shopping for a new vehicle – comparative information on vehicles new to the market, grouped within cross-shopping sets. For that reason, the detailed voting results are available to consumers on the AJAC web site as well as comparative test data obtained during the extensive five day evaluation of more than 160 new vehicles at Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario last October. This rigorous evaluation process includes real world driving on public roads on a variety of routes developed to reflect where and how the average consumer would drive the different classes of vehicles.