Driven: Volkswagen Passat CC GT

Elegant and refined. Forty years ago these two words would not have been used to describe the Beetles bought in droves by the counterculture in the US; a symbol of the hippy movement and the definitive people's car, designed at a time when Germany sought to put people in motion. With the Passat CC, however, Volkswagen is indeed making a sharp move away from the ‘volks wagen', and these two words rolled off the tongues of those who saw the car in all three countries we drove through on our winter holiday.

Car Design of the Year 2008

As the year draws to a close, it's time once again for us to ask you, our readers, to vote for your favorite car designs of 2008. Your votes will decide which design teams will be presented an award by the CDN team at the Geneva auto show in March, with prizes being given to the best vehicle in the concept and production car categories. We've selected our picks of the production and concept vehicles unveiled since the 2008 Detroit Auto Show, and now it's up to you to decide which ones gain the accolade of Car Design of the Year.

Fiat 500 1957 Edition revealed ahead of LA Auto Show

While American teenagers were cruising around in finned interstate crushers, Europeans of all ages were discovering the wonder of automobile ownership thanks to the tiny, affordable Fiat Nuova 500, introduced to a car-hungry public in 1957. The little two-cylinder city car was a smash hit, with 3,893,294 built before production ended in 1975. Fiat 500 production resumed in 2007, but the new car was vastly different from the original: Its engine gained two cylinders and moved to the front of the car, while its footprint, though diminutive by American standards, positively dwarfs that of its predecessor.