CarWale Awards 2009 will be presented in following categories:

• India's Favourite Car for Small Families 2009
• India's Favourite Car for Large Families 2009
• India's Favourite Car for Self-driven Executives 2009
• India's Favourite Car for Chauffeur-driven Executives 2009
• India's Favourite Car for Offroading Activities 2009
• India's Favourite Car for Enthusiasts 2009
• Aspirational Car of India 2009

• New Car of the Year 2009 (jury driven)
• Safety Initiative of the Year 2009 (jury driven)
• Environment Initiative of the Year 2009 (jury driven)

Nominations Methodology

CarWale Awards 2009 nominations methodology works in two steps:

• We nominate all possible cars that fit in a category on the basis of few parameters (listed in section 1).
• Category-specific elimination rules are applied to filter irrelevant candidates.

1. General Nominations/Eliminations

• Cars that received the most votes (but not less than 5% votes in the category) in their respective categories during CarWale Awards 2008 are nominated for the CarWale Awards 2009. Among these cars, those were launched prior to 2005 and haven't received any significant face-lift/upgrade e.g. new/different engine, major interior/exterior change, significant price cut/hike (at least 5% of the cost of the car. This change in price should be specific to this car and should not be a result of any change in industry parameters e.g. cut in taxes or duties etc) will be eliminated from the nominations list. CarWale encourages manufacturers to provide the country with fresh products. Moreover, cars that are too old are likely to get discontinued and may affect the owners in the long run.
• All cars launched and sold in India from 1st Jan 2008 to 31st Dec 2008 are nominated in their respective categories as well.
• Categories for newly-launched cars are determined by observing the trend of votes in that particular category last year. For example, 9 out of 10 cars were hatchbacks in Most Preferred Car for Small Families in Awards 2008, so for this year's awards, all the hatchbacks launched in the mentioned period get nominated for this category automatically.
• "New Car of the Year" category has all the cars launched in the period of Jan 1, 2008 to Dec 31, 2008. Nominations for ‘Safety Initiative of the Year' and ‘Environment Initiative of the Year' too will be done by CarWale editorial team.

2. Category-specific Eliminations

• Only cars that have an SUV body type and have at least one variant with four-wheel-drive option are eligible for "India's Favourite Car for Offroading Activities".
• Only cars that have 100ps (99.5ps will be rounded off to 100ps and 99.49ps to 99ps) of maximum power output and do not cost more than Rs 20 lakh (ex-showroom, Delhi) are eligible for the "Most Preferred Car for Enthusiasts".
• "Aspirational Car of India" category nominations are done by CarWale editorial team on the basis of how much they pull an owner's heartstrings – the pursestrings no object.

Notes:

'New Car of the Year', 'Safety Initiative of the Year' and 'Environment Initiative of the Year' categories are not available for voting. CarWale editorial team will choose the winners.