In future years, 2006 may be seen as a watershed year for Saab. Not only were there record sales of Saab vehicles around the world, Saab established itself as a leader in the alternative fuel market with it’s BioPower range, which is set to expand with the 9-3 BioPower debuting in Geneva in March 2007.

The Aero-X stunned the world at last year’s Geneva Motor Show and went on a year-long world tour that brought plaudits from all corners, as well as several prominent awards. Perhaps the final jewel in the crown for the Aero-X is the most fitting of all - the ultimate recognition from those that specialise in automotive design.

Car Design News has named the Aero-X as it’s Car Design of 2006 (Concept).

The award was twofold, with a public vote as well as an award decided by forty leading design chiefs in the industry. The Aero-X was a clear winner in both awards.

In the public voting category:

1st Place: A clear win for the Saab Aero X. Over 82% of readers awarded it a top three place. In fact, it received over 50% of all votes for 1st position from within the first few hours of the voting, and that position never changed substantially over the whole two week period.

That’s massive! Read that again - 82% of voters placed it in the top three. A huge result. That’s a LOT of recognition and now the design cues from this winning concept will begin to trickle down to Saab’s production models.

The vote was initially publicised here at Trollhattan Saab at about the same time as the Autoblog vote controversy, so maybe we helped a little with that initial bump. Importantly though, it retained its position through the whole voting period, showing the true appeal of the car to all comers.

The 2nd and 3rd placegetters in both the public vote and the expert’s vote were the Citroen C-Matisse and the Mazda Negare concepts respectively. The award for production cars was given to the super-sexy Alfa Romeo 8c Competizione.

A big round of applause, congratulations and the popping of many champagne corks to the Aero-X team and Alex Daniel in particular for designing the 2006 Concept Car of the Year.

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For those that haven’t seen it, here’s the video Richo and I shot of the Aero-X at the Sydney Motor Show last year. A truly stunning car.