The annual Car of the Year awards issue is a culmination of twelve months’ work, and more, judging each and every new car that arrives on the market.

Every contender is put through its paces, and evaluated by our team of highly respected judges, with their verdicts spilling out onto the pages you see before you.

In common with previous years, we’ve split the contenders into ten distinct categories so that each different type of car can be evaluated fairly against its peers.

But in a break from the past, we’ve split the categories down further, so that we have a finalist from each faction of the category.

For instance in the small car and crossover sections, we have a finalist from the budget arena, the mainstream, and premium sector, each vying for a chance to take the overall category honours.

This, we believe, gives each contender a more equal chance of winning, no matter what its price tag and positioning in the segment.

Over the next ten days we will be bringing you the winner in each category before announcing our overall winner on Monday 20 May.

If you just can’t wait that long then the awards are revealed in full in the June edition of DieselCar which is out NOW.

We hope you enjoy this year’s awards, brought to you in association with tuning experts, Celtic Tuning.

Never before has there been so much debate as to the winners, finalists and cars that we’ve commended.

As we introduce this year’s Car of the Year Awards, it’s particularly fitting that in our celebratory 25th year of DieselCar, the sales figures for diesel propelled vehicles continue to hover around the 50 per cent mark.

As always, I’d really like to hear what you think. Drop me a line at the usual address or by e-mail at ian.robertson@dieselcarmagazine.co.uk.

This just leaves us to introduce the winners of the DieselCar Car of the Year Awards 2013…

Ian Robertson, Editor