Lies, damn lies and reader votes

As Karla Pincott points out in her blog, 'tis the season for car awards ceremonies. All across the land, it seems every motoring industry organisation with a brand to push is handing out awards to car manufacturers left, right and centre.

Not to be left out, motoring classifieds site Carsales has announced its own People's Choice Award has been given to the Volkswagen Eos.

I've got nothing against the Volkswagen Eos. It's a great mid-range convertible, well-built, good-looking and reasonably-priced. But what's it doing winning a People's Choice Award supposedly determined by Carsales users sending sales enquiry emails to car dealers?

Carsales.com's Greg Roebuck says, "During 2007, hundreds of thousands of new car enquiries were placed across Carsales Network websites. That means we can determine exactly which new car models Australian buyers are looking at purchasing, and in that way, the People's Choice Awards are truly a vote by Australian car shoppers on their favourite new vehicles."

Really? Because the Eos (great car that it is) is not selling like hot-cakes. Not even the best-selling in its category, much less overall. And yet, the Eos generated more sales leads than any other make and model on Carsales.

Are the people who use Carsales a dramatically unrepresentative sample of the Australian car-buying audience? Are Carsales' online leads to Volkswagen dealers converting into very few sales? Or is the Carsales People's Choice Award open to distortion from an organised voting campaign from... shall we say... people with a vested interest in the Eos winning?

I'm all for websites having Car of the Year awards, but sales leads is clearly not an accurate reflection of anything you should keep in mind when choosing a new car.