The BMW M5 has been crowned as the World Performance Car at the 2018 World Car Awards, hosted at the New York International Auto Show on Wednesday 28 March.

Eleven vehicles from several automotive brands were selected and voted for by the World Car Awards jury panel, consisting of 82 leading automotive journalists from 24 countries around the globe. The finalists in the category were all performance cars of which at least 2,000 units are produced per year and which are available for purchase on at least two continents from 1 January 2017 until 31 May 2018.

Since its establishment 14 years ago, BMW has won several World Car Awards. Previous accolades have included the inaugural World Urban Car award in 2017 (BMW i3); the 2016 World Luxury Car award (BMW 7 Series); two back-to-back World Green Car awards (BMW i8 – 2015, BMW i3 – 2014) as well as another World Green Car win in 2008 (BMW 118d with EfficientDynamics). In 2006, the BMW 3 Series secured top honours as the World Car of the Year.

An official statement released by BMW said: “We at BMW are very excited to receive this award from the World Car of the Year organisation. The BMW 5 Series has always played an important part of the BMW product portfolio. With this 6th generation BMW 5 Series we are able to offer our customers a broad range of variants ranging from the extremely efficient BMW 530e plug-in hybrid, all the way to the BMW M5, which is the quickest BMW ever built, reaching 0-60 in under 3.2 seconds.”

Find out more about the BMW M5 or book a test drive today.