It’s always exciting to launch the BusinessCar Awards, and as you’ll have seen from the front cover of this issue, voting for the 2012 awards is now open at www.businesscar.co.uk/vote.

Completely decided by the readers of BusinessCar, the awards are the industry’s chance to pick the products, services and suppliers that best serve their business.

The biggest award is the Business Car of the Year prize, which goes to the most popular corporate model launched during 2011. This year’s choice is more diverse than ever, with the likely front-runners including, predictably, the Audi A6, BMW 1-series, VW Passat and Ford Focus, as well as several dark horses such as the electric Nissan Leaf, Hyundai‘s excellent i40, the hybrid Lexus CT200h and the surprisingly impressive Peugeot 508. Or maybe it’ll be something else altogether.

The service supplier category is always one of the most hotly contested, with the wide variety of firms involved meaning votes are spread around a host of equally worth winners, and it’s a prize that many big names have collected in recent years.

But it’s not just the star names that can win prizes – BusinessCar’s readers can too. By voting you’ll be entered into a draw to win a case of champagne, which should get to you in time to help see in the New Year. A couple of minutes of your time at www. businesscar.co.uk/vote is all it takes. Your favourite firms will appreciate it, and in several categories last year just a handful of votes was enough to separate the winners from the rest.

From BusinessCar on TWITTER