2009 Green Car of the Year finalists announced, and you can't buy three of them yet

Yamaha

So, surfing around the web over the weekend, I saw that a number of media outlets had picked up on the press release announcing the five finalists for the 2009 Green Car of the Year award, which will be presented later this month at the Los Angeles Auto Show. Curious, I clicked through to Green Car Journal, which decides the five finalists. They are:

• BMW 335d
• Ford Fusion Hybrid
• Saturn Vue 2 Mode Hybrid
• Smart ForTwo
• VW Jetta TDI

Nice list. Here's the problem: The 335d, Fusion Hybrid, and Vue 2 Mode aren't out yet.

Now, I drove the Vue 2 Mode last month, but it was just for a few minutes at a media event -- its official launch won't take place until December.

Similarly, BMW has U.S.-spec 335d sedans in the States for media to sample, but again, you can't go to your dealer and test drive one right now even if you wanted to.

The real stretch, however, is the Ford Fusion Hybrid. The 2010 Fusion (shown above) was only revealed, via a photo and a press release, just last week. The car's official debut doesn't even take place until the Los Angeles Auto Show.

Think about that -- the new Fusion Hybrid could conceivably be named the 2009 Green Car of the Year just as it's being shown to the general public for the very first time. Sorry, that's ridiculous.

According to Green Car Journal, "To qualify for consideration as a nominee, a vehicle must exhibit characteristics that substantially raise the bar in environmental performance and be in production by January 1 of the award year." Green Car Journal also drives each finalist, but this year, three of those cars driven -- the Bimmer, the Ford, and the Saturn -- will essentially be pre-production models. The Smart and VW Jetta TDI, on the other hand, are both actually on the market right now. Novel concept, eh?

Welcome to the car show silly season, everybody.

Alex Nunez is associate editor of Autoblog.com. His blog posts are provided by LifeWire, a part of The New York Times Company.