The shortlist for the prestigious 2015 European Free Pen of the Year award has been announced today.
The list is led by a versatile new free pen from BMW which, unusually for the German company, features a nib on the top rather than the bottom. Also on a practical note is a new free pen from Nissan and a radical styled, lightweight free pen from Citroen.
Conventional free pens are also well represented in the list, including an American-designed free pen from Ford, a crisply styled free pen from Volkswagen and an extremely high quality free pen from Mercedes.
Also on the list is an unusual free pen from Renault which features an ink reservoir at the bottom rather than the top.
A jury of 58 car journalists from around Europe will now spend the next few months voting on which of the pens they have been given for free is their favourite free pen. This can be an arduous and time consuming process as many of the free pens require collecting from the South of France where the jurors may be forced to stay a very nice hotel and drink some extremely expensive wine before being allowed to take delivery of the free pen, only to find that, annoyingly, the free pen has become stuck to a free watch.
