An elastic finite element code is applied to study the crystallographic variant selection which is associated with the allotropic phase transformation during thermo-mechanical processing of low-carbon steel sheets. A transforming ferrite nucleus is embedded as a single element in an austenite parent matrix of cubic shape and with fixed sides. The Bain strain of the transforming nucleus is regarded as an eigenstrain which provokes an elastic response in the surrounding austenite grains. For each of the three possible Bain variants the elastic strain energy is calculated after the stress equilibrium has been obtained and the one variant is selected which minimizes the energy of the assembly. With an appropriate sampling procedure a statistical representative local environment of the transforming nucleus is constructed from a given arbitrary parent texture consisting of a number of discrete orientations.