carsales Car of the Year 2017: Behind the award

carsales Car of the Year is Australia’s number one automotive award program and presents its winners to the largest automotive audience in the country.

The awards combine expert evaluation, data and consumer sentiment to recognise Australia’s best new vehicles across 13 categories, and also our overall carsales Car of the Year.

The comprehensive process starts by shortlisting, driving and then rating the hundreds of new vehicles available in the Australian marketplace, based on key lifestyle and segment criteria.

From here just five in each category are selected as ‘Recommended’ choices for consumers.

The next step sees our experts from motoring.com.au overlay industry standard setting data (from Redbook.com.au and the wider carsales network) to determine category winners that define excellence, innovation, class-leading safety, performance and value for money.

Finally, a small selection of ‘finalists’ — for the first time this year including two editors’ choice wildcards — are subjected to four days of back-to-back testing to enable the overall carsales Car of the Year to be selected.

>> Get the full rundown of the 2017 carsales Car Of The Year winners

The categories
The carsales Car of the Year awards categories are based on commonly searched vehicle lifestyle segments and align with search options on the carsales.com.au website.

Whichever lifestyle category new cars match, to qualify, they must be available for sale to the general public via recognised OEM (manufacturer or approved importer) channels before September 1, 2017.

Vehicles that go on sale after this date will qualify for consideration in our 2018 awards.

Eligibility for price-defined categories (eg: Best SUV Under $50K) is based on recommended retail price of the base model under consideration. All expert evaluation, ownership costs and affordability calculations are based on the price, packaging and equipment of the respective top-selling variants.

Raising the bar
For the first time, this year mass-market segment cars were required to include a reversing camera as standard in all variants. Further bonus points were awarded for advanced safety technologies including lane-keeping assistance, blind-spot warning and autonomous emergency braking.

Real numbers
The carsales Car of the Year awards remain unique in the Australian marketplace as they combine critical evaluation with a matrix of ownership costs and data-based factors. Key considerations include cost to run, retained value, consumer engagement and affordability assessments.

Redbook calculates cost to run and retained value based on an ownership period of three years and total mileage of 60,000km.

>> Get the full rundown of the 2017 carsales Car Of The Year winners