carsales.com.au announces new Car of the Year Awards

Australia's number one automotive online destination carsales.com.au and motoring.com.au will next week announce the winners of its carsales.com.au Car of the Year awards.

Updated for 2014 and replacing the popular carsales.com.au People's Choice awards conducted since 2003, the new awards build on the momentum of the motoring.com.au Recommends initiative.

The new awards are unique in the Australian marketplace. They utilise motoring’s 13 category Top 5 recommendations as shortlists and combine critical expert evaluation with data from the automotive network’s Redbook and DataMotive divisions to refine and determine each winner.

Key considerations in the awards are therefore not only excellence but also cost to run, retained value, consumer engagement and affordability.

"The new carsales.com.au Car of the Year award brings an important consumer element to Australian automotive awards. Cost to run, retained value and affordability are all important factors for car buyers," said CEO and Managing Director, Greg Roebuck.

"Added to our motoring.com.au experts’ opinions, this creates a robust and relevant award structure from which we believe Australian new car consumers will benefit," he said.

The winners of the 13 lifestyle categories and overall carsales.com.au Car of the Year, will be announced next Monday (November 17).

To qualify for the 2014 awards, new cars must be available for sale to the general public via recognised OEM (manufacturer or approved importer) channels before September 1, 2014. Vehicles that go on sale after this date qualify for consideration in the 2015 awards.

For the new carsales Car of the Year awards, Redbook calculates cost to run and retained value based on an ownership period of three years and total mileage of 60,000km.

Eligibility for price-defined categories 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.

motoring’s editors then award carsales.com.au Car of the Year to the vehicle determined to be the most deserving of the lifestyle category winners.

"The carsales.com.au automotive network is the strongest in the country and combines editorial and data resources that are second to none," stated motoring.com.au Editor in Chief Mike Sinclair.

"In the revised and updated carsales.com.au Car of the Year awards, we're leveraging those resources," he said.

"The vehicle categories in carsales.com.au Car of the Year and motoring.com.au Recommends align with search functionality across the carsales network and give new-car buyers the opportunity to search for cars that suit their individual needs.

"In announcing the best car in each of these categories we aim to also give consumers a clear and unequivocal list of the very best cars on sale Down Under today," he stated.

The 2014 carsales.com.au Car of the Year and a full list of category winners in the awards will be published at carsales.com.au and motoring.com.au on November 17.

For more details check out the official