The Skoda Elroq is a great all-round EV and a worthy Car of the Year winner
Editor Paul Barker thinks the winners of our 2025 New Car Awards highlight the strength in depth across the car industry
Our annual celebration of the best new cars is one of our favourite times of the year. Once the ridiculous amount of hard work has been completed, the issue is off to press and everything uploaded to our website, that is…!
Every year we seem to say the competition is hotter than ever, but that’s only because it’s true. In the final reckoning, there were five cars that could easily have claimed the ultimate accolade of 2025 Auto Express Car of the Year.
Whatever you need your vehicle to do, we’ve exhaustively tested every model out there to put together a three-car shortlist for each category – so if you don’t agree with our winner, there are a couple of other excellent options.
Our winners are – in the opinion of our test team, which has decades of experience behind it – the best in their class. But we know that in any given sector of the market, buyers have very different requirements around brand, pricing and appeal of different models. So you won’t always agree with our king of the castle.
But every one of the cars across our New Car Awards extravaganza is bloomin’ brilliant. From city cars to supercars, we love them all, and the conversations about the winners were always enthusiastic and animated, no matter what sort of model we were discussing.
Some categories have been retained by our 2024 winners, but the car world moves fast and we have a lot of new models that have come straight in at the top of the class. As if to highlight the strength in depth across the car industry, we have no fewer than 17 different brands with their name on a winner’s trophy, and 25 different marques were commended across the categories.
There are very few dominant brands; a couple collected four or five awards each, but there are particular high points in most manufacturers’ model ranges, and we’ve picked them out, along with our choice of the sweet spot in the line-up for each of the winning cars. So enjoy our walk-through of the very best in the business, culminating in the Skoda Elroq winning our 2025 Auto Express Car of the Year. We think it’s a very worthy winner, highly recommendable and an all-round great new arrival. Because that’s the point of the Auto Express New Car Awards.
Configure your perfect Skoda Elroq through our Find A Car service now. Alternatively, check out the best deals out there on a new Skoda Elroq from stock or top prices on used Skoda Elroq models...
Great leasing deals on our award winners
Skoda Elroq
Tesla Model 3
Fiat Grande Panda
Skoda Octavia
MG Motor UK MG3
Mazda Mx-5
Volvo Ex30
