Celebrating 20 years of Australia’s best cars – Welcome to Drive Car of the Year 2025

A lot has changed in the past 20 years, particularly in terms of Australia’s new car market. Back in 2006 the car industry had a bumper year, recording 962,521 new car sales, which was, at the time, the second-best year on record (2005 – 988,269).

There were 47 brands vying for your attention, including fresh offerings from Dodge and Hummer, and while it was the last time we would see a new Daihatsu for sale, you could still buy a Saab, a Proton, or even a Maybach.

The cheapest new car was a $13,490 Holden Barina, the top four brands (Toyota, Holden, Ford and Mazda) accounted for nearly 56 per cent of all sales.

The inaugural Drive Car of the Year program introduced Australia’s car buying public to a comprehensive analysis of the best new cars on sale and included 20 categories spanning popular market segments as well as key industry callouts. The awards then, as they continue to be, were designed to assess the market as a whole and call out the best of the best for a multitude of buyers.

The winner of the Drive Car of the Year 2006 overall award was the second-generation Audi TT, praised by Drive’s judges for bringing balance, performance and sporting manners to a far more affordable segment than its capability would have you believe.

Here are all the 2006 Drive Car of the Year award winners

The awards have evolved over the past two decades with naming conventions (Best 4WD awards became SUV categories in 2009), price bands and even market segments all adjusting to suit changing times.

Things changed slightly a few years ago when the awards included a commercial-vehicle dedicated program in mid 2019, and then switched from an end-of-year announcement in 2019 (for the 2020 year) and a start-of-year announcement in 2021 to manage the challenges of gathering the team of judges during the COVID pandemic.

For some fun facts, between 2006 and 2024, there have been 35 different car brands that have achieved at least one category win with Ford securing the most awards, seeing 36 trophies adorning the bookshelves at the Blue Oval’s HQ. Volkswagen has had at least one win in every award year, and both Ford and Toyota have topped the tables in 2015 and 2021 respectively with five wins a piece in one single year.

For 2025, the Drive judges have assessed cars across 19 key categories, with one of these winners also to be crowned the overall 2025 Drive Car of the Year.

Today, we will announce all of these category winners, and then this evening on A Current Affair at 7:00pm on Channel 9, the overall Drive Car of the Year 2025 will be revealed. If you miss that, we’ll be on Today, tomorrow, at around 8:00am on Channel 9.

So sit back, and stay tuned as we update this article with all the winners throughout the morning.

With over 20 years of experience in digital publishing, James Ward has worked within the automotive landscape since 2007 and brings experience from the publishing, manufacturer and lifestyle side of the industry together to spearhead Drive's multi-media content direction.

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