And there are minivans! You might’ve forgotten these compete as cars in our Of The Year awards, not as SUVs (and certainly not as trucks, though full-size, body-on-frame commercial vans do). These don’t appear at COTY often, not least because if the car world has gotten smaller, the minivan world is bordering on molecular; all-new or heavily revised minis are less frequent than presidential elections. Yet this year, we have two—not counting Honda’s lightly revised Odyssey, which doesn’t qualify on account of its carryover powertrain—the Kia Carnival, newly dressed up in SUV-cosplaying sheetmetal with a new hybrid option, and the all-electric, hotly anticipated Volkswagen ID Buzz.

In short, even among this small number of vehicles, there was a lot of diversity in power (gas, electric, and hybrids), size (from the new Fiat 500 to the Carnival and ID Buzz), base price ($27,345 to $120,495), and shape (every body style save for a convertible). There are even several entrants without direct competitors at this year’s OTY or otherwise. Will the 500e and ID Buzz please pull up?

2025 MotorTrend Car of the Year: Behind the Shrinking Scenes

Fewer cars mean fewer Car of the Year contenders, yet the competition was not worse for being whittled.Alexander StoklosaWriter

MotorTrend StaffPhotographerNov 20, 2024

In case you live under a rock or have just awoken from a lengthy coma, cars aren’t really a thing anymore. They’re not shiny and new, like Moo Deng, the seemingly always wet, internet-genic pygmy hippo challenging Taylor Swift for global attention from a Thai zoo. Nor are they totally dead and gone. Much like page-two Google search results, sedans, hatchbacks, and other not-SUVs-or-trucks are still there, out of the limelight but available to discerning sleuths.

It therefore should come as no surprise that MotorTrend’s 2025 Car of the Year field is among the smallest ever, with few new vehicles qualifying by way of a new powertrain, a total redesign or substantive changes, or both, and a handful that do qualify were nonetheless unavailable during our testing. Dodge’s new all-electric Challenger Daytona? Not ready yet. Porsche’s newest 911 Carrera? Waiting for a ship to cross the Atlantic. Volkswagen’s ID7 electric sedan? Delayed.

As our staff descends on Hyundai’s California Proving Ground near Mojave, just 21 cars wearing 14 nameplates are there to greet us. While this tiny number likely has our co-workers who slogged through this year’s three-times-bigger SUV of the Year program fuming, the challenge isn’t lighter here. If anything, this tight 2025 COTY field is packed with some serious players, and choosing a winner from among them would prove difficult.

More Of The Year:

• 2025 COTY Contenders | Finalists
• 2025 SUVOTY Contenders | Finalists | Winner
• 2024 COTY Contenders | Finalists | Winner

There’s a new Toyota Camry, for starters, which moves the midsize game forward with an all-hybrid lineup and new duds. Honda’s Civic family looks the same but enters 2025 with all-new powertrains, including a powerful hybrid; this same Civic generation earned a finalist nod when all-new in 2022—and it’s a strong entrant now. BMW sent along a pair of its new i5s, essentially the first-ever electric 5 Series sedans.

And there are minivans! You might’ve forgotten these compete as cars in our Of The Year awards, not as SUVs (and certainly not as trucks, though full-size, body-on-frame commercial vans do). These don’t appear at COTY often, not least because if the car world has gotten smaller, the minivan world is bordering on molecular; all-new or heavily revised minis are less frequent than presidential elections. Yet this year, we have two—not counting Honda’s lightly revised Odyssey, which doesn’t qualify on account of its carryover powertrain—the Kia Carnival, newly dressed up in SUV-cosplaying sheetmetal with a new hybrid option, and the all-electric, hotly anticipated Volkswagen ID Buzz.

In short, even among this small number of vehicles, there was a lot of diversity in power (gas, electric, and hybrids), size (from the new Fiat 500 to the Carnival and ID Buzz), base price ($27,345 to $120,495), and shape (every body style save for a convertible). There are even several entrants without direct competitors at this year’s OTY or otherwise. Will the 500e and ID Buzz please pull up?

There would be surprises, and we’d need to lean hard into our Of The Year criteria—performance of intended function, advancement in design, engineering excellence, value, efficiency, and safety—to keep this thing on track. But nothing could prepare us for what we found in one of the Camry’s trunks: an entire spare, color-matching set of rear seat backrests (no cushions, oddly). We have no idea why Toyota sent us a car with extra seats, but many judges awarded points for the first Camry with more than five seats since the ’90s.

Another shock? Most of the judges found themselves enjoying the ID Buzz way more than expected. The Camry makes the case that it’s the best midsize sedan you can buy, and even Fiat’s 500e got some love. A few judges even think it’s unusually strong against the criteria—after all, its performance of intended function is off the charts. It’s a small, lightweight city EV with decent range for its size. We don’t knock Mustangs for having two doors and less versatility than similarly priced midsize sedans, do we?

Culling cars to reach our finalists is challenging, but the field that emerges is golden, if not entirely without controversy. Judges are split over the affordable, king-size compact Kia K4’s styling—love it or hate it, most agree it’s eye-catching. Some can look past the non-hybrid Civic’s merely acceptable powertrain and cabin loudness; others think it’s damning enough to drag the excellent new Civic Hybrid down with it. A similar split emerges over the ID Buzz’s missed packaging opportunities and high floor, which makes getting in and out a unique experience, or whether those represent worthy novelties that set it apart. People are starting to root for the flamboyant minivan, clouding the criteria considerations.

As our road loops with the finalists conclude, it feels like this year’s award is any car’s to win. While we’d readily recommend any of our finalists, the one that rises to the top in 2025 is no stranger to total excellence, both against our criteria and in the generally accepted meaning of the term. As they say, it’s the best or nothing.