Car of the year 2025

The BMW 5 Series is Germany’s Car of the Year 2025

The jury of the German Car Awards has cast its final vote and selected the overall winner from the five class winners: German Car of the Year 2025 is the BMW 5 Series in both body variants and all available drive systems.

This makes the Munich business-class saloon (or estate) the winner among winners. It was the winner in the Premium category (base price over 70,000 euros). Here are the other class winners:

Compact (up to 35,000 euros): Citroen C3 and e-C3
Premium (base price over 70,000 euros): BMW 5 Series/i5
Luxury (over 70,000 euros): Cadillac Lyric
New Energy: Audi Q6 or SQ6 e-tron
Performance: Porsche 911 GTS T-Hybrid

The BMW 5 Series is something of an all-round winner. It is successful as an i5 with electric drive, as well as a plug-in hybrid, a petrol engine and a diesel.

Cadillac Lyriq(Bild: Stephan Schätzl)

Porsche 911 GTS T-Hybrid(Bild: Stephan Schätzl)

In the final vote, it also shone as an all-rounder: it was ahead in five out of twelve evaluation criteria: infotainment (just ahead of the Audi), comfort (clearly ahead), quality (just ahead of the Porsche), safety (just ahead of the Audi) and significance. In terms of drive, it was only narrowly beaten by the Porsche 911. In terms of handling and driving pleasure, it also came second behind the Porsche, but by a wider margin.

The Citroen excelled in three criteria: The price/performance ratio achieved the highest rating of all criteria for all cars (BMW in second place) and environmental friendliness was also rated best (BMW in second place here too). This is probably due to the fact that the C3 is generally a very light car, is available with an electric drive and does not consume much fuel even as a combustion engine. The jury also found the French car to be particularly practical (BMW in second place).

Jochen Goller, Board Member for Customer, Brand and Sales, accepted the award.(Bild: Daniel Kraus)

The Porsche 911 GTS impressed in the classic sports car criteria of drive, driving pleasure and handling, in each case ahead of the BMW. Porsche can also see the drive rating as a pat on the back for the (not uncontroversial) decision to give the iconic 911 a hybrid drive.

The BMW 5 Series thus achieved a clear victory on points. There was only one criterion in which it did not at least come second: in the design category, it was only good enough for fourth place.

The German Car Award was held for the seventh time. The overall winners in previous years were Jaguar I-Pace (2019), Porsche Taycan (2020), Honda e (2021), Hyundai Ioniq 5 (2022), VW ID.Buzz (2023) and VW ID.7 (2024).