This is the 2025 SA Car of the Year...
The 2025 edition of the South African Car of the Year competition saw 17 finalists compete.
The locally built BMW X3 has been crowned the 2025 SA Car of the Year.
SA's popular Suzuki Swift took second place, and the BMW M5 hybrid took third.
Seventeen vehicles were in the running for the 2025 South African Car of the Year title for this year's competition.
The BMW X3 has been crowned as the 2025 South African Car of the Year by the country's most respected motoring journalists.
All new vehicles launched during a specific period in 2024 are eligible for the SA COTY competition, but facelifted models do not count. The seventeen finalists were voted on by the South African Guild of Mobility Journalists jury after being narrowed down from a semi-finalists list. The final 17 were then put through testing over two days by the jury earlier in March this year and were individually scored on a 32-question score sheet.
It's important to note that finalists are not scored against each other but rather in each of their respective categories and against direct rivals based on the closest vehicle specifications and prices in their segments.
Most COTY titles
The win marks a successive victory for the German manufacturer, with the G70 generation 7 Series winning the 2024 title. BMW now holds the record for being the manufacturer with the most SA Car of the Year titles, with honours dating back to 1988 when the 735i won the competition. This is the first time the X3 nameplate has been awarded the title.
While the competition is not to find the most relevant or budget-friendly vehicle for the South African market, it's about finding motoring excellence, and the X3 showcases the local industry's capabilities and outstanding manufacturing standards.
The German sport-utility vehicle edged ahead in the score sheets, excelling in its high refinement levels, innovative design, high level of digitisation, and relative value for money.
Suzuki came in a highly respectable second-place ranking for the B-segment Swift. Completing the podium was the G90 BMW M5.
6 Categories
In addition to the Top 3 overall winners, SA Car of the Year incorporates six main categories: Budget, Family, Premium, Executive, Adventure Utility and Performance.
The BMW X3, Suzuki Swift and BMW M5 are the top finishers in their respective categories: Premium, Budget and Performance.
In the Family category, the Volkswagen Tiguan received the highest overall score.
BMW took another win in the Executive class with the G60 5 Series, and Toyota secured a victory in the Adventure Utility segment with its latest-generation Land Cruiser Prado.
Mabuyane Mabuza, chairperson of the SAGMJ, congratulated all the winners and entrants, noting the strong representation of South Africa's diverse market. 'Each year brings better technology, improved quality, and a stronger focus on safety – showing manufacturers' commitment to safer roads.'
The Mahindra XUV 3XO won the 2025 Old Mutual Insure Car of the Year Motor Enthusiast 'People's Choice' Award. Voted for by the public, this compact SUV ticked all the right boxes with its bold looks, feature-packed interior, great fuel efficiency, and unbeatable value for money.
Jerry Anthonyrajah, chief commercial officer at Old Mutual Insure, said the category, introduced four years ago, highlighted the growing role of public engagement in COTY competition. 'From dual 10.25-inch screens and advanced safety tech to a panoramic sunroof and smooth drive, it brings big-car energy without the big price tag.
'It's the kind of car that gets people talking and driving. As a brand that is customer-centric and develops products to better service our customers, Old Mutual Insure is thrilled to yet again play a part in celebrating vehicles that resonate with everyday South Africans,' said Anthonyrajah.
Mabuza further explained that the COTY expert panel evaluates each finalist on design, technology, engineering, performance, handling, ingenuity, and safety.
Lightstone Auto contributes essential market intelligence and data-driven insights, including value-for-money assessments relative to market rivals and each finalist's category sales performance. An independent audit firm formally verified the 2025 competition results to ensure fairness and transparency.
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It's like the hyperfast electronics bestow 'virtual agility.' Of course, the M4's actual agility clearly allowed it to scoot out of tighter corners more quickly, as we waited for our taller SUV to settle back down to allow even distribution of full power to all four wheels. Alas, there's no electronic escape from physics). Revolutionary Braking Three levels of regeneration can be selected via the screen, but true one-pedal driving is accessed via shifting to B mode, and with the 1ms latency, BMW claims 99 percent of customer braking can be handled via regen. With the 'Heart of Joy' superbrain able to directly micromanage the braking at each wheel under all circumstances, engineers have programmed them to deliver a limousine stop (no head bobbing) every time. They gently release just as the car comes to a complete stop, whether you're braking manually or via one-pedal driving. We tried our best limo stop in neutral (no regen) and didn't come close. A sharply twisting steep descent demonstrated that the computer can't be flummoxed by widely varying wheel speeds. The Neue Klasse's greatly expanded reliance on regenerative braking is largely responsible for its claimed 25-percent improvement in overall efficiency. At least for entry-level iX3 models, the suspension is completely passive, but the geometry, dampers, and elastokinematic bits are all new, and everything's tuned to attenuate or eliminate vibration or oscillation. Strategic reinforcement and the structural battery box provide an extremely rigid body and chassis. Body motions are well controlled, allowing natural levels of roll, pitch and dive. The ride/handling compromise impressed us on rural French roads, but the acid test will be neglected American pavement. Sport mode steering is meant to feel less anodyne, with effort at the rim tied to the lateral grip information calculated by the 'heart of joy.' Try as we may, we failed to notice evidence of changing road grip, meaning it's still no match for the E39 5-Series' hydraulic system in delivering fingertip joy. Exact specifications for the asynchronous induction front and brushed synchronous rear motors have yet to be released, but the round-number estimates are 300kW/600Nm, or 402 hp/442 lb-ft combined. A new silicon-carbide inverter generates 40 percent less heat/energy loss than the previous silicon ones. 4 Driving Modes The vehicle always starts up in Personal mode, which can indeed be personalized for everything but the powertrain mode (which impacts efficiency ratings). Sport alters steering, driving responsiveness, sound, and screen graphics. Efficient dulls throttle responsiveness to maximize thrift (boosting the computer's indicated range by 25 percent). Silent quells all artificial noise and presents 'calm' screens displaying minimal content. Driver Assist Systems That Don't Annoy The Neue Klasse iX3 gets both a capacitive-touch sensing steering wheel (which means no 'hands on the wheel!' scoldings when they're already on it). The driver monitoring camera located in the inside rearview mirror determines what the driver is looking at, so the lane-departure warning/lane keep assist won't squawk or try to maintain your lane if it notices you just checked the mirror and then steered over the line. Watching an erratic driver coming up from behind you? The system allows the driver to stare at a mirror much longer than it does at a phone, the infotainment screen, or a landmark on the horizon. Hands-Free Driving Innovations When the hands-free cruise control suggests a lane change, the driver need only glance at the appropriate mirror to approve it (and the system can be set to allow passing left-lane bandits on the right—equally abhorrent in Germany). A driver can also either signal to initiate a lane change or simply check the mirror and nudge the wheel in that direction and it will automatically signal and change. You can even use the brake pedal (lightly) without canceling cruise control—perfect if a lane is ending and you need to decelerate to fit a gap in traffic. This is called 'cooperative braking.' Tap the brake, brake harder, or press the on/off button on the steering wheel to cancel (resume by pressing it again). Steering manually will also pause or cancel the hands-free mode. The system even allows drivers to briefly rest their eyes when inching along or stopped in traffic, without displaying those aggravating coffee-break warnings. It won't drive off until the driver's eyes open (or look up from the phone), but there's no need to click 'accept' or goose the accelerator. There's even an intelligent reversing mode that remembers the last 650 feet of forward maneuvering well enough to precisely reverse back through them. The superbrain controlling these 40 ADAS functions works 20 times faster than its predecessor and is the only one that requires active cooling. Automated Parking You Might Actually Use These systems usually take longer to set up and finish parking than any good driver would, but at low speeds, the Neue Klasse's ADAS superbrain continuously maps potential parking spots. So when you're ready to park, your left thumb just presses the P steering-wheel button, the screen shows the spot it's aiming for, if you agree you thumb the OK button on the same steering-wheel stalk and the car hustles into that spot quicker than a cautious driver might. The screen allows you to choose a different space or switch between head-in or back-in, but it can be as quick as two button presses. When you return to the car, it asks 'Park Out?' Touch OK and the car pulls out. Panoramic iDrive We love Lincoln's 48-inch screen, and we love BMW's 43-incher. They function similarly—driver info on the left, selectable widgets on the right (six shorter, wider ones here), but BMW projects its image onto the windshield, making it appear like it's farther out, just under the rear edge of the hood. The 4K-resolution image remains bright (1,000:1 contrast) and visible for all occupants—even those wearing polarized glasses (thanks to a BMW-patented screen coating). One note: We wish the G-circle widget 'remembered' several minutes of driving, so a driver could review it after stopping. The 3D head-up display also gives an augmented reality three-curve preview that's quite helpful (sadly the HUD is largely invisible with polarized glasses). The three-screen setup (HUD, panoramic display, and central info display) seemed intuitive to use during our brief time at the wheel, and the angled graphics and coloring convey BMW's sporty mission. 'Shy tech,' wherein only buttons pertinent for use at the time have their functions illuminated, keeps the cabin looking clean, though some buttons' illumination struggled to be seen in direct sunlight. Operating System X on Android The superbrain controlling all infotainment functions uses BMW's latest tenth-gen OS, which runs Android open-source software to accelerate time-to-market with third-party apps. Android Auto and Apple CarPlay screen mirroring remains available, with the former enjoying no noticeable 'home-court' advantages. There's an onboard personal assistant (with 'BMW' as its wake word, but hopefully this is reprogrammable) that is personified with a face and eyes that look at whomever is speaking, and reportedly evinces personality at times, strumming a guitar, for example, when asked to crank up music volume. The Bottom Line? Our prototype drives on and around the Miramas proving ground in the super-fast-thinking 2026 BMW iX3 have whet our appetite for more. We'll be eager to quantify the Heart of Joy's performance benefits, and we'll be eager to find out if we're still able to sense the millisecond-latency improvements when they're applied to inherently laggier combustion or hybrid powertrains. It also remains to be seen whether all the ADAS innovations are deemed fully legal or marketable in the Litigious States of America. We'll all learn more about the pricing and specifications when BMW officially pulls the wraps off the iX3 at the IAA Munich show this September, in advance of its second-quarter 2026 launch.
