2025 carandbike Awards: Skoda Kylaq, Bajaj Freedom Take Top Honours

The 2025 Car of the Year has been awarded to the Skoda Kylaq and the 2025 car&bike Motorcycle of the Year is the Bajaj Freedom. Since its inception in 2006, the car&bike Awards have grown to clearly stand out amongst the clutter of automotive awards in India, by being the most scientifically judged and fair. Two separate juries of eminent, experienced, and multi-skilled jurors evaluated and judged the two product categories: cars and bikes.

The 2025 car&bike Awards and Jury Round was spearheaded by car&bike Editor-in-Chief Girish Karkera. The car jury also included International Racing Driver Parth Ghorpade, Auto Expert Bhuvan Chowdhary, car&bike Senior Editor Shams Raza Naqvi and car&bike Assistant Editors Seshan Vijayraghavan and Bilal Firfiray.

Car of the Year – Jan Buras, Executive Director of Sales, Marketing & Digital, Skoda Auto Volkswagon India Pvt. Ltd.

The two-wheeler jury was led by car&bike Senior Editor Preetam Bora, and included Two-Wheeler Expert & Content Creator Sagar Sheldekar, Former Auto Journalist and Head of Business, BigRock Dirt Park, Ashok George, Motorcycle Expert Pushkar Patil, Auto Expert Ogden Fernandes, car&bike Assistant Editor Janak Sorap, along with actor and auto enthusiast Satyadeep Mishra.

“Last year was a significantly challenging one for the automotive industry. But the juggernaut didn’t slow down as the Indian auto industry continued to churn out numbers on the sales chart. With more new models launched we even had a bigger challenge to pick the best ones. But thanks to our experienced jury and our audit partners we were able to ensure the deserving get their due. Not necessarily populist but definitely credible,” said Girish Karkera, Editor-in-Chief, car&bike.

To pick the best designs amongst the scores of nominations, a third exclusive jury for design included Director and Dean of Strate School of Design, Thomas Dal, Co-founder of Studio34 Designart, Aashish B. Chaudhary and Owner of C Design, Punit Chaphekar.

Viewers Choice Bike – Kunal Joshi, Corporate Communications, Hero MotoCorp (Left) Rahul Madan, Brand Manager – Xtreme, Hero MotoCorp (Centre)

The winners were selected among nearly 60 nominations which were put through stringent assessments by the two juries at the Madras International Circuit, Chennai. After a thorough and elaborate assessment, followed by voting, the winners were chosen, with the votes and data being validated by Divergent Insights, the validation partners.

The awards ceremony was held at JW Marriott, Aerocity, New Delhi, amidst a gathering of some of the most illustrious leaders of the Indian Automobile industry. Winners of the top honours, including Car of the Year, Motorcycle of the Year and Scooter of the Year, among others, were felicitated during the awards ceremony.

The car&bike Awards also have the distinction of having India’s most voted for Viewers’ Choice categories. The car&bike Viewers’ Choice Car, Motorcycle of the Year are sought-after trophies at each year’s event. The 2025 car&bike Awards Viewers’ Choice Car of the Year is the Mahindra Thar Roxx, car&bike Viewers’ Choice Motorcycle of the Year is the Hero Xtreme 125R. At the Special Citations category, the 2025 car&bike Manufacturer of the Year is Tata Motors and the 2025 car&bike Engine of the Year goes to the Nissan X-Trail.

Full List of Winners