- Maruti Dzire was the first runner-up
- Indian Car of the Year (2024) was the Hyundai Exter
The Mahindra Thar Roxx has been declared as the Indian Car of the Year (2025). It beat out the Maruti Suzuki Swift and Maruti Suzuki Swift to take top honours. Mahindra’s SUV fought a pretty intense battle to grab the top step of the podium in a year filled with multiple car launches the likes of which included Tata Curvv, Tata Punch EV, BYD eMAX7, Citroen Basalt and of course the Maruti Swift and Dzire.
Launched on August 15 2024, the Mahindra Thar Roxx is five-door version of the Thar SUV. It can be had with both petrol and diesel power both of which get a RWD configuration as standard but only the latter gets 4WD. It has a significantly updated feature list the likes of which include 360-degree camera, level-2 ADAS, wireless phone mirroring, sunroof and LED light package.
The Thar Roxx has been a runaway success for the Indian automaker with it getting over 1.76 lakh bookings within just an hour of prices being announced. It currently has a waiting period of well over a year with significantly higher demand for the diesel range.
The Jury
For the 2025 award year, the ICOTY jury comprised Vikrant Singh and Sagar Bhanushali from Carwale.com, Dhruv Behl and Ishan Raghava from autoX, Yogendra Pratap and Dipayan Dutta from Auto Today, Aspi Bhathena and Joshua Varghese from Car India, Sirish Chandran and Aatish Mishra from Evo India, Pablo Chaterji and Kartik Ware from Motoring World, Rohit Paradkar and Kranti Sambhav from Overdrive, Arpit Mahendra from TOI Auto, Ashish Masih Times Drive, Ameya Dandekar from Cardekho.com, Abhay Verma from Turbocharged, Cyrus Dhabhar from Powerdrift, and Kushan Mitra from The Print.
