Choosing Australia's best cars traditionally falls to the country's leading car website carsales.com.au. This year, as well as handing out awards in individual categories, the panel of experts voted for an overall winner as Australia's Car of the Year for the first time. The first winner of this award was the Mercedes-Benz C-Class, which was also voted as the best luxury car costing under AU$100,000. The Mercedes-Benz CLS won the award in the category above AU$100,000.

The award organisers gave several reasons for their decision: "Based on a critical evaluation, the C-Class delivers top performance overall in terms of operating costs and value retention. For less than AU$70,000 it offers levels of quality, comfort and safety more commonly only seen in AU$200,000-plus European saloons."