Archive for the ‘Choosing a Car’ Category

It’s been six months since I last updated the list of the most popular price comparisons. Why so long? Partly because I’ve been buried in other work for the site. But also because it rarely changes much from one month to the next.

Go six months, though, and you’ll see a few changes.

The top five comparisons are now all between a Honda and a Toyota. Before, one of the five was between the Honda Accord and Nissan Altima–which has fallen all the way to sixth.

Last time, ten of the 40 comparisons included at least one domestic model–two even included two domestic models. But the Buick Enclave, Cadillac CTS, Chevrolet Malibu, Ford Fusion, and Chrysler minivans have all dropped off the list. It seems visitors’ interest in these once-hot domestics has cooled.

The only domestics still on the list: the Pontiac Vibe, in a 7th-ranked comparison with the Toyota Matrix, an dthe Saturn VUE, in a 37th-ranked comparison with the Honda CR-V. And I’m not sure the Vibe counts: it’s engineered and manufactured by Toyota.

New to the list: Subaru, with the Impreza/WRX being compared to the Mazda3 and the Forester being compared to the Toyota RAV4.

Models that appear the most times on the list: the Honda Accord and Mazda3, which are each in six comparisons, followed by the Honda Civic and BMW 3-Series, which are each in five.

When members of TrueDelta’s panel sell an enrolled car and buy a new one, they email me so I can make the change. In recent months, I’ve noted many cases where a large, powerful vehicle was traded for a smaller, more efficient one. And very few cases of the opposite.

It seems that size and power are on the way out, in the face of rising gas prices and a probable economic downturn.

This week leading industry trade journal Automotive News also noted this trend with a front page story, “Downsizing arrives – with a vengeance.” Apparently, Ford executives are calling the current shift in consumer preferences “seismic.”

In other words, it’s not expected to be momentary. The age of the 268-horsepower Toyota Camry may be at an end. Sales of four-cylinder cars are surging, while Chrysler’s HEMI is just so 2006.

The hottest car in TrueDelta’s panel right now? The tiny, three-cylinder Smart ForTwo. The car only recently became available in the United States, yet already nearly 50 are enrolled in the panel. We’ll even have an initial result for the car in May.

The opposite can be seen in the number of Chrysler 300s, Dodge Chargers, and Dodge Magnums enrolled: 75 2005s, 140 2006s (when the Charger and SRT8s arrived), 28 2007s, and only 6 2008s.

Expected to get hurt the most: Detroit auto makers, who over the course of the 1990s and the first few years of this decade relied more and more on large trucks for sales and profits.

I performed some research for my Ph.D. inside GM back in 1996 and 1997. Back then, and probably still today, GM spoke of having a “product portfolio.” I suggested that they manage this portfolio the same as they would a stock portfolio, and diversify. By having a broad range of products and the ability to flexibly shift production among them, they wouldn’t always be one step behind the market. Instead, wherever the market shifted to, they’d already be there.

But this isn’t what they did. And so, once again, they–along with Ford and Chrysler–are a step or two behind.

The theory behind market segmentation assumes that people have a certain set of needs and thus that when looking to buy something like a car can be expected to buy a specific type of product.

Reality isn’t nearly so clean. Although I continue to find market segmentation quite interesting (how might car buyers be grouped?), and believe there’s a role for it to play, the traditional view of car buyers’ needs as clear and unchanging just doesn’t hold up. Instead, people’s needs are often highly fluid, especially as they play out in the selected vehicle.

I learned this a  few years ago when someone asked me if they should buy a Subaru WRX or a VW GTI. He didn’t personally feel any need for a fast car, but he wanted something that his friends would think is cool and noteworthy. He arrived at a better solution without my help: a Toyota Prius. Which did fit his basic needs, demonstrates the unlikely alternatives that can result even starting with the same set of needs.

This month I came across a similar switch. Someone who’d been driving a large 425-horsepower Chrysler SRT8 swapped it for a tiny 70-horsepower Smart ForTwo. It’s hard to imagine two more different cars. Yet at this point I’m no longer surprised by such a switch; major changes from one vehicle to the next happen too often.

Back when I first got into cars, I talked my father into buying a 1983 Pontiac 6000 STE instead of a Saab 900 Turbo. The Saab was neat, and he really wanted it. But Detroit had gotten to me with all its flag waving, and the magazines were talking up the Pontiac as a legitimate alternative to the Audi 5000, then the benchmark semi-affordable midsize sedan. Partly to make me happy, my father bought the Pontiac.

It wasn’t as interesting as the Saab, but he was generally satisfied with it for the three years that he owned it. But he bought a Lincoln Mk VII LSC three years later, then a Lexus LS 400 in 1991, and his primary car has been a Lexus ever since.

In 1985 I bought a Pontiac myself, a 2000 Sunbird Turbo convertible. It was a fun car, but proved unreliable, going through an alternator, exhaust manifold, spark plug wires, and automatic transmission (the only one I’ve had) in the first 28,000 miles. The problems weren’t the problem. How the dealer dealt with them was the problem. At one point I gave them a choice: waive a $70 charge I felt should be covered by warranty, or lose me as a customer for a very long time, if not for life. (Turned out to be a very long time rather than for life.)

From that point on I realized that as much as many Americans were pulling for Detroit, Detroit wasn’t going to return the favor. It’s all business in the end.

My father never felt burned by Detroit on reliability, even though the first few Ford Taurus / Mercury Sable wagons my mother has driven since 1986 had a penchant for transmission and head gasket failures. Instead, he hadn’t bought a domestic car for himself since 1986 because how they looked and drove did nothing for him.

Then I took him to test drive the new 2008 Cadillac CTS. No pressure from me on this one, I just show him what’s available and write up a joint evaluation.

He felt that the new CTS drove well enough, though his standards here aren’t the highest. The main thing he disliked about 1990s Cadillacs was torque steer (they were front-wheel-drive the last time he bought a sedan) and a general feeling of float while acclerating. His main concern with the new CTS is the road noise we heard on some roads during the test drive. He’s never been entirely happy with his current Lexus, a GS 400, because of road noise (especially with the replacement tires).

What really sold him on the Cadillac CTS was the styling, both inside and out. And the fact that where he lives hardly anyone buys a Cadillac car–it’s now the outsider brand, like Saab was back in 1983. So, for the first time in a quarter-century he’s ordered a GM car.

He also asked me about the new 2008 Chevrolet Malibu–an advertising photo for the car really caught his eye. So GM seems to be finally getting the styling thing spot on. Will my father be an isolated success, or might striking exterior styling combined with upgraded interiors and decent dynamics win people back?

Of course, the 2008 Cadillac CTS is a new design, and sometimes new designs have teething problems. It’s too soon for even TrueDelta’s methods to provide any insight here. If GM’s new designs do win many people back, I hope that it handles any problems well enough that these people aren’t lost all over again.

From time to time I receive an email asking which cars are most comfortable for someone who is tall, long-legged, large, or all of the above. Problem is, I’m none of the above–at 5-9 and 175 pounds I’m probably very close to the size person cars are designed around. So this isn’t something I can evaluate well during my test drives. Even so, I’ve long noticed that the official interior dimensions provided by manufacturers are at best a loose indicator of how roomy a car actually is. Why? I don’t know, but that’s the way it is. So the specs are nearly useless for answering such questions.

In the end, the best information will come from people who are tall, long-legged, or large and who have paid attention to comfort while shopping for their own cars. If you fit any of these descriptions, please either leave a comment or contact me (see link at the bottom of the page). Whenever possible, be specific about how a particular car excels (headroom, legroom, cabin width, ease of getting in and out, and so forth). I’ll update this blog entry as information comes in.

I strongly encourage people of all shapes and sizes to evaluate roominess and comfort as much as possible before buying a car. Too many people discover that a car is physically uncomfortable for them after buying it–and this is something that the warranty and lemon laws do not cover. In other words, once such a problem occurs, you’re stuck with it as long as you own the car.

I’d update the list of the 40 most common price comparisons more often, but it simply doesn’t change that much. I just updated it for the first time in 75 days, and it only goes back 90. Despite the minimal amount of overlap between the two periods, and the fact that the new totals include considerable traffic over the last few weeks from The Truth About Cars, the new list is very similar to the new one.

One again, Hondas dominate. There’s at least one Honda or Acura in 23 of the 40 comparisons. I think the proportion has been even higher in the past, but this is pretty high.

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Over at MazdaForums someone recently posted that they might have to sell the $40,000 CX-9 they just purchased because the seat became very uncomfortable for them after a few hours. They ended up getting an upholstery shop to trim back some excess material in the seams and add some padding, which helped some. But the fact remains that a seat that feels comfortable during a brief test drive can feel very uncomfortable after a few hours of driving time?

Why does this happen? How can you keep this from happening to you?

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The Mazda I currently own is only the second new car I’ve ever owned, and the first since 1985. Used cars are generally just much better values. And among used cars, there are some very good ones that most people just don’t consider, so their prices are almost shockingly low for what you get.

Each month, Brendan Moore posts a paragraph or two about each of a few dozen used cars of interest on his blog, Autosavant. He includes typical selling prices. Be sure to check these out. Speaking with Brendan recently, I suggested that a site focused around good buys in used cars could fill a large unmet need. If you agree with me, it might not hurt to leave him some encouraging comments.

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If you look at TrueDelta’s list of the most popular price comparisons, you may notice a few things:

–Hondas dominate, with at least one Honda or Acura in over half of the comparisons

–there’s little interest in the domestics, with two Fords, one Chrysler, and no GM models

I’ve found similar patterns in recruiting people for the panel. Honda owners are easiest to recruit, while GM owners–despite frequent complaining about Consumer Reports–tend to be among the most difficult (with the exception of Saturn). A few more bits of info for the mix: Toyota owners don’t join nearly as readily as Honda owners. VW owners virtually jump at the opportunity, yet Audi and Mercedes-Benz owners may be even more difficult to recruit than GM owners.

How might these observations be explained? I have no hard data, but a few hypotheses.

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Over at GMInsideNews, Ghrankenstein recently posted an editorial on the biases of automotive information sources. He divides these into two camps: those that strive to make the car buying process rational, and those that assume it’s emotional. His point: the former camp overemphasizes criteria that can be reduced to numbers, while the latter overemphasizes the necessarily subjective driving experience.

He places TrueDelta in the former camp, while noting that I’ve written editorials acknowledging the value of each individual’s subjective experience. I found the entire editorial insightful, and couldn’t agree more with this characterization.

That said, I’d like to push a bit further. I post my own reviews at Epinions, but there’s a reason for that site’s name. They’re just my own impressions. I don’t believe any car is simply “the best.” As I’ve written in a second editorial, comparison tests necessarily assume certain criteria and weights, and there’s no “best” set of these.

But this doesn’t mean that the decision of which car to buy must be entirely subjective. Each person must decide what they care about, and how these criteria rank. And for some of these desired criteria it is possible to supply numbers. Some potentially critical numbers haven’t been available. TrueDelta will remedy this.

TrueDelta’s price comparison tool confuses many people. What sense does it make to give each feature a value, when the features aren’t available separately? Well, this tool seeks to determine the price difference that remains after the values of commensurable features have been removed, leaving “core models” that must be subjectively evaluated. (Don’t agree with some of the default values? Well, panel members can substitute their own.)

The real-world fuel economy survey seeks to produce more valid numbers than the EPA.

Finally, there’s reliability. One of my primary criticisms of Consumer Reports is that providing results in the form of vague dot ratings hinders trading off reliability against other criteria. Is one car’s superior driving experience worth the difference between a clear dot and a red one? It’s hard to say, because the dots are relative and encompass broad ranges.

Knowing that the extra emotional appeal of a car was most likely to cost 0.8 extra repair trips over a three-year period would make trade-offs between the two much more feasible. TrueDelta won’t argue you should necessarily buy the more reliable or fuel efficient vehicle. It will only provide an idea of the object of your desire’s tangible costs. Only you can decide whether these costs are worth it.

Overall, TrueDelta aims to provide facts that can be combined with a car buyer’s subjective evaluations of what each potential purchase is like to look at, sit in, and drive. It doesn’t aim to replace this personal evaluation, only better complement it to yield a balanced whole.