Comparison points vital when shopping for vehicle
For best buys, check a combination of sources, Lorraine Sommerfeld writes.
Best in class. Highest fuel economy. No. 1 safety pick. Car of the year, Canada’s bestselling truck, highest resale value.
Confused yet? Accolades are handed out in the auto industry like candy canes at a Santa Claus parade.
If you’re making a buying decision from the ground up, those claims and awards can get confusing. I know people who only trust Consumer Reports, and others who won’t even consider it. Same goes for nearly every judging entity in North America. While banners and wreaths might make you feel a little more certain you’re getting a top buy, it’s important to find out what an award is based on, and if those factors are pertinent to you.
If a vehicle review is harsh but fair, most manufacturers can ride it out. Maybe not happily, but I’ve also seen those same manufacturers respond to fair criticism with an improved product.
How can you trust that the opinion you’re reading isn’t biased? Information gathering is hardly new, but it’s never been more exhaustive. Some entities, like Consumer Reports, purchase the cars they test, and pull together input from government agencies, the auto industry, and owner feedback.
At the other end of the spectrum, Top Gear also buys its own cars, which is why it can push them off cliffs or declare them pieces of crap, if it feels like it. It’s not worried about having access cut off.
If you’re smart, you’ll use a combination of sources. Certainly knowing that a vehicle you’re considering is the top seller in the country three years running is good information to have. But it’s also important to know how long people kept that car — high tradein rates can be a sign of people moving on from a vehicle. Top Seller awards are informative, but they’re not the whole story.
Canadian Black Book awards Best Retained Value. This is a significant consideration for anyone who might resell their car at some point. Vincentric, an American site, posts awards for the Canadian market, and they heavily weight the cost of ownership of a particular vehicle. As they point out, buying cheap only to have to pay costly maintenance isn’t much of a deal.
J.D. Power will post how many problems per 100 vehicles were reported; the fewer the problems, the higher the ranking. Seems straightforward, but dig to see what the reported problems were. Someone being unable to adequately work their nav system is not the same as a transmission needing to be replaced.
Determine an award’s comparison point. Is it against all other vehicles in the segment? NACOTY (North American Car of the Year) and AJAC Car of the Year (Automotive Journalists Association of Canada) present their winners only from vehicles that are new or substantially changed. Unless that Honda CR-V or Toyota Corolla has been vastly reworked, it won’t be that it didn’t win its category, it’s that it was never in it. That’s important to know.
Talk to friends and neighbours about their experiences, not just with their vehicles, but with their dealerships. Scan Transport Canada for recall information. Sometimes patterns emerge when manufacturers let their quality slide.
Online forums can be worth wading through (throw out the most gleeful comments and the most bitter) for owners’ experiences. If the new technology in your car candidate is winning awards in the tech industry as well as the car one, that’s a good sign.
Strong sales, few reported problems, happy existing owners, industry awards and the thumbsup from people who drive hundreds of cars a year — use every resource you can find, but also find out how they arrive at their conclusions.