Car ownership is expensive. Take your monthly payments and add insurance, gas and maintenance, and it's a big part of the family budget. Some features available in today's cars, though, can make the ownership experience more expensive than it needs to be. Because it's not always apparent which features might hit your wallet later, we've outlined some common ones with hidden costs — and how you can minimize those costs through smart shopping.
Nissan and Ford led a strong month for the auto industry, with sales up 23.2% at Nissan and 17.9% at Ford thanks to big gains among both carmakers' strongest sellers. Nissan Altima sales gained 35.4% while Ford Escape sales spiked 52% — despite similar year-over-year incentives on both and lower dealership supply for the Escape.
It may seem bizarre that the Altima, then, isn't among the top 10 best-sellers. It's been there for ninth months straight, and in March it was the best-selling car (not truck) in America. But a year ago, sales were dismal — less than 17,000 in April 2012 — so even a healthy spike kept Nissan off April 2013's top 10.
The Toyota Camry and Honda Accord had higher-profile struggles. The Camry's sales drop could signal plateauing demand for Toyota's seventh-generation family sedan, whose year-over-year sales have declined for three straight months. The new Accord, meanwhile, is just 7 months old, and shoppers found significantly lower discounts versus the 2012 Accord a year ago. It's a factor that could affect Accord sales through autumn. Still, Ford didn't seem to have a problem with that. Anyone considering the new Fusion found a similar situation — lower discounts versus year-ago levels — but it didn't stop shoppers from flocking toward the popular sedan, whose sales boomed 23.7%.
Gas prices remain volatile, but even so, no one expects prices below $3 per gallon ever again, and many parts of the country consistently see prices near or above $4. As much as ever, shoppers need to know how effectively hybrids deliver efficiency for your dollar — if they do at all.
To determine if a hybrid's added expense is worth the cash, we devised an efficiency-cost rating to reflect efficiency bang for your overall buck.
It's simply the combined city/highway mpg divided by the base price (MSRP plus destination charge). We then multiply that number by 1,000. This formula can be applied to any type of vehicle, hybrid or not. A high mpg rating and low price provide a high efficiency-cost rating. A higher score is the better score.
We don't account for equipment levels, quality judgments, cost of ownership or any variances from EPA mileage estimates. The goal here is to pay the least for the most mileage, barring all other considerations.
With the top seven automakers reporting numbers — which account for the vast majority of new-car sales — March sales have crept up around 3.2% over year-ago levels. Honda, GM and Ford saw the largest gains, but no major automaker saw a double-digit increase.
The top sellers are a reshuffle from February's list; all 10 are back. The Nissan Altima jumped three spots from February, and despite an 8% sales drop, it's the best-selling sedan by just 100 cars in March. Madness? Not really. Look back at March 2012 and the Altima even beat out the Chevrolet Silverado for a podium finish in monthly sales.
Lower year-over-year incentives played against Nissan's redesigned sedan as surging competitors — the Honda Accord and the Ford Fusion — saw larger gains. Ford says the Fusion had its best sales month in the nameplate's 7 1/2-year history, and this happened with fewer incentives than on last year’s outgoing model. The Escape hit its highest monthly total in its 12-plus-year history. Those two cars — and rising Explorer and F-Series sales — overcame falling Focus, Edge and Mustang sales to drive Ford to a 5.7% year-over-year increase.
Shopping for a new car can be dangerous territory for gadget-obsessed consumers. Given the number of new toys available, the line between wants and needs is easily blurred. Many of these features look great on paper, but their usefulness is limited. These features don’t fully deliver on their promise or are old technology made redundant by capable smartphones and tablets.
Are you the type of car owner who dutifully changes the oil every 3,000 miles or the one who ignores the check engine light because you figure the problem most likely is a malfunctioning check engine light?
If you fall into the latter category, you're not only gambling with the long-term well-being of your vehicle, but you're almost certain to pay far more for major repairs than if you'd simply followed basic maintenance schedules prescribed in your car's owner's manual, according to CarMD.com, a Southern California-based advocacy group. That check engine light could be notifying you of a faulty oxygen sensor, for example, and what might've been a $20 air filter replacement could become a $1,000 catalytic converter replacement; likewise, not changing the oil can result in complete engine failure, as dirty oil ruins today's high-tech engines.
Out of thousands of Kicking Tires posts in 2012, a little novelty news item about the return of Chevrolet's Captiva Sport enjoyed something of a captive audience. The post, about the short-lived Saturn Vue crossover reappearing as the 2012 Chevrolet Captiva, finished the year with nearly 15% more reads than its nearest competitor.
Perhaps it was the sheer oddity of the thing, as the Captiva isn't sold at dealerships, but instead was brought back by General Motors for rental-fleet duty.
Further down the list are our top 10 cars we recommended for surviving the Mayan apocalypse aftermath, which if you're reading this now is, mercifully, irrelevant. Check out the rest of the list below:
1. The Saturn Vue Is Back as the 2012 Chevrolet Captiva Sport
2. Honda Confirms 2013 Civic Updates, Mum on Specifics
3. 2013 Mazda3: What's Changed
4. 2013 Hyundai Elantra Sedan: What's Changed
5. Top 10 Cars for the 2012 Apocalypse
6. 2013 Honda Accord Sedan Shrinks, Gets Plug-in Hybrid Model
7. 2013 Subaru Forester: What's Changed
8. 2013 Honda Odyssey: What's Changed
9. 2013 Honda Pilot: What's Changed
10. Recall Alert: 2005-10 Honda Accord, 2007-10 Honda CR-V, 2005-08 Honda Element
The end of another review- and video-packed year at Cars.com is approaching. Our most popular video of 2012 comes from sister-site PickupTrucks.com and features the Ford Raptor SVT and the Mopar Ram Runner duking it out in the desert. In the video, professional off-road racer Chad Ragland and PickupTrucks.com editor Mark Williams test the trucks' limits on the rugged terrain of Ocotillo Wells, Calif., in a first-time duel to determine which would emerge victorious once the dust settled.
Check out that video above and see what other videos were popular in 2012:
1. Raptor vs. Ram Runner: Head to Head
2. 2013 Ford Fusion
3. 2013 Honda Accord Coupe
4. 2013 SRT Viper First Live Exhaust Note
5. 2013 Hyundai Santa Fe
6. 2013 Nissan Altima
7. 2013 Cadillac ATS
8. 2012 PickupTrucks.com Midsize Shootout
9. 2013 Chevrolet Traverse
10. Mopar Ram Runner: Sights & Sounds
The holidays are here, and we finished covering our first major auto show in Los Angeles. As the new year approaches, the editors at Cars.com are getting excited to drive some of the redesigned cars that we've been writing about for months.
These are the 10 cars we're most looking forward to driving in 2013.
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