Prius Tops Consumer Reports List of Best New-Car Values ...

Consumer Reports released on Thursday its annual list of Best and Worst New-Car Values.

The magazine finds the Toyota Prius to be the best overall value for the automotive dollar. Specifically, it?s the Prius Four trim level at $26,750. If you buy a lower trim level, the magazine suggests, it will be an even better value. Go higher and you?ve lost the advantage.

The Prius just squeaked by the Honda Fit ($16,915 base), which has been the best new-car value winner for the last four years. To show how close they were, the Prius had a score of 2.21 and the Fit?s score was 2.15.

The reason the Prius came out on top this year, even though the Fit costs less and has a lower estimated cost of ownership, is that the predicted-reliability rating of the Prius is slightly higher than the Fit?s.

To come up with the value analysis, Consumer Reports considers the five-year cost of ownership for each vehicle and works in its road-test scores and its predicted reliability. Then it calculates a value score for 200 different vehicles.

The average value score is 1.0, which means that the Prius and the Fit are both twice as good a value as average.

Generally the best values are cars that perform well in Consumer Reports road tests, have good reliability ratings and are low cost to operate.

Small cars tend to have the highest value, on average. The value of large cars, luxury cars and S.U.V.s is about 25 percent below the average vehicle. And the value of family sedans is 50 percent above the average vehicle?s, according to this analysis.

Toyota models and models from the company?s Lexus luxury division were the best values in 6 of the 10 Consumer Reports categories, and three of those were hybrids (the Prius, Prius V and Camry).

However, last week the Prius V and Camry were the only two out of 18 midsize family cars to get the lowest rating of Poor in a new, more severe front crash test conducted by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

The insurance institute said that the rating from the Prius V could not be applied to the Prius because of the difference in their size, but the Camry?s rating can be applied to the Camry Hybrid.

These are some of the Consumer Reports best and worst values in the most popular categories:

Best Value Small Hatchbacks: Toyota Prius Four
Worst Value Small Hatchbacks: Ford Focus SE

Best Value Family Sedan: Toyota Camry Hybrid XLE
Worst Value Family Sedan: Chrysler 200 Limited (V6)

Best Value Large/Luxury S.U.V.: Lexus RX 350
Worst Value Large/Luxury S.U.V.: Nissan Armada Platinum

Best Value Minivan/Wagon: Toyota Prius V Three
Worst Value Minivan/Wagon: Chrysler Town & Country Touring-L

Best Value Small S.U.V.: Honda CR-V EX
Worst Value Small S.U.V.: Mini Cooper Countryman S

More information is available to Consumer Reports subscribers online at www.ConsumerReports.org or in the February issue of Consumer Reports Magazine, which is available now on newsstands.

Source: http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/27/prius-tops-consumer-reports-list-of-best-new-car-values/

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