Real Cars - Brief Article

Kiplinger's Personal Finance Magazine, Dec, 2000 by Ed Henry, Josephine Rossi

SEDANS | The spotlight may shine on other models, but these are still the MOST POPULAR wheels around.

IT'S COME to this: At the dawn of the new millennium, sedans have become the Rodney Dangerfields of vehicles. "The trouble is," says Dan Gorrell, "the only place for the conventional sedan is as a second car or one-person vehicle."

Gorrell, vice-president of the automotive marketing firm Strategic Visions, may be overstating the case. Despite massive inroads by trucks--a category that officially includes SUVs and minivans, as well as pickups--and station wagons, sedans still command a smidgen above 50% of the market. But it's true that the real innovations (and promotions) are going into noncar cars. Still, 2001 brings plenty of changes to keep drawing drivers to the showrooms.

For example, the Honda Civic, Hyundai Elantra, Nissan Sentra and Toyota

Corolla have all been redesigned. Each takes another step away from its small-car brothers and toward its roomier midsize kin. Prices have barely budged.

Chrysler's redesigned Sebring ($19,833) also offers considerably more space, as well as 20% more horsepower with a new 2.7-liter, aluminum V6. The new design includes the familiar Chrysler egg-crate grille, and the convertible version ($ 23,150), the best-selling domestic ragtop, now comes with a power roof.

Ford and GM have made only minor changes to their basic sedans. The Ford Taurus, for example, now comes with improved child-seat latches, and GM's big Saturn offers optional side-impact air bags and center shoulder belts in the rear seat.

Kia introduces its biggest, most luxurious offering yet: the Optima, a midsize sedan designed to fight for a share of the market now dominated by the Nissan Maxima and Toyota Camry. With a target price of $15,522 (about $1,000 less than a Camry equipped with a four-cylinder engine), the new Kia delivers 149 horsepower from an in-line-four--about 10% more than the Camry. But with just 170 hp, the Optima's V6 falls well short of Maxima's powerful, 222-hp V6.

The price of luxury

AS YOU MOVE up the price ladder, you'll find more interesting new models. Lexus's new IS 300 takes direct aim at the BMW 3-series. At $27,564, compared with the BMW 325i's $26,146, the IS 300 is equipped with an in-line six-cylinder engine that delivers 215 hp, which compares favorably with the BMW's 184.

Although it comes from Japan, we found the Lexus thoroughly steeped in the European car culture--it's fast and solid. The quirky lollipop shifter was actually fun to use, particularly in the auto-stick mode.

In contrast, Oldsmobile's new Aurora ($32,739) is a big ride in the American sense, built on a Cadillac DeVille platform, with cushy, eight-way-adjustable front seats standard. Oldsmobile has equipped the car with a powerful 4.0-liter V8.

If you are looking for a fun car to back up your family's primary SUV or minivan, a few two-seaters should be on your list. The Audi TT Quattro roadster ($36,646), the new all-wheel-drive version of the quirky-looking convertible, made it straight from the drawing boards into our hearts. Its 1.8-liter turbocharged engine pumps out 225 hp. The TT is quick and tight around curves, and the interior is a home run--complete with the baseball-glove stitching on the leather seats.

For a few bucks more (okay, about $10,000), you can pilot what might be the best roadster on the highway: Porsche's Boxster S ($46,737). It's the latest synonym for precision handling and delivers instant power in any of its six forward gears.

If money is no object, the Porsche 911 Carrera Turbo ($101,158) is back after missing 2000 for a redesign. It delivers even more raw power than the Boxster S, a mind-numbing 415 hp (compared with the Boxster's 250) that rockets the Carrera from zero to 60 in less than four seconds.

RELATED ARTICLE: VALUE AND PERFORMANCE

We bet you have an aunt or a taste in automobiles leaves you wondering, "What were they thinking?" You wouldn't be caught dead driving such a machine. So how in the world can we tell you what the best car is in one category or another? By relying heavily on objective measures, that's how.

Almost two-thirds of the points in our exclusive scoring system are awarded for performance and value. In each price category, we rank the cars on criteria such as resale value, fuel-efficiency, power, front and rear legroom, headroom, and cargo space. Because station wagons, minivans and SUVs-the "people movers" we feature in the lead story--are prized for their hauling capacity, we judge them a bit differently (for example, by scoring wheelbase rather than legroom). For pickups, we award points based on payload, bed area and wheelbase to measure stability and cargo capacity.

Because vehicles other than cars don't have their own price categories, we score price for these vehicles too: The higher the price, the fewer points

awarded.

We award about one-fifth of the points for safety based on two measures: safety features, such as anti-lock brakes and traction control, and a vehicle's safety record, as measured by injury-claims data maintained by the Highway Loss Data Institute (HLDI).