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Mark Rechtin
Reference Mark
@markrechtin
Welcome to MotorTrend’s new Buying Guide and Ultimate Car Rankings e will shop for and buy cars again.
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Leases are up. Or maybe a long-held car is costing more to maintain than a new car payment. Certainly, some folks are masking up and braving the threat of COVID to go car shopping because they have to. With the average age of every car on the road being nearly 12 years, folks need new wheels. But many Americans are simply hunkered and bunkered at home, satisfied with their existing car and mildly troubled only by the occasional dead battery. This issue—and more important, MotorTrend’s revamped Buying Guide website—is for both audiences: those who need car-buying information now, and those who have time to kill and are researching what to purchase when this whole mess clears up. It also is an opportunity for MotorTrend to highlight its just-launched Ultimate Car Rankings, which will prove an invaluable tool for car shoppers hoping to whittle down their wish list. Most buying guides tend to list vehicles alphabetized by automaker, vehicles small to large—which doesn’t really help folks get a sense of where these vehicles live in the hierarchy. Instead, MotorTrend is listing vehicles in this issue (and online) by category, ranked in order of excellence. Zach Gale’s column on page 24 gives a more thorough explanation, but in short, using the term “ultimate” is not hype. Our proprietary algorithm sifts through dozens of scoring categories and reams of vehicle data and thus produces our in-segment rankings. It is more comprehensive than that of any existing publication or third-party consultancy. How do we know this? Because the team that created the basis for the ratings and rankings knows how the other, mostly subjective ranking systems fall short. We know our rankings are the best, most accurate, and most reliable. No other automotive entity has the ability or means to perform the scale of year-round testing that MotorTrend does. As MotorTrend enters its eighth decade, with records that go all the way back, our testing team brings more than a collective century of evaluation experience to the equation. If something isn’t right with a car—be it a rattle, a rough shift, a gravelly engine, or cheap materials—our testers can suss it out in a heartbeat. We then add our instrumented testing results, encompassing nearly 5,000 vehicles since 1997, so we can benchmark vehicles within their competitive sets. But testing and evaluating vehicles is only one part of the Ultimate Car Rankings. We consider crash test safety scores and technology as evaluated by the government’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and private-sector Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Active and passive safety technology—its availability but
also its effectiveness—also plays a role in scoring. Because everyone’s pocketbook takes a hit when buying a car, we incorporate statistics from MotorTrend affiliate IntelliChoice, which has developed a formidable database of vehicle depreciation stretching back decades. A bargain car may seem budget-priced, but if it doesn’t retain its value, it could cost more over time than a vehicle priced more at time of purchase. We also compare EPA and EQUA Real MPG fuel economy data to determine if the car is a budget buster at the pump. Finally, because a car purchase is inherently visceral, we factor in exterior and interior design. You want to love your car, and styling has a lot to do with it. And although design is subjective, our team has a pretty good idea of what works and what doesn’t. We also have extensively interviewed former heads of design and engineering from automakers to help balance and define this category. With all these data points to work with, we brought in some brilliant statisticians to create an algorithm that is customizable across every vehicle segment—because let’s face it, minivan buyers and sport sedan buyers have vastly different priorities as far as quarter-mile times and cargo space. The data is specific to its competitive set. What’s more, the algorithm is updateable, based on new vehicles and technologies arriving in dealerships. So go ahead, turn the page, and kick our tires. Know that what you see here is an abridgement of the trove of information you will find at MotorTrend.com/cars. Let us know how we are doing. Q
Our rankings are the best, most accurate, and most reliable.
10 MOTORTREND.COM OCTOBER 2020
We've been doing this a long time. Now we have a rankings and ratings system that compiles all our institutional knowledge into a reader-friendly format. IMAGES: MOTORTREND ARCHIVE