Cars and Consumer Reports

When I first started seriously thinking about what kind of car I wanted I became enamored of the Volkswagen Rabbit.  I loved the idea of the tiny little hatchback that I'd be able to park pretty much anywhere.  I expressed my interest to my father and he immediately handed me his authority on used cars.  Cue my first significant encounter with Consumer Reports.

Consumer Reports is an American magazine and "the world's largest independent consumer-product testing organization". Every month, CR comes out with an issue full of reviews of consumer products including, but not at all limited to, cars, electronics, appliances, kitchen gadgets--even things like health insurance.

They buy all of the products they review, they don't accept paid advertising or free test samples, and are a nonprofit organization.

So when my dad handed me that year's used car dedicated issue of CR, I was more than willing to trust their results.  I was a little sad to find that the Rabbit ranked so poorly overall as a reliable car, but the same section turned me on to the existence of the Honda Fit, the Nissan Versa and the Toyota Echo (what is now the Yaris).  Those cars, all equally tiny and available as hatchbacks, all scored significantly better across the board with Consumer Reports and became the new objects of my automobile affection.

The ultimate moral of the story is that even though a particular make, model, and year of car may be what you want technically speaking, it's a really good idea to look into the car's long term reliability.  Consumer Reports is a great resource for doing just that.

This is a little bit of what I've been putting together for the potential book on dealing with adulthood that I mentioned in a previous entry.  One sizable section (or one of a series in this vein; I haven't decided yet) will be about cars, buying vs. leasing, new vs used, etc.