Best car to buy 2014 nominees
The summer and fall months this year have been especially busy, as our聽聽editors have had to contend with another record year for聽launches. While other areas of the economy still might have been sputtering, the auto industry has been speeding confidently ahead鈥攔olling out redesigned versions of familiar nameplates, as well as plenty of all-new entries.
Now, among all that is new, it's time to pick the best鈥攚ith The Car Connection's Best Car To Buy 2014.
We've rated and road-tested upwards of 280 new vehicles, assigning scores for styling, performance, utility and comfort, safety, and features鈥攁nd we even include a mileage-minded聽聽take on each vehicle.聽
And the Best Car To Buy showcases the results of those ratings; they aid us in choosing the single new-for-2014 model that car shoppers should at least consider before getting their next new vehicle.
How we whittle the field down to our nominees
We've limited consideration to models that are either brand-new, or those that are significantly updated for the聽.
Then, in order to narrow the field, and home in on the mainstream value and accessible vehicles, we've placed a base-price limit of $50,000鈥攁 move that knocks out a few very strong luxury contenders that we otherwise might find irresistible.
One other important requirement is that the vehicles be made available to our editors for a full road test before December 1, 2013, and be available for purchase by April 30, 2014. We won't be able to test the new 2014 Toyota聽聽by the end of November, for instance, so that knocks it out of contention.
The vehicles that remain on the list are then assembled in order based on their overall numeric score, and the highest-ranked simply wins. Any vehicles with the same score are subject to a tiebreaker, subjective or not.
Among all of these, there can be only one, and we'll announce that鈥攐ur Best Car To Buy鈥攊n less than two weeks, on Tuesday November 12. And keep in mind that on the same day, we'll have separate winners (from separate sets of nominated vehicles) from our luxury and performance destination,聽, and our green-car source,聽.
So without further ado, here are this year's nominees for Best Car To Buy 2014:
