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IntelliChoice Value Rating
The chart above shows the purchase price versus ownership cost for each car from a specific vehicle class. The cars with better than average ownership cost/purchase price correlations are the best values, and these best value cars are represented by the dots below the curve. (i.e. the cars that have a lower ownership cost compared to its purchase price.) Those cars, which are worse than average or poor values, appear above the curve.
One way to view the graph is to draw a vertical line through any purchase price. You may see several dots that fall on this line - each of which is a car with a similar purchase price. However, notice the difference in ownership costs of each car represented by the vertical position of the dot. Two cars with the same purchase price can have thousands of dollars difference in ownership costs. This is what separates "good value" cars from "poor value" cars.
What is a good car value?
A "good car value" is one whose cost to own and operate is less than expected. The lower the cost to own and operate a car compared to what is expected, the better the value of that car.
But how do we know a car's "expected cost"?
For each car in the class, IntelliChoice plots the car's purchase price against the total five-year cost to own and operate it as determined by IntelliChoice research. Each dot on the above chart represents a specific car. Generally, we find that as the purchase price of the car increases, the cost to own and operate that car increases. This is why the dots on the graph tend to rise upward and to the right. This phenomenon also makes intuitive sense - as the purchase price rises, financing costs tend to rise, as do insurance, depreciation, taxes, and most other car ownership costs.
This is an important concept. It's normal for car ownership costs to rise as purchase price rises. Therefore, we can't just establish one "average" ownership cost number for each class, since cars in the class have different purchase prices. (This is why the "Relative" shown on each chart is different for cars in the same car class.)
Using statistical techniques, IntelliChoice "connects the dots" to form a curve that defines, for this car class, the relationship between the car's purchase price and car's ownership costs. This curve is our "expected cost" curve. The curve defines, for any car in the class, the five-year ownership cost that we would expect to see at each possible purchase price. If every car in the class were an average value, then all the dots would fall exactly on the curve. However, it's rare that any dot is exactly on the curve. Some dots are a little higher or lower, and some are a lot higher or lower. The dots that are a little lower are better than average car values, while the dots that are a lot lower are excellent car values (A dot that is a lot lower than the curve has ownership costs much lower than expected for a car of its purchase price). Conversely, a dot a little higher than the curve is a poorer than average car value, while a dot that is much higher than the curve is a poor car value.
Value is a relative term, not an absolute term. It is performing better than the logical expectation.
So is a Mercedes-Benz E320 expensive to own and operate? Certainly in an absolute sense. Most other cars cost less. But, when its cost to own and operate is plotted against cars with comparable invoice prices, the E320 costs less. So the E320 is not expensive to own and operate - it is a good car value. The Mercedes does not have low ownership costs, but it has low ownership costs for its invoice price.
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Article From Motor Trend Magazine
Road Test: 2005 Ford Five Hundred Limited, 2005 Buick LaCrosse CXS, 2004 Toyota Avalon XLS, 2005 Chrysler 300 TouringMotown Finds Its Mojo: For years, the best American-style midsize sedans have worn labels from Japan. Now, with a trio of stunning new entries, Detroit's Big Three are back and proclaiming "This land is our land." / By Kim Reynolds / Photography by Wesley Allison /
Article provided by: Motor Trend Magazine
Remember the date: Fall 2004 will go down in history as the moment when the Motor City finally cast aside its feeble efforts in the mid-size sedan arena and once again began building big, bold, American four-doors with the moxie and the quality to seriously challenge the segment-leading Japanese brands. Hallelujah.
Gathered here are the latest three from this long-overdue Midwestern-design renaissance: the audacious Chrysler 300, the substantial Ford Five Hundred, and the beguiling Buick LaCrosse. Two of the three contain substantial underpinnings sourced from familiar corporate relations in Europe. Lurking beneath the Ford Five Hundred is a sizeable chunk of the Volvo S80's platform, while the Chrysler 300's skeleton has plenty of previous-generation Mercedes-Benz bones to it. But don't bother with the details, because at their heart is pure American attitude. Are these three new Americans as good as the fanfare suggests? To find out, we've pitted them against that American-style sedan benchmark with the distant country code: the Toyota Avalon. Let the fireworks begin. Driving Toyota's Avalon is like going to Disneyland and seeing Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln. It's not actually Abe up there, but a high-tech facsimile constructed to give you a credible Abe experience. Instead of delivering the Gettysburg Address, however, Toyota's mechanical subterfuge provides a recreation of a decades-earlier American automotive driving experience: the hushed, bank-vault quietness that armor-gauge bodywork once afforded, the liquidy-lope called "boulevard ride," and the room to sprawl lazily and stretch your legs. This second-generation Avalon has impressively managed to emulate these feats atop the previous-generation Camry's aging platform, despite little difference to its wheelbase, track width, or overall length. To achieve the Avalon's generous interior room, Toyota wriggled out of these confines by inflating the car's profile, causing one driver to call its looks a Toon-Town version of the Mercedes-Benz C-Class. Rough, perhaps, but the Avalon does have remarkably slab-sided flanks, as though it were an entrant in a contest to see what you could do to flat sheetmetal and technically still call it styling. ... >>next page
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Chrysler 300
The new Chrysler 300 is big, bold, and brassy. This rear-wheel-drive sedan is also terrific to drive, especially in Hemi-powered
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