Buying a New Car, Part 1: The List

By Scott Araujo

It's funny that SCC posted this story not long ago. This is exactly the question I faced a few months back after more repairs to my little 1997 Honda Civic CX in the rain than I cared for. A bit reluctantly, I decided it was finally time to replace it, but with what? The Honda would be a tough act to follow. I've had it for seventeen years since it was brand new. It's been dead reliable and very easy to take care of.  Ironically, I didn't make it to the Portland Auto Show last year, the one year I'm actually looking to buy a car. There was terrible snow and we were hunkered down at home. The auto show is such a great tool since you can see every car you're interested in all right next to each other without any sales people hassling you. Oh well, to business and the creation of the list.

Well my loss is your gain.  I don't need or want a lot of bells and whistles, I want a very base model car. Usually the cars SCC gets for review, though small, are pretty loaded. It's not surprising, car companies want to put their best foot forward so put loaded high end models in the fleet for review. I don't like fancy and I'm cheap. I don't want a $15,000 car with $8,000 of options added. I'm looking for an inexpensive and basic car. So, in documenting my search for a car, I hope to give you something you don't always see here: a bunch of mini reviews (all the info we can glean in a dealer test drive or two) of the lowest end cars that manufacturers have to offer.



I had a pretty minimal set of requirements for my new car:

• Four doors with room in the back seat for actual adults to sit comfortably.
• Adequate power, brakes, and handling.
• Manual transmission.
• Keyless entry.
• Hatchback?

With those requirements in mind I moved to step one: the creation of The List. Basically, I want a reliable car that I can easily fit my family into that will last a good long time and won't be something I'll hate driving every day. I mostly just drive to work and home, and not even that in the summer because why would I miss the chance to ride my motorcycle? Less expensive is better. I've got enough bills to pay every month and don't need to add to the strain. I put hatchback as a possibility.  Though I'm a huge hatchback fan, I didn't want to rule out a great car just because it was a sedan. My first draft of The List in no particular order looked like this:

• Kia Soul
• Mazda2 hatch
• Mazda3 hatch
• Mazda3 sedan
• Chevy Spark
• Toyota Yaris SE
• Subaru Impreza hatch
• Subaru Impreza sedan
• Toyota Corolla
• Nissan Versa Note
• Kia Forte
• Dodge Dart SE
• Honda Fit

It's a longer list than I'd like. If I had made it to the auto show it probably would have been half as long. It's easy to rule out some cars after seeing them in the flesh for just five minutes. Bad ergonomics, obvious cheap and/or low quality construction, and a host of other things can knock a car right off the list. As I had not seen any of them this year I felt I needed to at least take a look at them all.

I showed the list to my wife and we had a brief chat, going over the good and the bad of each contender. "So the Mazda 3 is the best handling car, why don't you just get that?" If only it were so simple. There are so many things to consider: price, ergonomics, availability, driving impressions, will it really fit four people comfortably? It's not so easy, especially for overly analytical types like me.

I showed the list to Andy and he told me what I should have already known about myself: nix all the sedans. While I hadn't had a chance to see them at the show and I was interested in what they were like, especially the all new Corolla, I'm just not a sedan guy. After seventeen years of singing the praises of the versatile hatchback there's no way I was ready for a car with a trunk. He was right. The sedans came off the list and "hatchback" was no longer optional.

• Scion xB
• Kia Soul
• Mazda2 hatch
• Mazda3 hatch
• S-Mazda3 sedan
• Chevy Spark
• Toyota Yaris SE
• Subaru Impreza hatch 
• S-Subaru Impreza sedan
• S-Toyota Corolla- 
• Nissan Versa Note
• S-Kia Forte- 
• S-Dodge Dart SE
• Honda Fit

My top pick was the Yaris SE.  It's actually an SE, and by that I mean Sport Edition. Unlike other Sport Editions that are simply wheels and air dams, the Yaris SE has different suspension and a different steering ratio than the standard model, and even at full MSRP it's a bargain. The only hitch: you can't get it in the Pacific Northwest with a stick. For some reason Toyota doesn't sell some configurations in some regions. I had thought about flying down to my in-laws near San Francisco, picking one up, and driving it home on 101, but there's a catch. One of the lucky things about living in Oregon is no sales tax. Adding Cali sales tax to the price of a Yaris makes it less of a bargain.  While there are some Washington dealers who are willing and equipped to sell to Oregon without collecting the sales tax, it's not that way in Cali. If you drive the car off the lot and on to a public road you have to pay California "use tax" as they call it, no exceptions. You can skip the tax if you arrange to have a shipper pick it up and guarantee delivery outside state lines but that still costs money and is a hassle.  With the headache it would cause, the Yaris was off the list.

Next to go was the Versa Note. I saw one while I was out at lunch one day and took a really good look. I really liked the last generation for being unapologetically ugly, boxy, and utilitarian. Then it went all Hollywood with sleek lines from a design team that actually cared what it looked like. So now it was kind of a knock-off copy of the Honda Fit for a slightly lower price. The Honda Fit certainly isn't my first pick on the list and without the Honda reputation behind it I really wasn't interested the copy.

• Scion xB
• Kia Soul
• Mazda 2 hatch
• Mazda 3 hatch
• Chevy Spark 
• S-Toyota Yaris SE
• Subaru Impreza hatch
• S-Versa Note
• Honda Fit

So, with just a little work The List was pared down to a more manageable length. It was time to set out and go for some test drives.

• xB
• Kia Soul
• Mazda2 hatch
• Mazda3 hatch
• Chevy Spark
• Subaru Impreza hatch
• Honda Fit

Stay tuned...