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Early Favorites: Which 2017 Will You Test Drive?


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2017 Jeep Wrangler Unlmited

Winter Storm Stella, microwave cameras, and St. Patrick dominated the news this week, but we’re more interested in the 2017 model year and which new cars shoppers want to see themselves driving. We’ve published 37 Test Drive Reviews of 2017 vehicles so far, and we’re going to take a look at those vehicles that have garnered the most inquiries from CarGurus shoppers. We haven’t spent enough time with a bunch of big sellers to review them yet, so we suspect our end-of-year list will look different, but we want to see which 2017s have already started generating interest. If you were buying a new car this year, do you know which 2017 you’d want to test drive first? Continue reading >>>

The Best Luxury Cars Without the Luxury Badge


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When someone buys a luxury car, he or she is not just buying heated rear seats, autonomous driving capability, and an overly complicated infotainment system. The buyer is investing in a little thing called prestige.

Prestige is what you get when you buy a high-end Mercedes-Benz, Audi, Lexus, Jaguar, or the like. Prestige is the thing that makes people look at your car and think, “I wonder what that guy does…”

When non-luxury automakers attempt to build a luxury car, they can fill it with all of the luxury features and goodies they want, but it will never have the prestige of the luxury brands.

If you want all of the luxury that modern vehicles have to offer but could pass on the prestige, check out these cars.  Continue reading >>>

What’s the Best Car Brand in America?

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2017 Audi Q7

Which car brand would you say is the best on the market today?

The answer to that question will be as varied as car buyers themselves. Some people judge brand based on style, while others make it all about reliability. The customer experience will surely rank high on anybody’s list of best car brands, while a reputation for high performance or stellar fuel economy may be a priority for others.

To name a “best” brand is certainly a subjective effort. Anyone can apply a custom set of qualifiers and name their favorite brand as the best on the market.

Consumer Reports tackled the project by naming the brands that exhibit high-level performance across their lines. According to that standard, CR says Audi is the best brand available. Continue reading >>>

Dependable Drives: Ten 2014s Worth a Look

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2014 Ford F-150
As anyone who’s shopped for a used car knows, cars retain value inconsistently. In this era of Big Data, armies of statisticians are gathering and analyzing all sorts of car numbers by maker, body style, price, location, model, and so on to see what we can learn. J.D. Power recently published its 2017 Vehicle Dependability Study, which rates both makers and models, and it shows that Lexus and Porsche had the fewest reported problems per 2014-model-year vehicle, followed by Toyota, Buick, Mercedes-Benz, Hyundai, and BMW.

Each year J.D. Power polls owners of 3-year-old cars to determine the number of problems they experienced during the previous 12 months, then ranks each maker and model by the number of problems experienced per 100 vehicles. Last year we built a list of Reliable Rides featuring 10 cars that performed well in studies based on model years 2010 through 2013, and this year we’re going to take a look at some new winners and returning champs as well as some cars that have made important changes since 2014. Continue reading >>>

Lexus Tops Dependability List While Jaguar Rises and Acura Falls

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If you were to buy a car based on its reliability reputation alone, what would you get?

Would you take home a Honda or Acura because of their legendary commitment to being problem-free? Would you purchase a Toyota because you know they routinely go 300,000 miles or more?

Would you avoid Jaguar and Land Rover at all costs because of their reputation for spending more time in the shop than on the road?

J.D. Power’s annual U.S. Vehicle Dependability Study, released yesterday, reinforces some of those preconceived notions while turning others on their head. Continue reading >>>