new cars

Early Favorites: Which 2017 Will You Test Drive?

Last updated: Mar 21, 2017 at 6:00PM
Published on: Mar 17, 2017 by Steve Halloran

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 >>>

Are We Always Passively Shopping for Cars?

Jul 8, 2016 by tgriffith

Whether you’re aware of it or not, you’re always shopping for a new car.

You can be casually scrolling through Facebook, thinking only of cat videos and the most recent “Game of Thrones” episode, when a post from a car dealer goes by featuring a shiny new Ford Explorer. You might wonder, even for a moment, if the new rig would make for a good replacement for your aging Honda Pilot.

Or maybe that first glimmer of desire for a different car appears when a friend posts photos of his or her new GMC Acadia.

Whatever the source of inspiration, you might start wondering if you should consider buying a car. At the very least, you’ll start thinking about the type of car you’ll want when the time comes to make a purchase.

Perhaps you’ll click on the dealer’s link out of curiosity, or even (innocently) begin a search inspired by your friend’s new car.

Even though you didn’t think you were in the market, a different car suddenly becomes a very real possibility. This is called “passive shopping,” and a new study suggests that social media has created an environment in which we’re doing it all the time.

Staying Power: 2015s with Shelf Life

Mar 12, 2016 by John Harrington

To most people, spring means longer days, sunny skies, and flowers in bloom. For us, however, spring also means great deals on outgoing model-year vehicles. While some cars, like the Honda Civic and Mitsubishi Outlander, received enormous changes between the 2015 and 2016 model years, others enjoyed more modest enhancements or were complete holdovers from the year before. It’s these cars — the unchanged models — that we want to find.

The Perfect Car for a Picky Driver

Last updated: Dec 9, 2019 at 3:59PM
Published on: Nov 10, 2014 by tgriffith

The requirements weren’t easy to meet:

Fuel efficient
Fun to drive
Easy to zip through traffic
Not a 2-door, but not a lot of extra room for too many passengers
Not a sports car
Not a Honda, Toyota, Hyundai or Kia
Must be new and available for lease
Relatively inexpensive
Not an electric car
Reliable

A dear friend is moving from Washington to Los Angeles and needs a car better suited for SoCal than her current Hyundai Santa Fe. Things can get pretty snowy and cold up here in Washington, so all-wheel drive was a requirement, but front-wheel or rear-wheel drive will be preferred down south.

I set my mind loose to think up suggestions, but had a tougher time than I expected.

Bigger and Better: Combining Cargo Capacity and Fuel Economy

Last updated: Nov 25, 2019 at 5:00PM
Published on: May 14, 2014 by Steve Halloran

Every driver has a different set of expectations and needs for his or her primary vehicle. What meets my needs might not work for you at all, and your ideal car might be the last one I’d ever consider buying for myself. No wonder arguments about cars often get out of hand.

CarGurus user reviews provide a good idea of whether and how well a particular car met the needs of one driver, and based on car reviews received from our users over the course of the last year, it looks like most drivers are pleased with their cars. Our user reviews invite submitters to score a car from 1 to 5 points in a number of different categories, and with more than 10,000 reviews received from April 2013 through April 2014, three categories received average scores of 4.5—Reliability, Style and Overall—and Front Seat, Handling, Power and Price each earned averages of more than 4.

The two categories that received the lowest average scores were Cargo Space at 3.9 and Fuel Economy at 3.7. These qualities generally have had to be traded off in vehicles, since increasing size reduces fuel economy with all other things being equal. But cars get better with every passing year, and these days it’s possible to find vehicles with plenty of room as well as reasonable gas mileage. So here’s a look at our top 10 2014 vehicles for cargo capacity and mileage across a number of segments.

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