So I just read today that auto analysts see signs of rebound in auto sales.  Great news!  So with that said, maybe you are considering a new car.  Here’s one for you.  The new Mercedez-Benz C300 may be considered less of a car than it’s sibling the Mercedez-Benz E-Class, but according to Larry Printz of The Virginian-Pilot that is not the case at all.  Consider the Mercedez-Benz C300 “the same vehicle but more concisely rendered.”  The nice thing about the C300 is the price. I mean in the big picture it is still a really expensive vehicle, but it is nicely priced for a Mercedez-Benz.  There are two models to choose from in the C Class. You have the sporty model or the luxury sedan model.  All models come with a rear-wheel or all-wheel drive.  You also have a choice of a six-speed manual or seven-speed automatic transmission.  This is a fast vehicle.  The gas mileage is good as well at 22.5 miles per gallon overall.

You have so many choices on what to get. There is the base C300 that has a 228-horsepower 3-liter V6 or a C350 that has a 268-horsepower 3.5-liter V6.  Too many choices for me already!  These choices are before the options and extra packages too!  Yikes!  There is a “Multimedia Package” and a “Premium 1 Package” which costs $2300 that includes a garage door opener, heated front seats, satellite radio, auto-dimming mirrors, rain-sensing wipers, 10-way power driver’s seat with three-position memory and a power adjustable steering column.  You get a lot for $2300.  So, if you want to buy a really nice car, check out the Mercedez-Benz C300. Oops, I forgot to give you the price…..just a minor detail.  The base price is $33,600, but let’s be realistic it’s probably more like $43,000 after you get the model you want and the options.

Ford has been given the honors of receiving the Detroit Free Press 2010 Car and Truck of the Year.  The Ford Fusion and Ford Transit Connect are the lucky winners of the 2010 Car and Truck of the Year awards.  Great news for Ford.

The Car of the Year - Ford Fusion - this is a front or all-wheel drive midsize sedan with a base price of $19,620.

The 2 runner ups of this award was the Chevrolet Camaro and the Buick Lacrosse.

The Truck of the Year -   Ford Transit Connect - front-wheel drive compact van with a base price of $20,780.  It has a 136 horsepower 2.0-liter engine.  It will get 22 mpg in the city and 25 on the highway.

The 3 runner ups (2nd place was a tie) of the Truck of the Year were the Chevrolet Equinox, Lincoln MKT, Cadillac SRX.

Maybe I’m a loser (I am!) but I am really excited about these new vehicles. I think that Big 3 in Detroit are coming back!  I think Ford is the leader of the pack for sure and do to all of their awards are clearly making a better name for themselves these days.

www.carblogs.org

Happy New Year! Can you believe another decade gone?  What will this decade bring us in terms of vehicles?  Should be a lot of interesting vehicles and fuel efficient for sure.

Do you own an Aston Martin vehicle?  If you do, you are a special person and lucky as well.  Well there is a new car out there that is much more affordable. The average Joe could almost own it. It’s called the Aston Martin Cygnet.  It only costs about $35,000. The rumor is that some of the Aston Martin loyalists are not too happy about the price tag. Normally, Aston Martin vehicles have a price tag around $120,000.  The Cygnet is based on the Toyota iQ.  There will only be about 2000 minicars available for sale and oh did I forget to mention that this vehicle is only available to full-sized Astons owners.  Sorry most of us saps cannot be part of an Aston Martin any time soon!

    

I wasn’t very surprised by the results of the most/least expensive cars to insure that Forbesautos.com had on their website.  Before you read below, take some guesses. See if you can come up with any of the most expensive cars to insure. I would come up with a few.  See if you can do better.

Least to Most 

1.  Porsche 911 - $1819 - I thought this would be more expensive to insure.

2.  Lexus ISF - $1881

3.  Hummer H2 - $1912

4.   BMW M5 - $2020

5.  Audi S8 - $2071

6.  Mercedes-Benz G Class - $2088

7.  Ford Shelby GT500 - $2186

8.  BMW M6 - $2236 - Just be ready to pay big bucks to insure if you buy a BMW I guess!

9.  Dodge Viper - $2446 - I guessed this one!

And the most expensive car to insure is……………………………….

10. Nissan GT-R - $2533

As I’m sure none of you are surprised by the fact that these cars are extremely expensive to buy as well as insure. But I guess if you have the money to buy these sports cars for the most part, then you don’t care about paying more to insure them.  Happy driving!

 

 

 

 

An article on Yahoo! autos.com gives advice on what not to say when you buy a car IF you want to get a good deal.  It’s kindof like when you buy a new house. You need to have a poker face. Anything less is not acceptable. The owners/dealers will know that they can get you to eat out of their hands. Not good.  The article went to the big dogs in car consulting (AAA, Kelley Blue Book, and NADA Guides) for some advice as to what not to say.

Keep your mouth shut as much as possible. Do not go into the dealership and tell them what you can afford to pay. The salesman will then use that as a baseline and then you will probably end up paying more after fees, extended warranties, add-ons, etc.  Supposedly nine out of ten times telling the salesman what you can afford to pay will be an advantage to the dealership and not you. Talk about what cars you are interested in and the overall price of the cars, not the monthly payments that work for you.

Also, do you tell anyone that you have bad credit up front (if you do.)  Eventually if you are serious about getting a car at the dealership, they will run a credit report and see that you have bad credit.  If you tell the salesman up front about your credit problem, they will get the mentality that if they can get your credit, you will then pay what they want you to. If shows that you are vulnerable.  If possible, try to get financing from a bank or credit union before you even go looking for the car then you can tell the dealership that you have outside financing, and they may even try to give you a better deal to get your financing.

If you plan to pay in cash (good for you if you can!), don’t announce that up front either. Then the dealership may try to charge you more since they won’t be making any money on you with a financing plan.

Basically you just need to research the vehicles that you are interested in and know what you can afford.  There are really good deals out there and most salesman just want to sell cars as you just want to buy a car, so you are actually looking for the same end result.  Keep your mouth shut and know what you are talking about and you should be just fine buying a car.

The new 2010 Porsche Panamera S is a 4-door Porsche with a lot to offer.  This is the first four-door sedan ever made by this company in 61 years in the business.  Do you wonder why now?  I kindof do. I guess they needed to follow the trends for their customers’ needs, but Porsche has been well Porsche for 61 years with no help needed to attract their customers.  You have your choice between rear-wheel or all-wheel drive, and you also get 16 cubic feet of trunk space.  This car has a tremendous amount of power. The rear-wheel drive has a 400 horsepower  4.8-liter  V8 engine that can get to 60 miles an hour in 5.2 seconds with a top speed of 175 mph. If you get the all-wheel drive, everything is the same except you should be able to get to 60 miles an hour in 4.8 seconds.  If that’s not fast enough for some of you, you can get the turbo engine which is a twin-turbo that has 500 horsepower and gets to 60 in 4 seconds.

Alright, now that you are excited about the Panamera S and its four doors, let me give you the bad news.  It’s expensive. I mean really expensive.  The base price is $90,750 but with the options and all its going to cost you $108,000, and then if you need the turbo engine that STARTS at $132,000. I don’t know how many of you can afford the Porsche Panamera S, but if you can it sure looks nice!

Reilly Brennan of aolautos.com wrote an article on three cars that will be available to us in the near future that will give us great gas mileage without the hefty price tag of hybrids.  Brennan was actually pretty down on hybrids. He made some good points though.  The lowest priced hybrid you can get is about $20,000 and that’s a base model and the price goes up to $100,000.  You are basically paying for the hybrid engine but when you actually number crunch it will take you a long time to recoup your money for the hybrid technology.  I know that’s not the only reason that people drive hybrids. I get the whole environment aspect, Brennan and myself for that matter are just saying that hybrids are an expensive car and are only about 3% of all new cars.  Anyways, the three non-hybrid cars that Brennan talks about are the talk of the auto industry these days.  I know I’ve talked about them on this blog, but I’ll touch on them again anyways.

2011 Ford Fiesta - supposedly will get 40 mpg when it is with a 1.6-liter 4 cylinder engine.  This car has been winning numerous awards in the rest of the world for sometime now, and the starting price is $13,320.

2011 Chevrolet Cruze - you will get 40 mpg from the “high-efficiency model.” Not sure what the non-high efficiency model gas mileage will be, but you would think not a lot worse.  The price has not been determined but it should be in the mid-teens.  1.4-liter turbocharged 4 cylinder engine. This car will compete with the Toyota Corolla and Honda Civic. 

2010 Fiat 500 - not a lot of information available could be available to some metropolitan areas in late 2010 and might be priced in the low $20,000s though this is speculation at this point.  1.4-liter 4 cylinder engine that will be like the Mini Cooper or Smart Forwo getting 38 mpg. 

So, there you have it. Check out these cheaper cars with great gas mileage. Might be worth it.

 

 

 

 

Each week Yahoo! Autos brings you the top 10 most popular economy vehicles.  I thought I would give you the top 5 and you can check out the entire list on the Yahoo! Autos website if you want to. The rankings are determined by the number of visitors that view each new car.

1.  2010 Chevrolet Camaro

2.  2009 Smart Fortwo

3.  2010 Dodge Challenger

4.  2009 Honda Civic Sedan

5.  2009 MINI Cooper Hardtop

Not my first choices but interesting nonetheless.

 

 

Did anyone miss Centercaps.net’s blogs for the past week????  I missed doing them. I feel out of touch. Just got settled after moving. I thought buying a car was hard, moving is the worst!  Anyways, we are back to blog and perfect timing with the LA Auto Show opening up today.  Before I give you some details about the auto show, I thought I’d give you the top 10 2010 cars according to caranddriver.com.  There were “58 contenders, $2.5 million in total price, 12,000 test miles logged” to get to the top 10.  Here were the criteria to be even considered for the top 10 best 2010 vehicle.  1. The price had to be below $80,000 and 2. All 2009 10 Best Winners were invited back as well as any new or ”significantly altered” 2010 model that will be on sale no later than January 2010. So there you have the simple rules for this honor and here are the top 10 best vehicles for 2010:

1.  2010 Audi A4

2.  2010 BMW 3-Series/M3

3.  2010 Cadillac CTS/CTS-V

4.  2010 Ford Fusion Hybrid

5.  2010 Honda Accord

6.  2010 Honda Fit

7.  2010 Mazda MX-5 Miata

8.  2010 Mazda 3/Mazdaspeed 3

9.  2010 Porsche Boxster/Cayman

10.  2010 Volkswagen GTI

You matter which group comes up with their top 10, many of these vehicles are the same on each list. An easy way to review vehicles. Just find out how many different top 10 lists the car you are interested in is on.  Right?  Not really any surprises. Kindof the same old I guess, but good to know nonetheless.

 

     

Hybrids are good for some and no good for others. There are times when hybrids are the right choice and then other times maybe not.  Reilly Brennan of autos.aol.com gave 5 reasons when a hybrid makes sense, so here they are.

1.  When gas is expensive - that’s not rocket science. Hybrids are great financially, so when the gas is high as it was last summer, hybrids were the best option for sure.

2.  If you drive a gas guzzler - a hybrid definitely makes sense for someone who owns a truck or SUV.  You may be able to double your gas mileage if you get rid of it and buy a hybrid. If you own a sedan, you may improve your gas mileage, but probably not by too much, definitely not double it.

3.  If you are a city driver, you benefit alot more with a hybrid. Hybrids aren’t great on the highway, many times getting the same gas mileage, so if that’s your driving habits, a hybrid isn’t for you.

4.  If you are environmentally active, then you really don’t care as much about the fuel economy and just that a hybrid is good for the environment, so a hybrid is always a good idea for you.

5.  There are tax credits out there if you buy a new hybrid, so that could help make your decision if a hybrid is right for you as well.

Hybrids are probably right for a lot of people, but just make sure you pay attention to the details before investing in a hybrid.