How good are these cars?
Driving every vehicle on the road requires discipline, but rating cars requires driving every vehicle on the road.
The editorial team at Kelley Blue Book spends a lot more time behind the wheel than it does behind a computer. Our Expert Ratings come from hours of both driving and number crunching to make sure that you choose the best car for you. We comprehensively experience and analyze every new SUV, car, truck, or minivan for sale in the U.S. and compare it to its competitors. When all that dust settles, we have our ratings.
We require new ratings every time an all-new vehicle or a new generation of an existing vehicle comes out. Additionally, we reassess those ratings when a new-generation vehicle receives a mid-cycle refresh — basically, sprucing up a car in the middle of its product cycle (typically, around the 2-3 years mark) with a minor facelift, often with updates to features and technology.
How We Do It
Rather than pulling random numbers out of the air or off some meaningless checklist, KBB’s editors rank a vehicle to where it belongs in its class. Before any car earns its KBB rating, it must prove itself to be better (or worse) than the other cars it’s competing against as it tries to get you to spend your money buying or leasing.
Our editors drive and live with a given vehicle. We ask all the right questions about the interior, the exterior, the engine and powertrain, the ride and handling, the features, the comfort, and of course, about the price. Does it serve the purpose for which it was built? (Whether that purpose is commuting efficiently to and from work in the city, keeping your family safe, making you feel like you’ve made it to the top — or that you’re on your way — or making you feel like you’ve finally found just the right partner for your lifestyle.)
We take each vehicle we test through the mundane — parking, lane-changing, backing up, cargo space and loading — as well as the essential — acceleration, braking, handling, interior quiet and comfort, build quality, materials quality, reliability.
And Finally, Money
Naturally, every vehicle we rank and rate passes through the most important filter of all: Value.
In life, the cheapest choice is seldom the smartest one, and that’s as true for car buying as it is for finding a doctor or a place to live. In each of these cases, however, the best that we can afford is usually the smartest path. And that path changes according to each person’s individual needs.
Fortunately, car shoppers at every price level have more good choices than ever. That’s why value plays such an influential role in our ratings. True value is so much more than price alone. The editorial staff pores over short-term expenses like fuel economy and day-to-day dependability, and longer-term considerations, including resale value and 5-year cost-to-own standings calculated by KBB.com’s in-house numbers crunchers.
Why We Rank Before We Rate
Here’s the extra step that puts our vehicle ratings at the top: Before we rate any vehicle, we rank it exclusively against its direct competitors — the same SUVs, cars, trucks, and minivans that you would be comparing on your shopping list.
You see, most rating systems start as number-dependent. Raters try a red wine, a restaurant, or a car and then give a numerical “personal-preference” value to a list of features (taste, ambiance, ride quality). Such subjective valuations offer no context, and heaven help the product being judged by a rater who’s having a bad day.
A much more honest and fair methodology lies in ranking a product among its peers rather than assembling a clipboard full of numbers and hoping it ends up making sense.
Several years ago, the clearest example and proof of ranking before rating came to me on a comparison test of compact cars. When we tallied the numbers after two days of driving, a sporty small sedan we’ll call “Car A” had very subjective rating numbers from our drivers. When we went around the breakfast table with the question, “Which car would you recommend to your best friend?” However, everyone chose Car B, another superb small sedan with legendary reliability, flawless engineering, and resale value.
Short-term allure is a very different animal from long-term satisfaction. That’s why Kelley Blue Book’s editorial team ranks vehicles against their peers — by vote — before we rate them.
Ranking cars in a better-than/worse-than method is more real-world than doing it merely by the numbers. Quite simply, instead of putting a given day’s numbers against numbers (which can easily change a digit or two from one day to the next), you’re putting real vehicles against real vehicles, which have much less margin for changes in preference.
For the record, the automotive segments that Kelley Blue Book ranks vehicles into pretty much reflect our Best Buys and New Car Buyer’s Guide categories to ensure that each car gets ranked among its competitors.
From Rankings to Ratings
Once we get a 360-degree sense of where a vehicle belongs in the automotive universe, and we slot it into its rightful place on the ladder of cars it’s competing against. Then — and only then — do we feel confident assigning it a numerical rating.
That’s when our ratings team gets to work. Our editors bring together our testing and voting results and focus on the margins between the new vehicle being rated and the competitors directly above and below it on the ladder.
This allows the new vehicle to find a natural place among its peers and a solid rating number that reflects its status in the face of its direct rivals.
Kelley Blue Book’s 5-point Expert Rating scale — from 0.0 (worst) to 5.0 (best), with each digit broken into tenths — represents a system of measurement that we are all very used to using in our everyday lives.
Here’s how to interpret KBB’s ratings:
- 0-1.0: This is the rarest group of all because a really bad new car is really, really hard to find these days. We recommend that you pass on any vehicle receiving a rating between 0 and 1.
- 2.0: Cars landing in this set are also rare. Only true love and limitless passion (or a free vehicle) should allow you to give in to temptation for one of these vehicles.
- 3.0: Is the vehicle you’re looking at in this range? We’d bet that if you look a little harder, you’ll find a better vehicle at a similar price to fulfill your needs.
- 4.0: This is the area where the rubber meets the recommendations. The 3-4 range is full of good cars and some great ones. Starting here, it’s OK to listen to your heart.
- 5.0: These scores represent the cream of the crop, with “5.0” representing, well, near perfection. Any car you choose in this group will treat you very well over time.
