07.27.08
The Least Expensive Cars & Leases Sold Here
The “adjustment” in the American economy we’ve heard the president mutter about will have plenty of people adjusting their way from houses into rental properties, from organic frisée to iceberg lettuce, and from mid-priced sedans into whatever box with four wheels and a warranty the dealer will put them in. The cheapest new cars money can buy are no longer only for people failing their drivers’ tests for lack of experience or lack of eyesight.
The good news is that the vehicles at the bottom of the new-car barrel are better, safer, and more reliable than ever. There are even a couple of remarkably good cars on this list, so good we’d drive them even if the balance in our checking accounts didn’t mime a change jar. Chevy gets the party started with the $13,270 Aveo; Mazda serves up the champagne with the Mazda 3 for $16,895.
1. 2008 Chevy Aveo
Base Price: $13,270
When the Heartbeat of America strikes its first beat in Bupyong, South Korea, the result will be un-American, which, unfortunately, has all too often been a plus when it comes to cars. The cheapest car sold in the United States was styled in Italy by Giugiaro’s Italdesign and as such has a shape that looks, dare we enrage the aesthetes, sort of almost sporty.
And that’s where the sportiness ends. You had better equip the Aveo with the manual transmission if you’d like to make it up an on-ramp before the planet’s poles finish melting. However, the Aveo’s manual transmission inspired this description: “By enthusiast standards, perhaps the worst feel of any on the market.” Other laurels sung included “endless stopping distances” and “industrial steering effort.”
Once you’re up to speed, however, and traveling straight ahead, the Aveo is commendably quiet and boasts comfortable seating for four adults, which can’t be said of many more expensive cars, even some with four doors. The Aveo is also available in standard sedan form, but if you want a trunk, it’ll set you back almost another two grand.
The Aveo’s 14-inch wheels are an improvement over the tricycle tires that came on the last generation. As equipped with a manual, it should return something like 8.7 L/100km in combined driving, although the automatic example we tested returned a truly unimpressive 9.8 L/100km.
2. 2008 Hyundai Accent
Base Price: $13,595
Remember the Hyundai Excel? Would you prefer not to? We don’t blame you. This descendant, however, benefits from the same quality turnaround at Hyundai that has traditional quality mavens such as Honda and Toyota sweating a steady trickle of profit margin. That quality is also backed by “America’s Best Warranty” including a 10-year/100,000-mile powertrain warranty.
The Accent three-door is nice despite its low price, successfully emulating the quality of cars a couple classes up the price ladder. There is, however, some trade-off: The Accent’s cushy ride is not accomplished through sophisticated suspension geometry or advanced damper valving; it’s simply sprung a bit softly. (The uplevel Accent SE gets sportier suspension tuning.)
The 1.6-liter engine features continuously variable valve timing and produces 110 horsepower. These ponies are offered without complaint and encourage surprisingly spirited driving. The Accent coupe is a little globular cannonball that doesn’t mind being tossed around. Few three-door hatchbacks are available in this market, and the ever-popular Mini Cooper costs more. You’re certainly not going to extract more grins from any other new car that costs this little.
As an interesting aside, the Accent is also produced in Pakistan and Iran for regional consumption. Perhaps the relationship with rogue nuclear states will spur the production of a fission/electric hybrid powered by spent uranium pellets (those that aren’t suitable for plutonium production, anyway).
3. 2008 Kia Rio
Base Price: $13,595
The Kia Rio shares the same chassis with the Accent but is, per parent company Hyundai’s branding strategies, “sportier.” You’ll also find the same 1.6-liter mill under the hood as that in the Accent, but in the Rio, these four cylinders of fury are put to use by a car all-around better to translate it into cornering speed.
The Rio is one of those rare cases where the automatic gets better fuel mileage than the manual, with a highway figure of 6.7 L/100km. The four-speed automatic does, however, produce a grinding sound at highway speeds, not our soundtrack of choice to accompany five-hour journeys.
A few hundred more will move you into the Rio5, a better car for a number of reasons. For starters, it looks like something you might actually want to drive, will carry more stuff, and has standard 15-inch wheels and lower-profile tires to sharpen up handling.
4. 2008 Toyota Yaris
Base Price: $13,165
You can thank pump prices that leave SUVs to rot in driveways for Toyota’s decision to export the Yaris here, designed for and hugely popular in the European and Japanese markets. Any Toyota you can purchase for $13,000 is worth looking at, even if Toyota quality ain’t what it used to be. Still, an off-year for Toyota is still better than the average annum for the majority of manufacturers in the vehicles-as-appliances segment.
In our testing, the Yaris returned 6.5 L/100km, the best of any car here, while making an entirely commendable 8.9-second run to 100 km/h using all of its 106 horsepower. Although you might have fun lighting up a single 175/65-14 tire at a stoplight, the party ends when you hit your first set of esses. The Yaris takes no dynamic advantage of its low weight and suffers from the body roll and uninspired steering of a vehicle with much greater mass, rather than the tossable heart warmer we know Toyota could build.
It’s never pleasant to watch a car get uglier, and Toyota hasn’t done better by the Yaris than the model it launched in Europe and Japan in 1999, although the fact that it looks like a happy cartoon of its former self won’t bother parents subjected to thousands of hours of Disney’s finest. The Yaris is also available in sedan form, but it exhibits all of Toyota’s worst current styling gaffes in one package. If you need four doors and a trunk, it’s one of the cheapest sedans here at $13,945—only a dinner at Outback more expensive than the Chevy Aveo sedan.
5. 2008 Smart Fortwo
Base Price: $14,990
If time is money, then time spent hunting for a parking space—20 minutes if you live in New York, 45 minutes if you live in San Francisco—will make the Smart Fortwo your best financial asset. Parking spaces that seem impossibly small aren’t. That sliver of macadam between the H2’s hitch and the crosswalk? The Smart will fit.
Smart-aleck “Where’s the other half?” comments do point out the capacitive limitations of the Smart: With eight cubic feet of cargo space, there will be no Costco runs in the Fortwo (although a jaunt through the store for drive-up food sampling would be fun and feasible). As light traffic in many carpool lanes indicates, the Smart would however very well meet most commuters’ needs. For driver and passenger, space abounds: The Fortwo features just slightly less head- and legroom than the gargantuan Mercedes-Benz GL.
A Lilliputian footprint, a subton curb weight, and a tiny engine should promise stellar fuel mileage, but the Smart does not deliver. We got 7.4 L/100km in mixed driving. Unexceptional mileage might be excused if there were spirited performance to be had, but indeed, the Fortwo is the slowest-accelerating passenger car sold here. Europeans and Canadians can buy the won’t-pass-U.S.-emissions diesel Fortwo that returns 3.4 L/100km on the Euro highway cycle. We hope the reliability issues that plagued the first generation’s turbocharged drivetrains were obviated by fitment of the larger, naturally aspirated 70-hp, 1.0-liter engine.
6. 2008 Kia Spectra Sedan
Base Price: $15,995
Much like the Hyundai Accent/Kia Rio twins, the Kia Spectra shares much with the Hyundai Elantra. Like all other Kias and Hyundais, the Spectra sports a 10-year/100,000-mile powertrain warranty, making the Spectra a good bet if you plan on keeping the car that long, which we suggest you do, as the residual value stinks.
The Spectra sedan is not cheap-looking, although it does borrow a bit from the fifth-generation Honda Civic. It looks better in hatchback form as the Spectra5, the first of several reasons to choose the latter if you can pony up the extra $1000. Other reasons include a sport-tuned suspension, a 16-inch wheel-and-tire package, and lots of usable space.
Even if you opt for the cheapest possible Spectra, you are treated to a decent list of options including an adjustable steering wheel, a CD stereo with six speakers, lots of interior room (more than in the Volvo S60 and Audi A4), and most important, the most extensive list of safety features at this price point. Front, side, and curtain airbags; shoulder belts for all five occupants; and front-belt pretensioners and force limiters are standard. Six airbags aren’t standard on some vehicles that cost twice as much.
7. 2008 Nissan Versa
Base Price: $14,598
We’re going to start off by suggesting you select the Versa five-door over the sedan, as it costs just less and gets you oodles more space. Then, however, you’ll wonder why you bought a two-thirds-scale Nissan Quest, that roadgoing sea mammal.
If the Versa’s shape is ugly, it is also functional. No need to remove your top hat before sliding into the front or rear seats, and copious legroom awaits six-footers in the rear, even with six-footers in the front. Fold down the rear seats, and this subcompact will swallow large home-appliance-sized boxes. The interior is sophisticated for the price and comes standard with six airbags; the resulting crashworthiness makes it an Insurance Institute for Highway Safety top pick.
Thanks to Nissan’s somewhat bizarre “Americans don’t want hybrids, they want CVTs” wager, in addition to the four-speed automatic, there is an optional continuously variable transmission that nets better gas mileage than the six-cog manual. Both are bolted to a 1.8-liter engine that makes enough midrange power to make driving the Versa stress-free. This last part sort of sums up the car’s spirit: It’ll take you where you ask it to, without sufficient talent to make the trip memorable.
8.2008 Hyundai Elantra
Base Price: $15,845
Have you driven an Elantra lately? If you’ve rented a car in the past year, chances are you have. Whereas most compact-rental-car choices are punishment for some misdeed in a former life, the Elantra gives you little ammunition for complaint. It’s a decent-looking machine, too, sullied only by silly hips and shoulders apparently borrowed from Toyota’s bad-idea Camry Solara coupe.
High door sills hide a functional, high-quality, and comfortable interior for both front and rear passengers. Much of the comfiness comes from ample room; the Elantra boasts the most interior volume in the class, so much so that the EPA classifies it as a mid-size car. The reminder that you’re driving something inexpensive is a face full of thrashiness from its 2.0-liter engine when you give the throttle a solid goosing.
The Elantra carries on in the Hyundai tradition of offering more for less, with six airbags, four-wheel disc brakes, and ABS standard. The in-showrooms-shortly 2009 Elantra Touring, a five-door hatchback, will feature standard electronic stability control and active front headrests. More so than the sedan, it’s a looker and will feature handling commensurate with its sporty looks, thanks to a revised suspension.
9.2008 Mazda 3
Base Price: $16,895
It’s hard to believe a car this good is also one of the cheapest cars sold. Heck, Volvo uses the same chassis for its none-too-inexpensive S40. Granted, this price nets the ultimate stripper, but it’s also essentially the same car as our 10Best Cars–winning Mazdaspeed 3, minus all the mechanical bits that encourage big speeding tickets.
The Mazda 3 is the best and perhaps only real driver’s car on this list. Plenty of power is available from the base 148-hp, 2.0-liter engine, and you’ll obviously want to select the five-speed manual transmission. This car turns in like it means it, and especially if you throw good tires under it, it’ll hang with much bigger boys in the twisties like the underdog it is. If you trail-brake into a corner, it will rotate like an honest-to-goodness sports car.
The Mazda 3 five-door looks like a different car, sporting aggressive fender flares and a utility-enhancing hatch. It also costs more, however, so it might as well be a different car.
Despite the Mazda 3’s relative age—it was introduced as a 2004 model—it’s still competitive with, and arguably better than, segment standards such as the more expensive Honda Civic. High-quality interior materials and superb fit and finish would be enough to get our blessing, but the Mazda 3 gets our top vote because no car here better fulfills the raison d’être of all vehicles: to move.
- BY JARED HOLSTEIN