Since one condition of the government’s proposed save of Chrysler is a shotgun wedding to Fiat, it seemed a good moment to take a look at Fiat’s most popular car (and the one most easily brought stateside). The Fiat 500 is a teeny, impossibly cute econocar; a sexy competitor to the MINI Cooper and Toyota Yaris. Naturally we were curious how the 500 stacks up, review-wise. Click for more
As you may have heard, Tesla Motors just pulled the wraps off its second offering, a swoopy seven-seater (!) sedan known as the Tesla S. There’s some debate as to whether this vehicle will indeed come into being, and its viability seems contigent on serious largesse from the governnment. No matter — it’s a nice looking vehicle. And it gives us an excuse to revisit scores for the Ur-Tesla, currently rocking an 83 from critics.
A $170K Nissan? Road & Track thinks the GT-R Spec V might just be worth it.
Wikipedia action for the Honda Insight and Toyota Prius. Just because.
The review embargo now lifted, critics hither and yon are hustling to weigh in on the 2010 Toyota Prius. Herewith the early verdict: the Prius is scoring an average of 87 from reviewers, a whopping 5 points higher than the outgoing model. (One caveat: Toyota hasn’t released a final price for car yet, and most reviewers are making relative value judgments based on an anticipated price of $24k. Click for more
USA Today’s resident critic has been tapping the economic zeitgeist of late, rolling out reviews of one budget-priced ride after another. Who wins that race? By his reckoning, it’s the Kia Rio over the Toyota Yaris and Nissan Versa. Which is a tad more definitive than these cars’ overall scores on MotorMouths would indicate: the Versa’s 76 barely edges the Rio’s 75 and the Yaris’ 74. Then again, James R. Healy rates pretty high on the credibility scale, so perhaps he’s on to something grande.
A quick heads-up about another easy way to find reviews and scores from MotorMouths: use Twitter! Just reply to @motormouths with “find” and the name of the car you’re interested in, like “find Honda Fit.” Our Twitter-bot will send you the score for that car, plus a link to its reviews. Handy! (And if Twitter jargon is still a little confusing, you can learn about @replies here.)
The press embargo lifted on Friday, releasing a flood of reviews of the long-awaited 2010 Chevrolet Camaro. How’s it doing? Pretty darn good: the Camaro is currently averaging a score of 87 from the country’s car critics, just edging out that other iconic muscle car, the Ford Mustang. Some highs and lows from the new reviews after the jump.
Hmmm. Seems Lexus just lost its spot atop J.D. Power’s annual Vehicle Dependability Ratings. Who upset the long-time champ? Two usurpers: Jaguar, up from 10th place, and Buick, which rose from 6th. (Suzuki and Volkswagen tied for last place.) Given the good reviews that Buick’s Enclave and Jaguar’s XF are garnering, this isn’t that surprising. But wait! Peek at the fine print and you’ll notice that J.D.’s ratings are derived from customer satisfaction surveys of 2006 model-year vehicles…
Meant to put this up earlier. Consumerist likes us!
MotorMouths is a new car review site, but they don’t review cars. They review car reviews. They look at each critics’ review and assign a score based on what the critic is saying about the car, and then also supply an average score for each car. Only critics with cred are used. Sorta like RottenTomatoes for movies…
The busy birth of an Audi A4, which is fairly beloved by critics.
Here’s a teachable moment. One of our review sources, TheTruthAboutCars.com, just weighed in on the Maserati Granturismo S. The review, by site founder Robert Farago, was typically voicey and idiosyncratic. Farago liked much about the car, yet also hated aspects of it. His final grades by category were a 4 out of 5 stars for performance, ride, interior, fit and finish, and Click for more
