Cars, The Best New Cars in 2007 |
While new car sales among American car manufacturers continued to decline in 2007, makers of foreign cars actually did quite well. A look at the most popular new cars in 2007 reveals that.
The website cars.com lists the most popular new cars from the third quarter in 2007, which is the latest information available on cars sold. Traditionally foreign cars dominate the list. In fact, there are no American cars found anywhere in the top 10.
The Honda Civic, which has long been one of the best-selling cars in the United States, topped the list for the third quarter in 2007, the same position it was in the previous quarter. Another vehicle which routinely appears on lists of best-selling cars, the Toyota Camry, came in second for the second quarter in a row.
The cars that rounded out the top 5 include: The Honda CR-V, the Honda Accord, and the Toyota Prius. All of these cars, as you might notice, are foreign made. The cars that complete the top 10 are also all made elsewhere.
Perhaps American cars, while not popular in 2007, were more dependable. Let's take a look at cars.com's Most Dependable Cars list. In this category, American cars did a bit better, though not considerably.
Overall, Buick helped give American cars a better reputation by tying Lexus as the most dependable make of car. This is based on the number of problems reported by customer per 100 cars.
However, cars.com's list divides up cars based on their type, and awards the most dependable cars in each category. One of Buick's cars topped only one of these categories: the Buick Century was listed as the most dependable among midsized cars.
Other American cars did manage to make it to the top of some other categories. Among midsized sports cars, the Chevrolet SSR and Ford Mustang beat out all other cars for the top honor. The Ford Crown Victoria was named the most dependable among all full-sized cars.
Still, foreign cars dominated this list as well. Three Lexus cars topped different categories, along with two separate Honda cars.
Lexus is the undisputed king of luxury cars when it comes to dependability. All three of Lexus' "dependability" champs came in the luxury cars categories. They won among midsized luxury cars, full-sized luxury cars, and luxury sport cars. The only luxury categories they didn't win were for "entry luxury" cars, in which Lexus did not have an entrant, and compact luxury sport cars.
Honda won two categories. The Honda Civic won out among compact cars, while the S2000 beat out all other compact luxury sports cars for the top honor in that category.
Obviously, 2007 was a bad year all around for American-made cars. Not only were they not able to crack the top-10 among most popular new cars, but they also did not fare much better when the talked turned to most dependable cars. Hopefully, the future will be brighter for the Big 3. |
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