Next to your home, your car is just about the biggest investment you will ever make; so it makes sense that you’d want to check automobile ratings before buying one. There are several ratings available: Consumer Reports, the Insurance Institute, and others do annual tests and evaluations of all new cars. By using these automobile ratings you can be sure of getting a good quality car that is also the safest there is.

The Basics of the Rating System

All automobile ratings are fairly similar. Let us take a look at one in-depth: Consumer Reports. First, to insure they don’t get preferential treatment from the car dealers, they buy their cars anonymously. Next, they give the cars a good “run for their money” by driving them extensively over several months. Thus the cars end up with several thousand miles on them.

Next, the cars are taken out to a 327-acre test center. In some cases, the tests run on the cars were invented by the engineers at Consumer Reports: wet braking, fuel-economy test, antilock-brakes test etc. In all, each car is evaluated by the use of over fifty different tests. Beyond the mere scientific tests, the engineers also take the cars home and make use of them in typical family situations. They take the kids to school in them, buy groceries, go on long road trips, and engage in all manner of routine car uses. All of these factor in the automobile ratings they eventually come up with.

In the case of the Insurance Institute, they pride themselves on automobile ratings based on real world crash tests. In addition, they do side crash tests, which the U.S. Government testers do not do. That brings up an important point about how much “weight” to give automobile ratings you read. Always look at who is footing the bill for the tests. In the case of Consumer Reports and the Insurance Institute, they’re looking to save lives, and people money. With a government agency (sad to say), they can be influenced by the very businesses they’re supposed to be monitoring/reporting on.