What is Eight Great Rides? Simply put, it's a group of our picks to the most fun and affordable new cars priced under $30,000--winners that best reflect the ever-changing car market.
Four of our winners are new to the award; the others are returning favorites. The Golf GTI 1.8T and the WRX, Subaru's WRC monster, were a bit of a no brainer. Nissan's Sentra SE made it after a near miss in last year's competition, and Toyota's new MR2 Spyder jumps into the mix.
Gone are both Hondas (Civic Si and Prelude SH) that made last year's list. It seems Honda's transition to the new Civic platform has left a gap without an Si model--something we're expecting Honda to fill in the next year or so. The Prelude is an on-again, off-again contender that sporadically makes the list, depending on where its $26,000 price tag puts it against the other nominees.
Volkswagen got the nod from us in 1998, however, it was for its VR6-powered model. This year, with the 1.8T as its base engine, a new platform and lots of tune-ability on its side, the Golf is back.
The Eight Great Rides tradition dictates that the winner list is fraught with automotive diversity, and this year is no exception. Where else can cars ranging in price from $13,000 to $25,000 share common ground? Where else can two roadsters that define their own market share an award with four hatchbacks? Where else can you find this much fun for so little investment? That's what Eight Great Rides is all about.
The Eight Great Rides award is also about drivability.
During our evaluation, the nominees are put through the SCC training ground. In other words, they're driven by young and old, big and small, over mountain roads and on daily commutes. They haul our bicycles and our laptop computers, as well as our significant others. They're tested for their real-world practicality and drivability as much for their performance.
We made our picks this year using our traditional points system, which places emphasis on the most important categories. In addition to "fun factor," the most heavily weighted of the eight categories, judges rate cars on their value or "bang for the buck," and their technical merits (drivetrain and chassis performance). "Hotrodability" or how easily each car can be modified and how well it responds to those mods, is taken into consideration, as is a car's overall practicality. Eight Great Rides' nominees are evaluated on their exterior and interior styling, both subjective categories, which receive the least emphasis. In a car's interior, judges base scores on control placement and feel as well as driving position.
After the score cards for each car are collected, we feed them into a computer program, which assigns the proper weights to each category and tabulates the final scores. Then, it's simply a matter of picking the eight highest-scoring cars and heading for the test track. At the track, we again put each car through standardized testing of the automotive variety. We test each car in three performance arenas: Acceleration (0 to 30, 0 to 60, 30 to 50, 50 to 70 and quarter mile), deceleration (60 to 0) and handling (average lateral acceleration around a 200-ft skidpad).
Each year, there are always several really good cars that fall shy of making the list. Among them this year are Honda's always impressive Prelude, the Audi A4 and the Dodge Neon R/T. There are also a few that fall just outside of our $30,000 price cap. Those that did so this year are the Honda S2000, Audi TT quattro and the Lexus IS300. All others considered, that makes this year's Eight Great Rides the best of the best.