Which Cars Give You the Most Features per Dollar?
There’s hardly a person on earth who doesn’t like a good deal. Even the super wealthy ‘one percent of the one percent’ didn’t get to their lofty stature by throwing away dollar bills. Ok, maybe a few of them did simply because the family money is so old it’s moldy - but the vast majority of humans seek to get good value for their cash.
Few places is this more evident than at the car lot. If two equivalently sized, equally powerful machines are parked side by each and bearing the same asking price, chances are (ceteris parabis, of course) most people will grab the vehicle with more features. After all, why leave air conditioning or power seats or an aftermarket cam on the table when it’s there for the taking?
[Images: Chevrolet, Kia, Hyundai]
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This is the hymnbook from which the Korean brands loudly sang when they arrived on our shores. Shelling out for a Hyundai Excel typically netted way more standard features than an equivalent Honda or even Chevy, at a sticker price coasting in much less than its rivals. Kia made bank around these parts twenty-five years ago with efforts like the early Sportage, which offered all-wheel drive for roughly the same price as a front-driver from other brands.
These days, the value proposition still exists at those stores, though the machines are leagues ahead in terms of overall quality and reliability than they were back when everyone was wearing Hammer pants and drinking Crystal Pepsi. The starting MSRP of a Hyundai Tucson, for example, still undercuts that of many competitors, even though Hyundai no longer has to lure customers in with promises of ultra low prices and annoying ad campaigns.
But value can also appear in a completely different form, one which walk and talks like a much more expensive vehicle. While this site - and, in particular, this author - is fond of using unkind phrases to describe accountants, the bean counters are inadvertently responsible for a sub-set of value: base trims.
What used to be described as a sea of penalty boxes filled with wheezy engines and more button blanks than one might think humanly possible, base trims now often get features once reserved for the toniest of models. It’s all down to the phenomenon called ‘economies of scale’, an approach which dictates that it is indeed cheaper for a car company to make one style of door panels for a model of car instead of multiples - one for a trim with manual windows and one for trims with power accessories, for example.
A great nod to these economies of scale are found in cars like the Kia Soul, a model which may not be long for this earth. Its base LX trim starts a hair over $20,000 but packs features like a useable touchscreen infotainment display, all manner of automatic emergency and collision mitigation driver aids, and lane following. Remote keyless entry, a wiper on the rear glass, and standard A/C were the stuff of option lists not too many years ago.
