Edmunds.com vs. Consumer Reports

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Consumer Reports recently named the 2009 Toyota Prius as ‘the best new-car value’ among the 300 vehicles evaluated by the magazine’s staff.

Edmunds.com, the online car shopping and data site, begs to differ.

In a rare public display of intra-industry acrimony, Santa Monica-based Edmunds.com issued a news release this week warning that CR’s ranking of best new-car values and its crowning of the Prius hybrid as best in show ‘could lead cost-conscious shoppers astray.’

‘The Prius is a lot of cool things, but ‘value’ is not something that pops into mind,’ Edmunds.com CEO Jeremy Anwyl said in an interview. ‘If you’re buying a Prius to save money, you’re going to be in for a shock.’

According to Edmunds.com’s proprietary ‘true cost of ownership’ yardstick, the No. 1 vehicle in terms of after-purchase costs is the Honda Civic DX-VP. Edmunds.com calculates the Civic’s five-year ownership cost at $29,037. That was much less than the $37,079 cost for the top-of-the-line Prius Touring model, which the site ranked 41st. The less elaborately equipped Prius Standard model fared better in the survey, ranking 17th with a five-year total ownership cost of $33,848.

The cost of ownership, as defined by both Edmunds.com and Consumer Reports, doesn’t include what you actually pay for a vehicle. It measures all the additional direct and indirect costs -- such as depreciation, fuel costs, insurance and repairs -- paid by a new-car buyer over a given period of time.

In compiling their rankings, Edmunds.com and CR used national averages to compute insurance rates, gas prices and other expenses. Edmunds.com’s free website (www.edmunds.com) will calculate ownership costs based on individual ZIP Codes. The Consumer Reports website (www.consumerreports.com -- most info. available only to subscribers) doesn’t provide that option.

Although there are differences in the two outfits’ ownership-cost calculations -- for example, Edmunds.com’s estimate of the annual cost to insure a Prius is almost double CR’s -- that’s not the main reason their rankings vary so much.

In addition to ownership costs, Consumer Reports factors in the results of its customer surveys and its own vehicle road tests. This information is combined with the cost data to arrive at a final score -- which is then used to rank vehicles by ‘best value’ as opposed to ‘cost of ownership.’

‘There’s more to good value than just low cost,’ says Jake Fisher, a Consumer Reports vehicle tester.

And here’s another twist. Consumer Reports limited its ‘value’ rankings to vehicles that were already on the magazine’s ‘recommended’ list. Some cars that CR found were actually cheaper to own than the Prius -- notably the Toyota Yaris and the Chevrolet Aveo -- didn’t make the magazine’s ‘value’ list because they received poor marks from Fisher and his fellow testers.

The No. 2 car in Edmunds’ ‘small sedan’ rankings is the Chevy Aveo, ‘a car that did horribly in our testing,’ Fisher says. ‘It was slow, it wasn’t very fuel efficient for its class, and its emergency handling was not very good.

‘To suggest that people should look at a Chevy Aveo just because it’s cheaper to own doesn’t really help consumers out much.’

The folks at Edmunds.com, meanwhile, detect a bit of nannyism in CR’s implied mission of protecting consumers from themselves.

‘We feel consumers should determine’ which vehicle best suits their needs, Anwyl said. The publishers of Consumer Reports ‘seem to think that their editors should do it for you.’

So whom do you believe? If you’re looking for a new car and parsing ownership costs down to the last dollar keeps you awake at night, you might start by checking the Edmunds.com ‘lowest cost’ rankings to get a fix on which vehicles are the absolute cheapest in dollar terms to own and operate. Then you can cross-check the cheapest vehicles against CR’s ‘best value’ rankings to make sure you’re not about to saddle yourself with a real stinker of a car.

And if you know somebody who owns the car you’re interested in, ask what it costs them to own and operate the vehicle. Real-world experience can be an important guide -- but don’t let one owner’s experience totally determine your choice.

You can check out Edmunds.com’s ‘true cost to own’ findings for the 2009 Prius Touring model for free on its website. Car-by-car details of CR’s ‘best value’ calculations are available only to subscribers, but you can check out the basic ranking on its website.

-- Martin Zimmerman