Just because a car is cheap to buy doesn’t mean it’s a good value. The Nissan Versa Sedan, for example, is one of the least expensive cars we’ve tested. But we found it to be noisy and uncomfortable, and no one on our staff liked driving it. For about $1,500 more, we’d go with a Honda Fit, which is fun to drive, cheaper to own, more reliable, and provides almost twice the value.

 

just because some publisher makes a fancy chart doesnt mean it's accurate in real world either, especially by CR.

 

What makes a great value

Subaru Forester


To determine which vehicles give you the most for your money, we look at three important things when calculating our value ratings for each model:
Road-test score. The road-test score reflects how good a vehicle is overall. Each car’s score is the result of more than 50 tests and evaluations performed at our test track and on public roads. We measure performance, comfort, convenience, fuel economy, fit and finish, cargo space, and more. Ratings are based on a 100-point scale and range from a high of 99 for the Tesla Model S electric luxury car to a low of 20 for the crude, off-road-ready Jeep Wrangler. If a car doesn’t perform well enough, we can’t recommend it.
Predicted-reliability score. We forecast how well new models are likely to hold up based on their recent history. The information comes from our latest Annual Auto Survey, in which subscribers told us about problems they’ve experienced with 1.2 million vehicles in the last 12 months. If a model has a below-average reliability score, we won’t recommend it no matter how well it performed in our road tests. For example, the V6 Honda Accord earned an impressive 90 points in our testing, but owners reported more problems with it than for the average model, so we can’t recommend it. New or redesigned models for which we don’t have survey data, such as the Chevrolet Impala, are not included in our value study.
Five-year owner costs. Estimates of owner costs include all major expenses incurred during a typical five-year ownership cycle, including depreciation, fuel, insurance premiums, interest on financing, sales tax, and maintenance and repairs. In the charts below, they are shown as cost per mile.
Depreciation is by far the largest factor, accounting for almost half of all owner costs over the first five years; our analysis assumes the cars will be traded in after five years. Fuel is the second largest expense. We use the national average of 12,000 miles per year to calculate costs. Maintenance and repair costs come from our Annual Auto Survey.
We excluded electric cars (such as the Chevrolet Volt, Nissan Leaf, and Tesla Model S) from our analysis, because of the lack of data on their depreciation and on maintenance and repair costs.



Best & worst for the money

Here you can see the models with the highest and lowest value scores in several major categories. Models are ranked by value score, above or below the average car, which is represented by a score of 1.0. Scores are calculated based on a model’s five-year ownership costs, shown here as cost per mile, road-test score, and predicted reliability rating. A vehicle with a score of 2.0 is twice as good a value as the average car, and one that scores a 0.5 is half as good. The best values in each category are all recommended models. The models with the lowest value scores are listed below the gray lines.

 

On cost per mile there is no other car that beats the fit.

 

LOL!
Interesting read cjecpa. Amazing that the Subaru line-up has stayed up there all these years. Economics and surveys aside, best bang for the buck is the car that makes you smile, you can afford, meets your demands of it and erases the "only if" itch... Just my take... :-)

 

subaru's have given me plenty of problems from my two experiences...

 

What kind of Subaru's did you own in the past? When it always gets around winter I look at them I also go to the different forums to see what problems actual owners have, on the new forester which I was interested in there has been several people having issues with the tailgate not opening, starting and battery dieing. Besides the complaints on the seats being uncomfortable and choppy ride (sounds familiar).

 

wrx and legacy wagon. my main issue was parasitic drain, noisy starts in cold weather, several warranty botched repairs, headlamp problems, AT on the legacy getting stuck due to actuator intermittently not turning on/off, a/c problems, a/c vent problems, fuel light ses problems, other problems like o2 sensor going bad, door hinge issues, exhaust tip breaking off from normal use, etc. etc there are just to many to list.
both were bought new, less than 30k miles before i traded them in.

this dealer in my area is a f-head as well, so didn't help the situation. i just have very bad experience with subaru's all together.

 

I have heard that they had high oil consumption where people were adding a quart between oil changes do not know if this is still true. Tough to buy a a car based on prior experience I had similar problems with two Volvos that I owned will never buy another after that was mainly a Toyota owner rather own a bland reliable car any day. At least you can budget your car payments where repairs you can not along with the down time.

 

Knock! Knock! My first Subaru ever ('02 WRX) and all good so far @ 135k. No problems. Unfortunate about your experience Kenchan. I'm sure the dealer service experience didn't help either.

 

After last weeks storm I was tempted to pull the trigger on the 2014 Forester actually got quotes $2k below sticker, but I found out the 2015 will be ship in April 2014. Three and a half months and would be into the next model year. Strange how early in the year they are changing over and the difference in depreciation.

 

Subarus hold their values pretty well. I like the 3rd gen. Foresters (09+) but they scratched the 5sp.

 

They do have the 6 speed now but you can not get the winter package or sunroof with the manual. Don't really care about the sunroof but the heated seats and mirrors would be nice.

 

Stand corrected on the manual transmission heated seats are standard.