Sedan & Hatchback Buying Guide

Small Sedans and Hatchbacks
For many people, a small car makes sense if you’re mostly doing simple tasks such as commuting, running errands, and zipping around town. Some buyers are drawn to subcompact cars by the price, although we find through our member surveys that satisfaction is often lower with them than with other cars. Our advice for those shoppers: Focus on transaction prices, rather than sticker prices, in determining what you can afford. (This information is available on our car model pages.) You might find that for the real-world price of a subcompact car, like a Nissan Versa, a better compact car, like a Honda Civic or Toyota Corolla, may be within reach, and could serve and satisfy for a longer time.

With the ever-increasing demand for SUVs, automakers have taken efforts to maximize interior space and add new technologies to keep shoppers interested in traditional cars. As a result, many hatchbacks have more character and functionality than staid past models, and the latest compact cars have the rear-seat room and amenities you might have expected in a midsized car only a few years ago.

What you’ll spend: Small cars can sticker for less than $20,000, but often the actual transaction prices are above $20,000. Assume this category spans from $22,000 to $32,000, with high-performance models and entry-level luxury cars being $35,000 or more. Figure on spending in the mid-$20s for a CR Recommended model with popular features.

Midsized Sedans
Midsized sedans remain popular, led by market stalwarts such as the Honda Accord, Hyundai Sonata, Nissan Altima, and Toyota Camry. Domestic manufacturers have largely abandoned this segment, turning their attention and development dollars to crossover SUVs and electric vehicles. Even the Subaru Legacy is expected to leave the market.

The makes and models still competing for business offer a wide variety of options to appeal to buyers. A front-wheel-drive configuration is the most common. Snowbelt dwellers now have more choices with all-wheel drive because Hyundai, Nissan, and Toyota have options to compete with Subaru, which has long had standard AWD on its sedans, hatchbacks, and wagons.

Most manufacturers in this segment even offer hybrid powertrains to improve fuel economy. Four-cylinder engines dominate this segment, with turbos becoming common. Hybrid options from Honda and Hyundai boost fuel efficiency dramatically. The latest Toyota Camry is only offered as a hybrid. These four-door green machines can return from 40 to 47 mpg overall.

What you’ll spend: Common midsized sedans are priced from about $27,000 to $38,000 and offer a good balance of cost, function, and safety, addressing the needs of many drivers.

Large Sedans
This is the most sparse of the sedan segments, with the Chrysler 300 and Nissan Maxima discontinued. That leaves just the Toyota Crown as the sole mainstream offering. The Crown blurs genres, with its raised height and all-wheel drive serving to tempt buyers from making the move to an SUV. A redesigned Dodge Charger will be offered in electric and gas-only configurations, with two or four doors. There are still large models from most luxury brands.

What you’ll spend: Look to spend between $40,000 and $53,000 for a Crown.

Luxury Sedans
Companies such as Acura, Audi, BMW, Cadillac, Genesis, Infiniti, Lexus, Mercedes-Benz, and others sell smaller luxury sedans for those looking to own a prestige-branded car. Prices range from the mid-$30,000s to well over $50,000. While these models may offer more refinement and performance, comparable luxury—and often more space—can often be found in a top-trimmed midsized sedan for the same money. Plus, the mainstream models are typically more reliable and run on regular gas, rather than pricey premium fuel.

Moving up a size or two, there are a number of choices for luxury car buyers. Long-standing nameplates such as the Audi A6, BMW 5 Series, Lexus ES, and Mercedes-Benz E-Class continue to be steady performers. Relative newcomers like Genesis (Hyundai’s upscale brand) and Tesla have made great strides in this segment. Tesla has blazed the trail for high-end electric vehicles, quickly pushing the brand from an environmentally friendly choice to a bona fide status symbol, with sales that often dwarf those of its established rivals. There are a growing number of electric cars in this category, with more to come.

Most of these luxury coaches can be extravagantly outfitted with plush interiors, powerful engines or motors, all-wheel drive, and almost every creature comfort the automotive world can imagine. Turbocharged four-cylinder engines have become common on base trims, and some hybrid options are available.

The ultimate in luxury continues to be dominated by the Audi A8, BMW 7 Series, Lexus LS, and Mercedes-Benz S-Class. But the Genesis G90 gives them all a run for their money. The premium flagship sedans pamper drivers and passengers alike, and they can be the launch point for many high-tech innovations. And as with most vehicle categories, some type of electrified propulsion is usually offered on top trims.

What you’ll spend: Prices for these well-to-do models vary widely, from the upper-$40,000s to well into six figures. Truly, the sky’s the limit here.

Seating
Marketing materials claim most sedans can hold five passengers, but keep in mind that the person stuck in the center-rear position usually gets the least comfortable perch. Practically speaking, most sedans are comfortable for just four people. 

Naturally, larger models include lots more headroom and legroom, especially for rear-seat passengers.

Engines and Fuel Economy
Four-cylinder engines are generally more fuel-efficient than V6s, and some of the latest four-cylinder sedans balance fuel efficiency and power quite well. In the past few years, many manufacturers have turned to combining turbocharging with four-cylinder engines to aid performance. Regular hybrids and plug-in hybrids are also available in this segment, often providing outstanding fuel economy. 

Most of the buzz these days surrounds the growing choices of all-electric models. Tesla is still the dominant manufacturer here, but many more EVs are on the way from Audi, BMW, Cadillac, Mini, and Volvo, among others.

Cargo
Trunk sizes vary widely by model. Some can accommodate a week’s worth of groceries with room left over. Others have awkward shapes, high lift-overs, and intrusive gooseneck hinges that limit their usefulness. Over the past several years, some manufacturers have come out with four-door hatchback designs, such as the Audi A7, Polestar 2, Porsche Taycan, and Volkswagen Arteon. The Cadillac Lyriq—the company’s first electric-only model—is offered as a four-door hatchback design. This body style comes with a split rear seat design, so one part can be folded for cargo while still allowing someone to sit in the other part. Hatchbacks like these, though, can have a more restricted rear view, made worse by the heavily sloped slit of a rear window, thick back pillars, and tapering rear side windows.

Safety and Advanced Driver Assistance Systems Technologies
Consumer Reports’ safety ratings include assessments of crash-avoidance capabilities and crash-test results, based on tests performed by the federal government and insurance industry. Further, our road tests detail issues regarding child-seat installation and headlight performance.

Forward collision warning (FCW), automatic emergency braking (AEB) with pedestrian detection, and blind spot warning (BSW) are crash-avoidance technologies that CR believes should be standard on all vehicles. These should be on the next new or used model you buy.

FCW technology provides a visual, audible, and/or tactile alert to warn the driver of an impending collision with a car or an object directly in its path. AEB responds to an imminent collision, braking if the driver doesn’t react in time. BSW monitors a vehicle’s flanks, warning the driver that another vehicle is alongside, where it may be difficult to see.

Other modern safety advances include telematics systems that can alert emergency personnel if an airbag deploys, such as GM’s OnStar service; lane departure warning systems that sound an alert if the driver changes lanes without signaling; lane keeping assist to maintain the vehicle’s position in the lane if the driver starts to drift; and rear cross traffic warning, which monitors the sides of the vehicle when the driver is backing out of a parking spot, and can even apply the brakes if needed. (Learn more about car safety.)

Drive Wheels
The vast majority of sedans today use front-wheel drive. The space efficiency of a front-drive design allows a car to have a smaller engine compartment and a flatter floor, leaving more room inside for passengers and cargo. It’s also effective at getting going in slippery conditions because there’s more weight on the front wheels for extra traction. Rear-wheel drive is becoming rarer these days and is traditionally reserved for high-performance and luxury sedans for its inherent handling benefits. AWD is almost universally offered in every sedan segment but not necessarily every model. Designed for improved foul-weather traction and extreme, track-ready grip on enthusiast-targeted models, some buyers who live where it snows won’t settle for less.

Towing
Most sedans offer very modest towing capacities—if any at all. Most max out at around 1,000 pounds. Clearly, if towing is in your future, an SUV or a pickup truck is the way to go.

Like with any type of car, the first decision to make in choosing the right car: Will you buy new or used?

Buying a brand-new car certainly has its benefits. New cars have the very latest safety gear and engineering improvements, not to mention a bumper-to-bumper factory warranty. With a new vehicle, you know what you’re getting; you don’t have to worry about potential service problems or concealed collision damage. Further, you can have your choice of color, trim line, and option level. And financing rates are typically lower than for a used vehicle.

The key drawback to buying a new car is how quickly it depreciates. New cars have been known to shed around a third of their value in the first two to three years. Financing a new vehicle with a small down payment can easily make buyers "upside down" on the loan, where they owe more than their car is worth.

Buying a used car can save money up front and over the long haul. Plus, the U.S. used-car market is about three times the size of the new-car market, so there are plenty of choices. A 2- to 3-year-old vehicle, possibly one that has been returned from a lease, has already taken its biggest depreciation hit and should have the majority of its useful life ahead of it. Certified pre-owned cars, most especially luxury models, carry the unique appeal of coming with an extended warranty, and Consumer Reports’ analysis of reliability data shows that paying a premium for a CPO car could be a wise choice. 

Modern sedans, if soundly maintained, can run for 200,000 miles or longer. Checking with CR’s reliability data can help you zero in on a model that might give you fewer headaches down the road.

Again, focus on reliability when selecting a good new or used car, even if the vehicle is still covered by its original factory warranty. Check with Consumer Reports to find those that have top-notch reliability scores. (See our guide to car reliability.)

Whether buying new or used, it is important to do a little homework to choose a good model and to follow that up with effective negotiation.

Browse the Consumer Reports Used Car Marketplace.