2019 Best Cars for the Money

Finding the right car for you is all about striking the best balance between the performance, features, and quality you want, and your budget. The winners of our 2019 Best Car for the Money Awards do just that. Covering 14 different automotive classes, the award winners have the best mix of quality and value in each of their classes – a combination that will make you, and your bank account, happy.

How We Measured Quality

As with all of our awards, the starting point for Best Cars for the Money is the U.S. News Best Car rankings. The rankings aren’t based on our test drives and opinions. Rather, we collect and analyze every published and credible review of a given model, then combine that analysis with the latest safety and reliability data. The result is a data-driven, unbiased ranking with individual scores for each car that give you a clear picture of what automotive industry experts think about each car on your shopping list.

How We Measured Value

When it comes to buying a car, value has two parts: how much you pay for the car at the dealership and how much you pay to keep the car on the road. For pricing data, we partnered with TrueCar, a company that tracks real-time transaction prices for new cars. Keeping a car on the road means paying for fuel, repairs, and insurance. For that total cost of ownership data, we worked with Vincentric. We combined the Vincentric data on ownership costs with the TrueCar pricing data to measure a vehicle's overall value.

See the photo gallery of the winners »

Best Cars for Families »

Winning Trends

Honda and Kia tied for the most wins from a single automaker, with three each. Honda continued winning streaks for the CR-V, which won Best Compact SUV for the Money for the third time in a row, the Odyssey, which won Best Minivan for the Money for the second time in a row, and the Fit, which won Best Subcompact Car for the Money for the sixth time in a row.

The Kia Soul and Sorento each won awards – Best Compact Car for the Money and Best 3-Row SUV for the Money, respectively – for the third consecutive year. The Kia Stinger won Best Luxury Small Car for the Money. It’s the first win for the Stinger and the first win in a luxury class for Kia.

Toyota won two awards, with the Camry winning Best Midsize Car for the Money and the Avalon Hybrid winning Best Large Car for the Money. The Nissan Murano won Best 2-Row SUV for the Money and the Hyundai Kona won Best Subcompact SUV for the Money.

Among Luxury brands, Lexus took home two awards, with the RX winning Best 2-Row Luxury SUV for the Money for the sixth time and the Lexus ES winning Best Luxury Midsize Car for the Money for the third time.

The Acura RDX won Best Luxury Compact SUV for the Money and the Infiniti QX60 won Best Luxury 3-Row SUV for the Money.

No American or European brands won awards this year.

See winners from previous years: 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018