What You Can Learn From a Car's Monroney Sticker

Deciphering the Price Sticker in the Window of a New Car

When you’re car shopping, you’ll find one feature that’s common to every new car on the lot. It goes by a number of names – price sticker, window sticker, Monroney label – and it’s required by the 1958 Automobile Information Disclosure Act, though more required information has been added since its origination.

It is named for Oklahoma Senator Almer Stillwell “Mike” Monroney, who sponsored the act as a way of ensuring proper pricing disclosure on the sale of new vehicles. It is illegal to sell a new car at a dealership without a Monroney label affixed to the vehicle.

Through the years, the window sticker has evolved. It now includes information about fuel efficiency, air pollution, safety, and the vehicle’s origin. Every manufacturer’s price sticker looks a bit different, but all carry the same basic information. There’s a lot of fine print on the window sticker, so using a magnifying glass to set it all is actually a really good strategy.

Check out the following slides for a tour of a typical price sticker.

The Car’s Base Price

On every price sticker, you’ll find the manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP). It’s just that – a suggestion to the dealer about what price to sell the car for. Dealers are free to discount or add to this number, and it is negotiable for buyers. Rarely will you pay exactly MSRP.

The base MSRP doesn’t include the price for factory or dealer-installed options, shipping, documentation, or any of another multitude of dealer-added costs. It does include all of the features that are standard on the vehicle.

Though discrepancies don’t often happen, you’ll want to verify the vehicle identification number on the price sticker with the one at the corner of the windshield and on any purchase paperwork to ensure that the car that you are looking at is the one that you’ll be buying.

Standard Features and Powertrain Configuration

The list of standard features includes everything that comes on the car for its base MSRP. In some cases, it is for a specific trim level, while others add the trim level as an option package. You’ll want to compare cars feature for feature, rather than by base MSRP.

If you’re at the point of visiting a dealer, you’re probably already pretty familiar with the standard equipment on the cars that you are considering, but it’s always a good idea to scan the list of standard features to see if anything that you’re expecting is missing from the list.

Occasionally, there’s a shortage of parts in the factory, and the manufacturer will leave a feature off, and include a price credit for the change on the Monroney sticker. If it’s a feature that you’re counting on, you may want to wait for the parts shortage to end.

The window sticker will also have information about the vehicle’s engine, transmission, and drivetrain. It will show the engine size and type, whether the transmission is a manual or automatic and how many gears it has, plus whether the car is front-, rear-, all-, or four-wheel drive.

Options and Their Cost

Listed next is the optional equipment that has been added at the factory, with MSRPs for each item. In some cases these will be packaged into option groups, while in others each option is priced separately. Some manufacturers use arcane numbering schemes to denote packages, while others simply name them.

You’ll want to read this list closely to ensure that everything that you are expecting has been included. It’s also a good idea to note what equipment is on the car that you don’t want or need. Factory-installed equipment generally can’t be removed from the car, but you may be able to negotiate the price if there are some features that you don’t want.

Destination Charges

It costs automakers money to ship cars to dealerships. That cost, which is passed along to consumers, is listed on the price sticker as a destination, shipping, or delivery cost. It’s generally around $1,000 but can be more on high-end luxury models, or if you live in Alaska or Hawaii.

For simplicity, the destination charge is figured per car, and in not adjusted by how far you might live from the factory. You’ll pay just as much destination charge for a Kentucky-built Toyota Camry if you live in next-door West Virginia or across the country in California.

Fuel Economy Estimates

The fuel economy section of the window sticker is loaded with lots of information for buyers. For most cars you’ll see three mileage numbers: A city gas mileage estimate, a highway mileage estimate, and combined number that is a blended average of the first two estimates.

You can compare vehicles based on how many gallons of fuel they consume to go 100 miles using a figure that’s derived from the combined MPG figure and displayed on the price sticker.

On cars with alternative powertrains, such as battery-electric cars and plug-in hybrids, you’ll see a different number, called MPGe. It’s short for miles per gallon equivalent, and is a way to compare alternative fuel vehicles against cars with traditional powertrains. Monroneys for alternative fuel vehicles will also show EPA-estimated electric-only range.

Price stickers for plug-in hybrids and extended-range electrics will include a mileage estimate for when they are running on gasoline alone.

Annual Fuel Costs and EPA QR Code

Near the large print EPA fuel economy estimates, you’ll find a block of tiny print that shows the mileage that you can expect from other vehicles in the class. You’ll also see an estimate of how the car’s fuel cost compares to all other vehicles available on an annual basis.

If you want to see head to head mileage comparisons, you should check out our new car rankings, where you can sort each class by estimated mileage.

The price sticker shows an estimated annual cost per fuel based on average driving habits, but they’ve also included a nifty tool to better estimate the costs for your specific circumstances. By using your smartphone to scan a QR code on the price sticker you’ll be taken to a page where you can enter information about your driving habits. It will then compute an estimated annual fuel cost specific to your routines.

Smog and Greenhouse Gas Ratings

Since 2013, window stickers are required to display a vehicle’s greenhouse gas and smog ratings so that you can compare the scores of different vehicles.  The greenhouse gas rating is directly tied to the car’s fuel economy and is scored on a scale of 1 (worst) to 10 (best).

The smog rating considers the amount of smog and other local air pollutants that are produced by the vehicle including nitrogen oxide, non-methane organic gas, carbon monoxide, particulate matter, and formaldehyde. Vehicles are scored on a scale from 1(worst) to 10 (best).

The ratings only take into account tailpipe emissions. They do not include the environmental impact of the production and distribution of the vehicle’s fuel.

Government Safety Ratings

There are two major sources of vehicle safety ratings. The federal government’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the private Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS). Ratings from NHTSA are displayed on the Monroney label, if they are available. NHTSA does not test every vehicle on the market.

The government’s safety ratings follow a five-star scale, with one star being the worst, and five the best. There are a number of categories including frontal crash for driver and passenger, side crash, and rollover. You can also see how cars compare to one another in terms of safety by checking out U.S. News & World Report’s new car rankings.

The price sticker also lists a link to NHTSA’s Safercar.gov site.

Where It Was Made and Its Parts Content

A vehicle’s price sticker will have information about where the car was assembled and what country its parts were sourced from. Many price stickers will show the percentage of parts content from North America, plus where the engine and transmission were made.

For example, the price sticker for a 2016 Dodge Charger showed that 64 percent of its parts came from the U.S. and Canada, with 26 percent coming from Mexico. It was assembled in Brampton, Ontario, Canada with an engine from the U.S. and a transmission from Germany. Not all price stickers have that level of detail, but all have some information about the source of the vehicle.

Warranty Information

Carmakers are inconsistent about how and where they display warranty information on the Monroney Label, but most have it somewhere in the fine print. There are better places to find warranty information, including our new car reviews and manufacturers’ websites.

You can compare different vehicle warranties and vehicle predicted reliability ratings in our rankings of new cars, trucks and SUVs. 

The Addendum

There’s often another sticker in the window of new cars, and it’s placed alongside the window sticker. It’s call an addendum, or dealer add-on sticker. It’s where dealers will typically list any dealer installed options, market adjustments, additional dealer markup, or fees.

As a savvy car buyer you should be wary of anything you see on the dreaded addendum. Often it’s just a list of ways that the dealer is trying to gain additional profit. While you might need to pay a “market adjustment” or additional dealer markup on extremely limited production or hard to get cars, in most cases you should not.

When you are doing your new-car buying research, you should also explore the costs of add-ons that you might want, such as floor mats, paint protective film coverings such as clear bra, or roof rack accessories, and then be prepared to negotiate any costs down to prices that you can get outside of the dealer. Remember that dealers are buying those products at wholesale, so they’ll still make a profit if they can sell them to you at the price you can find on the street.

Nearly everything on the dealer add-on sticker is negotiable, but if you want to avoid the stress of the bargaining game, you should use a program such as U.S. News & World Report’s Best Price Program, where buyers save an average of $3,279 off MSRP when buying new cars.

More New Car Shopping Tools From U.S. News & World Report

Much of the information that you can find on a car’s price sticker you can also find in our new car rankings, where you can compare cars based on their price, mileage, safety ratings, and a host of other factors. You’ll also find information about financing your new ride.

You can also find information about the latest lease deals and financing incentives, which can save you thousands of dollars on the cost of a new car. Buyers save even more by using our Best Price Program, where customers save an average of more than $3,000 off sticker price.

Keep up with the latest car buying advice and features by following the expert journalists and researchers of U.S. News & World Report on Facebook and Twitter.