I'm Aaron Bragman for cars dot com
if you follow us online you might think that our days are filled with the latest
German sport sedans are expensive japanese luxury cars
and most days you'd be right which is why we try and make it a point to also
get into vehicles that the average american can afford
that's what brings us here we've assembled seven of the top compact cars
in the category for this
the 2013 Compact Car Challenge those seven cars are the 2014 Ford Focus
the 2013 Hyundai Elantra by 2014 Kia Forte
the 2013 Subaru Impreza the 2013
Nissan Sentra the 2013 Honda Civic
and the 2014 Toyota Corolla let's have a look at some of the features that you
should look out for
in the compact category
we're increasingly seeing a lot of electronic equipment included in the
price on the vehicle
it's almost the costume entry for number I'm younger buyers who are looking for
that kind of connectivity
in the vehicle no matter what the price point in this competition we were kinda
surprised by the Nissan in terms of how much electronics it actually included
bluetooth streaming audio moist control and even a low-cost navigation system
now a nap system is fairly unique most of these other cars only have things
like bluetooth streaming audio
or the ability to plug a music player into a USB port and controller through
the head unit
still a lot of this content is becoming increasingly common
one safety feature the starting to appear in the compact category our
rearview backup cameras
in fact the united states government is even thinking of mandating them for sale
across all vehicles in just a couple of years three vehicles in our test
actually include this feature
the Toyota Corolla Nissan Sentra and the Honda Civic
this is actually a really nice safety features a half
it prevents you from backing over any small obstacle that you might not have
seen including small children
these vehicles usually feature the rear view camera as a extra cost option
except in the Honda Civic word actually come standard
used to be a time when even if you bought an expensive luxury car
you still got stamped steel wheels with plastic hub cap
at the twenty thousand dollar level that's still pretty much the norm
for the cars in our test have 15 and stamped steel wheels were plastic
hubcaps
like the Ford Focus the Nissan Sentra moved up a little bit it a 16 and
stamped steel wheels
with hubcaps what in order to get that luxury touch
you have to go with the koreans the Hyundai and Kia both feature
16-inch alloy wheels now 15-inch wheels
aren't necessarily a bad thing the tires are a lot less expensive to replace
and the ride it tends to be a little bit quieter as these tall side walls soak up
a lot of noise
but you have to admit the 16-inch alloys still look a lot better
all of the cars in our test have automatic transmissions but did you know
there are no different types of automatic transmissions
cars like this Hyundai Elantra have a normal automatic transmission with a
torque converter in Gears
and behave like you always expect an automatic transmission to behead
cars like the Ford Focus however have something called a dual-clutch
transmission
the torque converter is gone instead it has two questions now all you have to do
is put it in the
and go like an automatic transmission but it feels a little bit different in
terms of some hesitations and changing gears
for does this because it's got about a 10 percent improvement in fuel economy
versus a normal automatic
the biggest difference com in the third type of transmission that we see in cart
with the Subaru Impreza
it has a continuously variable transmission or CVT
it replaces gears with a metal belt into police
that change ratios as you go forward now it feels completely different than an
automatic transmission
and that erodes the engine to a certain point and holds a
as you accelerate there is no shifting so instead you get
a little bit more noise but also a little bit better fuel economy as well
compact cars are one of the hottest selling segments in the market
and now you can see there's quite a lot of content available even a twenty
thousand dollars
see which one of these cars came out on top and research all of them
individually
a car's dot com thanks for joining us
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