Fuel Economy Tops List Of Car-Buying Criteria

Fuel economy is about even with reliability as the top factors that people consider when buying a vehicle, according to a nationwide poll taken for Consumer Reports magazine. The telephone survey, taken Aug. 3 through 7 as gasoline prices remained about $3 a gallon, showed that 27 percent of likely vehicle buyers ranked gas mileage as the top factor in an automobile purchase. Reliability was the top factor for 25 percent, followed by purchase price for 14 percent and safety features among 12 percent, according to the poll taken by Princeton, N.J.-based Opinion Research Corp. Five percent said manufacturer and dealer incentives are the top factor in an auto purchase, and 3 percent said styling. Consumer Reports funded the poll, which has a sampling error margin of plus or minus 4.5 percentage points. On the surface, the poll results appear to indicate further trouble for the Big Three domestic auto manufacturers, which rely more on truck and sport utility vehicle sales for their profits than their foreign-based competitors. Truck and SUV sales were down for the first seven months of the year compared with the same period in 2005, while car sales were up. Rebecca Lindland, an auto analyst at […]

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