Description: As the prices of new cars continue to go up, up, up, buying a reliable used car is almost always a better value than buying new. A used car has already traveled down the steepest part of the depreciation curve, a two- or three-year old model still has most of its useful life left in it, and that model costs 30% less than its showroom-new equivalent. Those are the key reasons why used vehicles outsell new cars by nearly three to one each year.

But who to trust when making this important buying decision? Consumer Reports knows automobiles. And consumers for decades have come to us first when shopping for their car, not only for advice on what the best automobile is, but how to negotiate the best deal, how to shop for insurance, and how to protect your investment with proper maintenance.

The Consumer Reports Used Car Buying Guide 2001 includes reviews and reliability reports for 256 used cars, sport-utility vehicles, pickups, and minivans manufactured between 1993 and 2000. Consumer Reports' trusted list of "Good Bets" lists models that have performed well over the years and have a better-than-average reliability. No other source can tell you more about a vehicle's reliability: with anecdotes from real-life experience, Consumer Reports advises which cars are likely to be good, and which cars can mean trouble. Also included is useful advice on where to shop, what questions to ask the seller, how to inspect the car, and how to negotiate the right price.

The experts at Consumer Reports have decades of experience in driving, testing, and reporting on cars. Their work is based on the testing and expertise of the Consumer Reports Auto Test Division, which has evaluated autos on the testtrack and on public roads for more than 60 years, and on the analysis of reliability data by the Consumer Reports Survey Research Division, which gathers auto repair information from hundreds of thousands of Consumer Reports subscribers each year.

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