Cars.com/USA TODAY/MotorWeek $16,000 Subcompact Shootout

ARCADIA, Calif. – As rising fuel prices spotlight the value of good gas mileage, low-price subcompact cars are leaving showrooms at a rate of three for every two that dealers were selling a year ago.

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  By Evan Sears, Cars.com
  For our Shootout we drove (l-r, back row) Ford Fiesta, Toyota Yaris, Kia Rio, Honda Fit, (front row, l-r) Chevrolet Sonic, Hyundai Accent and Nissan Versa.

By Evan Sears, Cars.com

For our Shootout we drove (l-r, back row) Ford Fiesta, Toyota Yaris, Kia Rio, Honda Fit, (front row, l-r) Chevrolet Sonic, Hyundai Accent and Nissan Versa.

Many recession-battered buyers who can't afford $30,000 for 50-mpg hybrids, are looking to small cars priced half that for relief from $4 gasoline.

It's still a niche of the new car market: Despite 49% higher sales through February this year vs. a year ago, cars classed "lower small" by tracker Autodata — essentially all subcompacts — still account for just three of every 100 new vehicles sold.

Subcompacts are the cheapest new car alternative, though the average transaction price of $16,287 this year is up 14% from two years ago, J.D. Power and Associates data show. For perspective, the average out-the-door price for the next size up, compacts, is $19,462, Power says, and for all vehicles it's $28,080.

Inspired by the increasing interest in subcompacts, our latest head-to-auto competition — the Cars.com/USA TODAY/MotorWeek $16,000 Subcompact Shootout — aimed to see where you can get the most for your money in an entry-level small car. It pitted seven of the small cars with stickers of $16,000 or less (before shipping) against each other in three days of testing.

The results can help you sort through the flood of information available — even help you decide if you'd be happier with a nearly new used car, or maybe spending a bit more for a compact with more room and features.

You can find more online at cars.usatoday.com and Cars.com. MotorWeek will air its Shootout coverage starting this week.

Surprises: The best-selling subcompact, the redesigned Nissan Versa, came in last. And the oldest design among the contenders, Honda Fit, came in first.

More than fuel prices have driven showroom traffic for subcompacts. There are new models, redesigns of existing nameplates and more advertising. Six of the seven Shootout contenders are new or significantly redesigned.

"These are the new-generation subcompacts," says Thomas King, senior director at J.D. Power and Associates. "They have a lot of equipment and a lot of technology and electronic features you didn't see in the past. People want fuel economy, but they want the features, too."

The Shootout found some models riding the crest of this "new-generation" curve, others lagging.

To make the field, a car's window-sticker price had to be $16,000 or less, while having four doors, seating for four, an automatic transmission and a government gas mileage rating of at least 35 mpg on the highway.

The last may not seem a high bar. Nowadays, many bigger cars have mileage ratings that good. Hyundai's Sonata and Toyota's Camry midsize sedans, for example, have 35 mpg highway ratings.

Subcompacts tend to be less aerodynamic, which hurts their highway mileage, but their lighter weight can give them an mpg edge on city and suburban streets, the most common driving.

Sticker price can grow

One thing to watch out for: You might have to work to get one at the low sticker price. Dealers have less profit margin than on bigger vehicles and sometimes are tempted to pad the sticker with "dealer-installed" furbelows.

Buyers, such as Richard Mark, 37, a mechanical engineer in Norfolk, Va., complain that it's hard to find a low-price small car. "They're advertised very low, but they come in with dealer options added," he says, boosting asking prices above what's on the sticker or in ads.

Mark bought a Nissan Versa recently for "about $15,500, out the door" by tapping into buying adviser FightingChance.com. It helped him save about $1,000 by advising him to, among other moves, shop outside his immediate area.

He also looked at a Chevrolet Sonic, he says, but "it basically came down to price. The Chevy had a dealer package costing roughly 800 bucks that was pinstriping, wheel locks, window etching.

"I said, 'You're making me take $800 of stuff I don't want. If you were $800 lower we'd be good to go.' But (the dealer) wouldn't come down."

Of the Shootout cars, Sonic, Versa, Fit, Accent and Kia Rio came from automakers' test fleets. The Ford Fiesta and Toyota Yaris were obtained by Cars.com through car brokers.

The lowest-price beast in our herd was Versa, with a sticker of $12,930 before shipping. Its only concessions to civilization were floor mats and the Shootout-required automatic transmission.

Highest was the Hyundai Accent: $15,990.

It quickly was clear that you have to spend every bit of the $16,000 Shootout budget to get a pleasant, livable car. The lowest-price contenders were scored down for lack of features and "cheapness," even though "value" was a key factor in the scoring.

So, a cheap car isn't necessarily a good value.

Beyond value gaps, other big differences among the little cars suggest that shoppers must be thorough in researching what features are standard or optional, and be careful in their decisions.

Smaller, cheaper subcompacts force automakers to make tough choices, and thus the test cars showed more variety, and a wider range of scores, than vehicles in some other Shootouts. Often the scores are tightly grouped for more expensive vehicles because they have pretty much the same elements, packaged a little differently by each automaker.

Among the Shootout subcompacts, there was little conformity on:

•Drivetrains. All had gasoline four-cylinder engines, but power varied from Yaris' low of 106 horsepower to the 138 hp ratings of Sonic's relatively big 1.8-liter four-cylinder and the smaller, direct-injection engines in corporate siblings Kia Rio and Hyundai Accent.

The variety of automatics was stunning. Versa had a CVT (continuously variable-ratio transmission). Yaris had an old-design four-speed automatic. Fit had a five-speed automatic, while Rio and Accent had six-speeds. And Fiesta had a six-speed dual-clutch gearbox (essentially a manual transmission shifted automatically by electronics). Such transmissions can improve gas mileage but may not shift as smoothly as conventional automatics.

•Features. Some had hand-crank windows, others power. Some had barely adjustable seats, others multiple adjustments. Some had manual outside mirrors, others power.

Sonic was an odd mix: upscale remote-control locks but downscale hand-crank windows.

•Space. Some were cramped, others remarkably spacious. Most were in-between.

Will it last?

One attribute of any car — no matter how much research you do — remains a gamble: reliability.

Mark, who bought the Versa, notes, "I was coming out of a 1996 Saturn SL2. It had 240,000 miles, lasted forever. I really hope this Nissan Versa will do the same."