Trust your instincts. I’d hold that up as the best advice I’ve ever been given. When you need to make a decision and the correct answer isn’t a certainty, trust your gut to point the way forward. It really is excellent counsel for the curveballs life may throw at you … but not what you need when it comes to buying a car.
In this instance, what you need is unbiased, considered, expert opinion. It’s not opinion dictated by the whims of advertisers or a need to sell cars, but one offered by experienced folk who have not only driven pretty much all the cars in the market, but always place your needs – those of the car-buying public – first and foremost in their minds. Like our Top 12 Best Buys, in other words. As we do every March, instead of another rather pointless car of the year award, we put forward our recommendations of the best cars to buy in 12 key market segments. We look at an entire model range and consider the attributes that market segment demands, with an increasingly high importance placed on value for money.
You can peruse our best new-car buys on pages 48 to 65 and our best used-car selection pages 106 to 111. Buying advice is, of course, not the only automotive assistance this magazine offers and, in this issue, we examine a topic that has blazed across all print, television and social media over the last few months: the Ford Kuga res. Rather than further criticising Ford’s handling of the situation, we have looked at how and why a re could start in your car (page 94), as well as how to escape your
vehicle and extinguish the blaze (page 104).
