Thursday, 2 December 2010

Whats The Best City Car?

Author: admin

Whether youre spending all your time zipping around an urban jungle or sitting in grid lock on your way home from work you know the city demands a lot from vehicles. Not all cars are designed to crawl along in traffic or squeeze effortlessly into compact parking spots having snaked through small city streets. If your daily routine demands this kind of driving you have to make sure youre driving a car designed for it.

Your car has a great deal to do with just how stressed or comfortable you feel behind the wheel. If youre driving the wrong sort of car for city driving you might well undermine your safety and the safety of other drivers on the road.

To choose a good car for the city you need to think a few things. First of all you need to think about how well the car is going to fit in on the streets. Second you are going to need to think about how easy it is to park. Finally you need to think about how easily you can see from the drivers seat what is the visibility like and how easy is it for you to handle and maneuver the car. How comfortable do you feel in the drivers seat?

Apply these questions when you have a general shortlist of cars that you like. You will be able to answer many of the questions by noting some of the key details about the cars themselves. The turning radius for example is measured as the outer radius of a circle that the car would make with the steering wheel cranked all the way in one direction. Generally this is considered to be perhaps the single most important numbers to look at when shopping for a good city car. According to one senior auto test engineer interviewed in Consumer Reports the turning radius is a measure of the cars maneuverability and how easy it is to park.

The next thing to think about is the footprint of a car. The footprint refers to its overall length and width of the vehicle. It is especially important for city driving because as a general rule the bigger the car the tougher it is to maneuver on roads crammed with doubleparked vehicles and trucks that are loading and unloading.

Once youve thought about the maneuverability of the car you need to think about your visibility from the drivers seat. Its all very well if you can zip back and forth and around about but if you cant see anything to gauge distances youre going to be stuck.

Outward visibility of the road and surrounding cars is very important but its largely a personal issue. Some people prefer SUVs because of view over the road and other cars. Others find it very difficult to see objects that are low down however and they often find themselves missing curbs and obstacles. To a certain extent the height of the driver and the position of the seats matters too but it is crucial to review the visibility for your car of choice before you make a decision to buy.

According to Forbes Autos the top ten best cars for city driving are:

Honda InsightToyota PriusBMW 3 Series CoupeMini CooperScion xBHonda Civic HybridVolvo V50Audi A3Saab 92XMercedesBenz CClass

The topten worst cars for city driving are:

Hummer H1 AlphaMaybach Type 62Lincoln Navigator LRollsRoyce PhantomHummer H2Chevrolet SuburbanCadillac Escalade ESVLincoln Town Car Signature LInfiniti QX56Bentley Arnage RL

Of course youre free to choose the type of car you want without reference to these lists but if you are driving in the city it may be a very good idea to invest in one or other of these models. The more comfortable you are in the drivers seat of your car the more likely you are to drive well consistently.

About the writer:  Tim Cartwright writes for AutoBidsOnline.com a place to research car prices new car comparisons reviews and much more. Build your own car spesifications and get competitive quotes from car dealers in your areas.

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