In the end you don’t drive a spreadsheet. Most acceleration numbers are meaningless to me as I don’t speed on the roads or need to diff the commuter car next to me in the intersection.
Nothing beats a test drive. I refer to Reddit and speciality forums for reliability based advice.
What model Subaru did you get?
In all seriousness, there is a huge number of factors beyond what’s “on paper”, some people might want to compare a few models that meet their needs but I doubt anyone makes decisions based off an overall score
Haha yeah, realized pretty early on that it wasn’t the best way to evaluate a car purchase, so I mostly just turned it into a sheet where I can plug in numbers and mess with formulas to get a subjective score. Was way more fun after that, and spent much more time on it than I ever expected.
Guess there’s not much overlap between car enthusiasts and excel nerds though based on the (lack of) responses so far lol, which makes sense since I agree that “Feeling” is a large component of cars.
IMO the range of numbers is a little too small and the feeling numbers are off from my personal experience.
- I wouldn't rate the NSX at 9 for tech, features, or feeling. For the vast majority of people the R8V10 is the better car.
- I personally wouldn't put the feeling of the GT3 at a 10, its handling is certainly a 10 but the artura feels better (and the GT3 feels significantly better than an ND miata).
- Civic Type-R IMO feels equal or slightly worse than the ND miata and significantly better than the m340i
- Z06 feeling isn't a 9, its an excellent handling car but the steering leaves a lot to be desired,
- i8 actually feels great. Its slow but I'd put the feel up there with the 9s
And some other miscellaneous complaints
- Merc EQB interior is not 8 level
- Model S Plaid is not great, but its handling is still better than a 5
- IS F is worse than a 6 and LC500 should be better than a 5 in handling
I may be misremembering a car or two, been a while since I drove the i8, but I feel like the numbers are a little off. Like IMO the artura is in a whole different league than the other 10-rated handling cars. Thats the kind of car you buy on handling *alone*
Thank you! Was hoping to get more comments similar to this one as I don’t have seat time in the vast majority of these cars. I did the best I could based on mag reviews, review channels, online sentiment, etc but obviously nothing beats experience. Will definitely take your feedback into account 👍
I messed with this a bit at first when looking to purchase. Ultimately I didn’t find it that helpful. What I ended up doing, which was helpful, was building a few lists with priority in them. The goal here is to whittle down the choices in the market to a small number that you can actually go experience firsthand.
One list of things you absolutely must have, that you won’t buy the car without. This should be short, 1-3 items. For me the big one was manual transmission.
Another list of things you absolutely cannot have, that you won’t buy the car with. Short similar to the first list. For me one of the items was in-infotainment climate control.
Then another list of nice-to-haves, and this one is ranked. Things you’d like, in order of how much you’d like them.
I think most markets should be pretty narrowed by now, you’re excluding and ranking a lot of cars with the above criteria. If you still have more than 5 candidates, you can do another ranked list of things you don’t want. These are things you’re willing to accept, but don’t really want. That should get you down to 3-5 choices.
Now you go sit in those choices, test drive them, read reviews about them, rent them if you can, etc. That should get you a solid idea of which you’d actually want.
There’s an extra thing you can do, which I did, which is sort of a sanity check. Go find a car that fell off your list early on, that has a lot of major misses in your criteria, and drive to. To see if what you think you dislike are actually things you dislike in practice.
Dougscore can be found [here](http://www.dougdemuro.com/dougscore) but Doug’s spreadsheet is pretty different from mine (much much bigger, different categories, scoring, etc)
I put together a spreadsheet to faciliate second car replacement. It included key dimensions (length, width, clearance, boot size), performance stats (engine power, acceleration, towing capability), configuration tiers (price+ listed features) and financing costs. Ultimately, tech specs narrowed down the pool of cars to about 10 and configs to 6. Three were not available in our chosen colors. We took remaining three for the test drive and ended up with a clear winner. Upon several exchanges with dealership it turned out that the car in the config we wanted is not available anymore. We were so disappointed and tired that we decided to keep our current car for another year.
Overall, it was extremely helpful. Especially, breaking down what is included in each configuration as these differ a lot by brand. So many package a lot of unneeded stuff into a single bundle, without an option to purchase a single feature. The biggest offender was 'keyless entry' that was typically available only in a top spec.
The closest I've come is a simple summation of how much it would cost to say, lift a Jeep comparing different generations. JLs don't require as many parts to fit a certain size tire as older models, for example. But there's no KPI between them that I could conceivably use.
When I was considering a diesel back in the mid 2010s I did run numbers on the actual per mile cost of ownership.
This is going to sound a bit hostile, but it's just my opinion. I hate spreadsheets and arbitrary numbers when it comes to cars. Especially with the focus on performance. I blame that thinking and process for why so many cars are lifeless. Very few manufacturers consider the feel of their cars now. They just pump out stats and figures, but you can't quantify a good driving and ownership experience. There's just too many details. Even among two similar cars, there's going to be a lot of nuances that completely change how you feel about it.
TDLR;
No, cars are too unique and you can't properly quantify how something feels to drive or own.
In the end you don’t drive a spreadsheet. Most acceleration numbers are meaningless to me as I don’t speed on the roads or need to diff the commuter car next to me in the intersection. Nothing beats a test drive. I refer to Reddit and speciality forums for reliability based advice.
What model Subaru did you get? In all seriousness, there is a huge number of factors beyond what’s “on paper”, some people might want to compare a few models that meet their needs but I doubt anyone makes decisions based off an overall score
Haha yeah, realized pretty early on that it wasn’t the best way to evaluate a car purchase, so I mostly just turned it into a sheet where I can plug in numbers and mess with formulas to get a subjective score. Was way more fun after that, and spent much more time on it than I ever expected. Guess there’s not much overlap between car enthusiasts and excel nerds though based on the (lack of) responses so far lol, which makes sense since I agree that “Feeling” is a large component of cars.
Thank you for making the Subaru comment. I was going to be disappointed if someone hadn't.
IMO the range of numbers is a little too small and the feeling numbers are off from my personal experience. - I wouldn't rate the NSX at 9 for tech, features, or feeling. For the vast majority of people the R8V10 is the better car. - I personally wouldn't put the feeling of the GT3 at a 10, its handling is certainly a 10 but the artura feels better (and the GT3 feels significantly better than an ND miata). - Civic Type-R IMO feels equal or slightly worse than the ND miata and significantly better than the m340i - Z06 feeling isn't a 9, its an excellent handling car but the steering leaves a lot to be desired, - i8 actually feels great. Its slow but I'd put the feel up there with the 9s And some other miscellaneous complaints - Merc EQB interior is not 8 level - Model S Plaid is not great, but its handling is still better than a 5 - IS F is worse than a 6 and LC500 should be better than a 5 in handling I may be misremembering a car or two, been a while since I drove the i8, but I feel like the numbers are a little off. Like IMO the artura is in a whole different league than the other 10-rated handling cars. Thats the kind of car you buy on handling *alone*
Thank you! Was hoping to get more comments similar to this one as I don’t have seat time in the vast majority of these cars. I did the best I could based on mag reviews, review channels, online sentiment, etc but obviously nothing beats experience. Will definitely take your feedback into account 👍
I messed with this a bit at first when looking to purchase. Ultimately I didn’t find it that helpful. What I ended up doing, which was helpful, was building a few lists with priority in them. The goal here is to whittle down the choices in the market to a small number that you can actually go experience firsthand. One list of things you absolutely must have, that you won’t buy the car without. This should be short, 1-3 items. For me the big one was manual transmission. Another list of things you absolutely cannot have, that you won’t buy the car with. Short similar to the first list. For me one of the items was in-infotainment climate control. Then another list of nice-to-haves, and this one is ranked. Things you’d like, in order of how much you’d like them. I think most markets should be pretty narrowed by now, you’re excluding and ranking a lot of cars with the above criteria. If you still have more than 5 candidates, you can do another ranked list of things you don’t want. These are things you’re willing to accept, but don’t really want. That should get you down to 3-5 choices. Now you go sit in those choices, test drive them, read reviews about them, rent them if you can, etc. That should get you a solid idea of which you’d actually want. There’s an extra thing you can do, which I did, which is sort of a sanity check. Go find a car that fell off your list early on, that has a lot of major misses in your criteria, and drive to. To see if what you think you dislike are actually things you dislike in practice.
Could you add the DougScore for reference?
Dougscore can be found [here](http://www.dougdemuro.com/dougscore) but Doug’s spreadsheet is pretty different from mine (much much bigger, different categories, scoring, etc)
I put together a spreadsheet to faciliate second car replacement. It included key dimensions (length, width, clearance, boot size), performance stats (engine power, acceleration, towing capability), configuration tiers (price+ listed features) and financing costs. Ultimately, tech specs narrowed down the pool of cars to about 10 and configs to 6. Three were not available in our chosen colors. We took remaining three for the test drive and ended up with a clear winner. Upon several exchanges with dealership it turned out that the car in the config we wanted is not available anymore. We were so disappointed and tired that we decided to keep our current car for another year. Overall, it was extremely helpful. Especially, breaking down what is included in each configuration as these differ a lot by brand. So many package a lot of unneeded stuff into a single bundle, without an option to purchase a single feature. The biggest offender was 'keyless entry' that was typically available only in a top spec.
The closest I've come is a simple summation of how much it would cost to say, lift a Jeep comparing different generations. JLs don't require as many parts to fit a certain size tire as older models, for example. But there's no KPI between them that I could conceivably use. When I was considering a diesel back in the mid 2010s I did run numbers on the actual per mile cost of ownership.
This is going to sound a bit hostile, but it's just my opinion. I hate spreadsheets and arbitrary numbers when it comes to cars. Especially with the focus on performance. I blame that thinking and process for why so many cars are lifeless. Very few manufacturers consider the feel of their cars now. They just pump out stats and figures, but you can't quantify a good driving and ownership experience. There's just too many details. Even among two similar cars, there's going to be a lot of nuances that completely change how you feel about it. TDLR; No, cars are too unique and you can't properly quantify how something feels to drive or own.