Ten smart cars for teenagers

Crash-test scores have, in the past, been the sole criterion for shaping our list of smart cars for teenagers. We have modified the list this year to include the other categories we have mentioned, and have added a category for accident avoidance to bring safety into sharper focus. If you want a ranking of cars with the best crash-test scores, please consult our annual feature on the safest cars.

Each car's accident avoidance rating is from Consumer Reports. That organization, in determining a car's safety, takes into account whether it has such standard equipment as antilock brakes, traction control and stability control. Consumer Reports was also the source for our predicted-reliability information, and the organization uses the same five potential scores for both reliability and accident avoidance: excellent, very good, good, fair and poor.

We excluded from consideration cars without predicted-reliability ratings, such as General Motors' affordable Chevrolet Cobalt sedan. New cars ordinarily do not have reliability ratings, as they need time to be studied.

We also ruled out including three other kinds of cars:

• Cars with base prices of $20,000 or higher.
• Cars that are headed for discontinuation or replacement, such as the Dodge Neon from DaimlerChrysler.
• Cars with serious problems, such as "fair" or "poor" Consumer Reports ratings, safety concerns reported by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) or specific warnings issued by Consumer Reports.

Additionally, we only considered including cars for which NHTSA has issued two frontal crash-test ratings, two side crash-test ratings and a rollover-resistance rating (for all ratings, NHTSA works on a scale of one to five stars).

As a final note on methodology, we should point out that cars can have variable fuel-economy figures or crash-test scores based on their equipment levels. For each vehicle, we looked at its best possible statistics.

And we would also be remiss if we did not explain the lack of SUVs in the slide show, given that some parents favor those kinds of vehicles for their commanding views of roads. In fact, when we set out to write this piece we intended to include at least two SUVs.

But we found that in addition to a dearth of cheap SUVs on the market, no SUV came close to comparing favorably with the passenger cars on our list, often because of fuel inefficiency and safety concerns. While we understand some parents' bias toward the tall trucks, SUVs do not measure up quantitatively under the criteria we feel are most important in selecting cars for teenagers.

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