A car is probably going to be your biggest expense outside of the purchase or rental of your home. Paying too much for a car through purchase price or financing can leave you in the hole if the vehicle is totalled in an accident or stolen. An insurance company is going to pay only the value of your car, not the exorbitant balance left on your finance interest. Another concern is retaining good re-sale or trade value if you plan on replacing your vehicle every few years.

Consumer Reports list the top 10 best cars for holding value and the bottom 10. Not surprisingly, all of the top 10 are imports. 9 of the bottom 10 are American made models.

Check out the list.

You’ve decided to buy a car. You know what you can afford for a monthly payment, you have figured in all the other costs such as insurance and you are ready to make that car loan committment. The dealer is offering you a rebate or a lower interest rate - which is the better deal?

That depends on several factors such as the size of the rebate, the price of the car and what interest rates are available. A rebate will lower the total loan amount but a lower interest rate will give you lower monthly payments for the life of the loan.

Bankrate.com has a nifty little calculator to help you decide which is the better deal for you. Just plug in the price of the car, the interest rates with and without rebate, the amount of the rebate and the length of the loan. Bankrate’s calculator will tell you the better option and how much it will save you.

Ford has announced that its small car, the Focus, will be revised and upgraded for 2008. Designed initially for Europe, the model has not been completely re-designed for America before and the idea is that, by offering more features for less money, sales will take off again after sliding recently.

The small car segment of the US market has not been a money earner for manufacturers in the past but the hope is that increasing gas prices will re-vitalize sales of cars like the Focus. Ford have not been doing well recently and are looking for ways to improve their position.

Having had experience of the Focus, I must admit to a wry smile and the thought that any improvement to it would be a step in the right direction. Just do a search for problems with it and see what you come up with…

CNN has an article looking at Consumer Reports’ latest survey on reliability in 2006 and 2007 cars. It makes interesting reading, with some winners you would expect and some surprising losers.

Toyota and Lexus do well but I was amazed that Volkswagen have so many models that owners reported as unreliable. As a result, I wonder just how reliable these surveys are. How were they conducted and what questions were asked? And to what extent has the usual problem with these surveys been overcome - that many owners hesitate to pour scorn on what was their own choice, after all?

These questions are answered in Consumer Reports’ FAQ on the matter. It does seem that they make a good job of their investigations and so we would be wise to take note of their findings when looking for a new car.

Have a read and be prepared for some surprises.