Step one
The index prices it first
The cut is drawn and the car’s band printed before anyone drives anything. The price you see in the verdict was set the day we collected it, not the day we published.
Every verdict is priced before it is written.
96 cars driven this year, each against the price the index held for it on the day we collected it. Nothing is reviewed before it is driven, nothing is driven before it is priced, and a verdict that flatters nobody gets printed anyway.
96reviews published this year
38,410miles driven for them
12bought at the index price, then sold on
0lent by a manufacturer
03
Renault 5 E-Tech
In the garage
week 40 · 1,206 records in the cut
04
Dacia Sandero Stepway
In the garage
week 41 · 2,847 records in the cut
05
Toyota GR Yaris
On the long-termer pad
month 4 of 6 · 402 records in the cut
06
Porsche Macan Electric
Requested 1,104 times
waiting list · 3,410 records in the cut
07
Ford Puma Gen-E
Requested 872 times
waiting list · 1,988 records in the cut
2verdicts this month·96this year·5in the queue·0driven, then skipped
Step two
It is driven for a week
Bought at the index price or borrowed unbriefed, insured, and driven the way the cut’s buyers drive — school run, motorway, a B-road on the way home. No launch events.
Step three
The record is read against the week
Everything the plate says — keepers, MOT, recalls — is checked against what the week found. A review that disagrees with the record prints both, and says which one convinced us.
Step four
The verdict prints, priced
One of three lines: worth the index price, worth more, or not worth it. Beside it, what the car trades for now — and if that has moved since we wrote, the page says so.
96reviews this year·7days with each car·3possible verdicts·0seen early by a maker
I read the Range Rover verdict on the Tuesday and checked it against our own invoice on the Thursday. It was right about the only thing it could have been wrong about: the real range. Three hundred miles at seventy is exactly what we get.
Priya Nair
Surrey · August 2026
Bought
2026 Range Rover Electric
The Corsa verdict said wait a month and the index will do the haggling for you. It was £890 under market when I found it, sold in four days while I was driving to see it — so I bought the next one the index liked instead.
Devon Hart
Bristol · September 2026
Bought
2026 Vauxhall Corsa GSE
The MX-5 piece said buy the one the index likes, not the one with the stripes. I did, and six months on it is worth what I paid — which is more than I can say for the last one.
Sam O’Leary
Leeds · June 2026
Bought
2019 Mazda MX-5 1.5
- Audi7
- BMW9
- Citroën3
- Dacia2
- Fiat3
- Ford8
- Honda3
- Kia6
- Land Rover5
- Mazda4
- Mercedes-Benz7
- Mini4
- Nissan4
- Peugeot6
- Porsche5
- Renault5
- Toyota7
- Volkswagen8
Across96verdicts ·19makes ·0of them for a car a maker chose
Follow the reviews
Reviews
Free, one click to stop, and never sold on.
Questions readers ask
Where the cars come from, what a verdict commits us to, and what happens when the market moves after we print.
Do you buy the cars you review?
Twelve of the ninety-six this year were bought at the index price and sold on afterwards at whatever the index said that week — the sale price prints in the review. The rest are borrowed unbriefed from pooled fleets. No manufacturer lends us a car, and none is told which car is next.
What does a verdict commit you to?
One of three lines: worth the index price, worth more, or not worth it. There is no stars scale to hide in and no middle round to fudge. If the market moves after we print, the figure is re-checked at 00:05 like every other number on this site, and the page says what moved.
A review got my car wrong.
Then we want the paperwork. Every verdict is one week with one car, and it says so. Write to the editor with the record reference and what the week missed — corrections print above the review, in the same place the moved figures do.
Why are the reviews also in the blog?
They are not duplicates. Long-form lives in the archive under its topic — Reviews included — and this page is the shelf those verdicts sit on, beside the queue and the owners’ verdicts. One article, one address; this page links to it.
Can I ask for a car to be reviewed?
Yes — the waiting list is real and the counts on it are printed. Requests move a car up the queue; they do not move the verdict, which is decided by the week we spend with it and the price the index holds that day.
Do makers see verdicts before they print?
No. There are no embargoes on this page. The count of verdicts a manufacturer has seen early is printed at the foot of the methodology above, and it has been zero since the first one.