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Buying guides
Practical guides for buying a used car, with sources for each guide.
The safest cars of 2026: what Euro NCAP and IIHS ratings really meanThere is no single 'safest cars in the world' list: Euro NCAP tests European market-spec vehicles and IIHS tests US/Canada-spec vehicles, using different protocols and different scoring systems, so their results can't be merged or compared. Euro NCAP's 2025 Best-in-Class awards went to six vehicles, including the Mercedes-Benz CLA and Tesla Model 3; IIHS handed out 63 awards for 2026 model-year vehicles under tightened crash-avoidance criteria. Always check the specific model year of a rating, too: Euro NCAP itself says a safety rating expires after six years because testing standards keep getting harder, not because the car changed.
EV range explained: why WLTP and EPA numbers differWLTP (used in Europe) and EPA (used in the US) test electric-car range with different lab procedures and different downward adjustments, so the same car gets two different official numbers: WLTP figures typically read about 10-15% higher than EPA figures for a comparable vehicle, though the gap varies by model. Neither number is 'wrong'; they're answers to different test questions, and on a used EV the real-world range also depends heavily on battery health, not just which label is on the window sticker.
Buying a car across borders: the extra risks of importsCars sold across borders carry meaningfully higher fraud risk than cars sold within their original country: a 2018 European Parliament study estimated 30-50% of cross-border used-car sales in the EU involved odometer manipulation, versus 5-12% for domestic sales, and more recent data from history-check provider carVertical found imported cars are 2.2 times more likely to have a tampered odometer than local ones. The core problem is verification: service records, inspection history, and write-off status all live in the exporting country's systems, which don't always talk to the country you're buying in.