Bottom Line/Personal: What are the best family sedans for 2015?

I’m Steven Kaye, Editorial Director at Bottom Line Publications, and today my guest is auto analyst Karl Brauer, Kelley Blue Book Senior Director. The good news is, a family sedan doesn’t have to be boring anymore. The bad news is, some still are. So Bottom Line is here to help you find a family sedan you’ll really love.

Karl, thank you very much for coming out to Bottom Line.

Karl Brauer: Hey, great to be here.

Bottom Line: Now, just even the term “family sedan” sounds kind of like something you wouldn’t necessarily want to have. But I don’t think that’s true anymore.

Brauer: It really isn’t, and I think that’s the most exciting thing is that the family sedan category has become so competitive that there really are almost no bad cars at all. There are several vehicles to choose from here that are very good. It’s hard to pick out what the best one is.

Bottom Line: When you think about a family sedan, it has to have a certain amount of size, I assume, because you’ve got to get the family in there.

Brauer: Right.

Bottom Line: So is it a midsize car and bigger?

Brauer: Pretty much. It’s a midsize sedan. There are larger sedans too that we could talk about, but most of them are midsize sedans that sell well in this category.

Bottom Line: Okay, so for 2015, where are you going for a family sedan?

Brauer: I think the real impressive sedan is the all-new Hyundai Sonata. It just was redesigned for ’15. This comes after a redesign in ’11, so Hyundai is very aggressive in this category. They are redesigning cars every few years, which is very quickly.

This car is loaded with technology that is going to be coming in other vehicles, but they’re going to be one of the first ones out with something called Apple’s CarPlay. It essentially recreates the iPhone interface inside the vehicle’s interface, and it makes it almost have no learning curve – which is one of the problems with a lot of modern vehicles, is how you have to figure out how to use the in-car interaction.

That alone, I think, makes the Sonata pretty interesting, but it’s also styled well. It’s roomy. It’s got great seats, very comfortable. It’s got a 2-liter turbocharged drivetrain that is both powerful and fuel-efficient. The car is well-equipped for the money you pay. There’s really no weak spot to the vehicle, and I think it’s going to do very well for Hyundai.

Bottom Line: And what about reliability?

Brauer: Reliability has been really no issue for Hyundai for a long time, and they’ve also had this 10-year 100,000 mile warranty. People who are concerned about those kinds of things can still have a fair amount of peace of mind, because they’ve got a 10-year warranty on the vehicle.

Bottom Line: Okay, and what’s your other best choice for family sedans for 2015?

Brauer: The holdout for this category for a long time has been the Honda Accord. This is a fabulous car, too. They just redesigned it in ’13, so it’s still relatively fresh in the marketplace. Again, handles well, looks good, lots of interior space, very comfortable seats, quiet, good fuel efficiency. There’s a wide variety. You can get hybrids, you can get a plug-in hybrid. There’s all sorts of options in this category. Even a coupe if you want one.

So the Accord continues to be another benchmark in this field. It’s interesting, because something like the Sonata, which is so good and capable now, would’ve been an unknown vehicle not that long ago. The fact that it’s rivaling the Accord says a lot about it. But it certainly hasn’t put the Accord in the weeds or anything. That’s still a great sedan.

Bottom Line: And how about price-wise between the two, between the Hyundai and the Honda? I’m assuming you’re going to have to spend more feature-for-feature if you want the Honda.

Brauer: Yeah, the Honda will cost you more on an equivalent basis. The Hyundai resale value has come up in the last several years, so it’s not even the fact that you pay more for the Honda upfront but you hold much better resale value than the Sonata, which would’ve been the case a few years ago.

They both hold their resale pretty well, so even though you’re paying less for the Sonata, that’s not going to come back on you if and when you go to sell the car or trade the car in, which used to be the case. Again, with the additional cost, the Accord is worth considering.

Bottom Line: Okay, I want to ask you quickly about two other choices in the family sedan segment. First one, with a reputation for being tremendously fun to drive, and that’s the Mazda 6 sedan.

Brauer: The Mazda 6 is fun to drive, and it also looks very good, very stylish. The problem with the Mazda 6 in my mind is it still only has a single engine option that’s not particularly powerful. It makes less than 200 horsepower, which is kind of low for this category.

And it still has a few traits that feel a little out of date; for instance, the interior display screen, the touch screen, is kind of small. I still really like that car. I think it’s got a lot of potential, it gets good gas mileage, fun to drive, looks good, but it needs some updates still in terms of drivetrain and some interior features.

Bottom Line: Okay, and finally a big honking American car: the Chevy Impala. Which really is bigger than the other cars we’ve been talking about, but could be, especially for a large family, I think a great family sedan.

Brauer: It’d be a fabulous family sedan. This car is huge. The improvement over the previous generation is almost unfathomable. It really improved. It used to be a rental car special; now it doesn’t look or feel like a rental car special at all. The interior is beautiful, the exterior is beautiful. Lots of room, as you said. It’s really another category up in the large sedan category.

Great family car. It’s going to cost you a little bit more than a lot of these midsize family sedans we just discussed, but if you look for a big car with lots of space and a very luxurious feeling without having to pay the premium that most luxury cars carry, an Impala’s a great choice.

Bottom Line: Okay, terrific. Thanks for the information on family sedans for 2015, Karl Brauer.

Brauer: Thanks, Steven.

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