Cars.com Names Honda CR-V and Toyota Camry Top Redesigns of the Year

CHICAGO, Nov. 15, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- The editors at Cars.com, the premier online resource for new and used vehicles, today named the Honda CR-V and Toyota Camry the top redesigned cars of the year.  The Redesign Index takes into account a number of factors, including sales, to determine which redesigns were the most successful for automakers. 

"Not all redesigns are equally successful, but the Camry and CR-V scored big among top-selling models," said Kelsey Mays, Industry Analyst at Cars.com. "The Camry drew huge appeal from car shoppers, and the CR-V has been equally popular among shoppers and has also been a Cars.com favorite this year, winning the Cars.com/USA Today Compact SUV Shootout."

Car manufacturers can spend $1 billion or more to develop new or redesigned cars, so sales are a significant indicator of success. The new index created by Cars.com takes a deeper dive into those figures to determine which redesigned cars rose above the others. Cars.com experts crunched numbers for 61 redesigns or introductions, and grouped cars into three categories representing their annual sales numbers in order to level the playing field. "After all, lesser selling models can easily double their sales with a sharp redesign, but market saturation makes it harder for a popular model to do the same," said Mays.

 "Automakers count on redesigns to boost sales," said Mays. "Though they are costly, the payoff tends to be significant, however not all are as successful as the Camry and CR-V. We took a look at an array of 2012 redesigns to determine which followed the pattern of outselling their predecessors and which fell short."

For full results of Cars.com's 2012 Redesign Index, visit www.blogs.cars.com. For current inventory listings of these cars or any new car on the market, visit www.cars.com/for-sale/.

ABOUT CARS.COM

Cars.com is an award-winning online destination for car shoppers that offers information from consumers and experts to help buyers formulate opinions on what to buy, where to buy and how much to pay for a car. Cars.com offers thousands of new and used vehicle listings, consumer reviews, side-by-side comparison tools, photo galleries, videos, unbiased editorial content and many other tools. Cars.com put millions of car buyers in control of their shopping process with the information they need to make confident buying decisions. Launched in June 1998, Cars.com is a division of Classified Ventures LLC, which is owned by leading media companies, including A.H. Belo (NYSE: AHC), Gannett Co., Inc. (NYSE: GCI), The McClatchy Company (NYSE: MNI), Tribune Company and The Washington Post Company (NYSE: WPO).

SOURCE Cars.com

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