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| We started with 21 really good family cars, and narrowed it down to 12 great ones. |
Happily, we had a good place to start. Based on our Expert Ratings of all the vehicles - more than 300 of them - that we test each year, we gathered the 21 vehicles from across classes we believed had the stuff to be top-shelf family haulers. The selection of the 21 was a rigorous process itself. Each of our nine editors received a list of candidates, then individually voted for up to 20 of them, and they were given the opportunity to nominate any additional vehicles that they felt should be included. We culled the responses, tallied the votes, and the vehicles that received four or more votes were invited to participate in our driving-and-usability test. We requested mainstream models from each manufacturer for our test, and most complied, although we did receive a few fully loaded exceptions. We were careful not to give added advantages to those heavily equipped vehicles, because we wanted the test to be as "real-world" representative as possible.
The resulting list included seven sedans, six small SUVs, five midsize SUVs, two minivans, and one hybrid wagon, from a total of 11 different brands. With these all on premises at our Kelley Blue Book offices our staff installed and uninstalled car seats, loaded up the cargo area with various objects, and even brought their kids down to climb in and out, and maybe test out the rear-seat entertainment. When we were done, we tallied up our results, compared notes, and picked what we thought were the best of the bunch.
What was surprising was the number of sedans that we feel qualify for the highest accolades as family cars. Once upon a time, sedans were the family car of choice before minivans and SUVs showed up on the scene. Yet the modern sedan still makes a fine family car, and the 2014 Honda Accord, 2014 Chevrolet Impala, and 2014 Nissan Altima each impressed us enough to land spots on our list.
So what about the other nine on our original list of 21? Well, as you might surmise from the fact that we chose to nominate them, we believe they have many attributes that qualify them as good family-car choices.
But compared to the vehicles that did make our honored Best Family Cars list, they were either lacking features available in the cars listed above or were too narrowly focused to provide the array of features that marked our top choices. That said, if you need excellent fuel economy, want to tow heavy loads, or just want to go farther off the beaten path, there are some solid alternatives worth checking out on the included list of what are essentially our semi-finalists.
Source;
http://www.kbb.com/car-news/all-the-latest/best-family-cars-2014/2000010347/
