Kia cee'd named as Best Value New Car by Parkers

Car price tracking experts Parkers have introduced new set of motor industry gongs with a difference. The Parkers New Car Awards focus on value for money and all-in cost of ownership, and the first winner is the Kia cee'd. The cee'd has already impressed buyers with a combination of good performance and keen initial pricing, and it's familiar to millions of Top Gear viewers as the programme's current “reasonably priced car”. The Parkers award confirms that it can be an interesting long-term proposition as well.

Parkers also selected winners in about a dozen sub-categories. The cee'd 1.4 VR-7 emerged from the Medium Hatchback group to take the overall title; the Skoda Octavia 1.2 TSI S won the Family Hatchback award and the Audi A1 1.6TDi SE was judged the best Small Hatchback. Premium brands were also successful in the 4x4 (Land Rover Freelander 2.2 TD4S), Premium Executive (BMW 520d SE) and Crossover (Mini One Countryman 1.6D) sub-groups, reflecting the importance of slow depreciation in overall costs. The winner in the Eco Car bracket, which included all electric cars and hybrids, was the Honda Jazz 1.3 IMA HE Hybrid CVT.

The first Parkers New Car Awards coincide with the release of a valuable online tool for car-buyers at the Parkers website. The Cost of Motoring tool ( car-costs.parkers.co.uk) gives the total cost of ownership for new and used models, taking care of all the complicated and boring maths usually associated with calculations of this sort. It takes into account a whole host of items that are easy to forget, such as the typical cost of annual breakdown cover. The cheapest Kia cee'd is projected by Parkers to cost £428.25 per month all-in over a three-year period, assuming it is driven 10,000 miles per year. The bulk of this figure is made up of unavoidable fixed costs, as opposed to running costs.