10 Best Cars by Brand

So many brands to choose from. So which model to choose among them? Today’s local car buyers are blessed with more choices than ever before, and it pays to know the best that each brand has to offer. Carmudi presents to you a list of the 10 best cars by brand.

Ford Focus

The Focus deserves praise for its sporty handling, high tech safety gadgetry, smooth drive, and awesome interior. Though many of its price rivals surpass the Focus in the infotainment department, the Ford hatch remains to be a highly capable and competitively priced car.

Honda Jazz

Known as the Honda Fit in other markets, the Jazz managed to be the number one subcompact car for many automotive and motoring publications across the globe. Its fuel economy marks are outstanding for its segment. The Australasian New Car Assessment Program(ANCAP) gave the Jazz a five-star overall safety rating. Comfort and passenger space are topnotch. Despite the Jazz’s chart-topping personality, you can get one for a low starting price of P799,000.

Hyundai Veloster Turbo

Many car enthusiasts awaited the Veloster’s arrival locally with bated breath. Fortunately, the Veloster Turbo doesn’t disappoint. That is, as long as you know what to expect. Though the overall design looks sporty, the Hyundai hatchback is more at home as a cruiser. With a smooth ride, respectable NVH, and a cabin more upscale than its other Hyundai stablemates, the Veloster is easily great value for the money.

Isuzu D-Max

Pickups are meant to be rugged, so if the crop of dynamic daily drivers that has flooded today’s pickup market left you yearning for the good old days, you’ll be glad to know there’s still a handful out there that does what they’re supposed to do. The ruggedness of the D-Max, combined with its simplicity and reliability, means you get a pickup that’s true to its core.

Kia Sorento

The Sorento takes full advantage of its size and sophistication. Larger than the previous model, the new luxury features is where the Sorento shows its sass. With a wide number of extra accoutrements and user-friendly features that raise the driving experience bar, the Sorento makes a solid case as the perfect getaway vehicle for those long trips to the provinces.

Mazda 2

True, the Mazda 2 won Car of the Year awards left and right, but you still don’t see many of them around. And with that, it’s quite safe to say that the vehicle is somewhat of an underdog, and a brilliant one at that. Succinctly, the Mazda 2 delivers on most of the qualities you look for in a day-to-day car. It offers better driving dynamics than many of its rivals, and that’s enough reason to seriously consider buying it.

Mitsubishi Montero Sport

What else is there to say that hasn’t been said about one of the top-selling midsize SUVs in the country? With its current SUV sales numbers coming in second only to the Toyota Fortuner, one would think that the Montero Sport would have gone the way of the dodo with all the sudden unintended acceleration (SUA) talk that went around at the height of the issue. Mitsubishi has turned all that around, proving eventually that this SUV is as stylish, comfortable, and sporty as it was designed to be.

Nissan Juke

Its limited rear cabin size aside, the Nissan Juke is all winner.  A real trendsetter when it first launched, rival manufacturers scrambled to come up with their own version of the smartly styled little hatchback that could. For a tall car, the Juke is surprisingly flat and composed. Responsive steering combined with the quick reaction time of the gas engine makes the Juke one extremely fun-to-drive little crossover.

Suzuki APV

Taking a back-to-basics approach is often a good thing, and this perfectly applies to the path that Suzuki chose to take with the APV. As an uncomplicated vehicle, the APV is a practical throwback to a time when vans were vans and behaved as such. If you feel tied down by all the tech that modern cars come with, then the no-frills Suzuki APV can be the freedom you’re looking for.

Toyota Vios

As the country’s best-selling car since 2008, the Vios has managed to do what not many cars have--get better with every iteration. Since day one, the Vios has been the bread and butter of the Japanese make in the local arena thanks to its affordability and dependability.  A new continuously variable transmission (CVT) was installed this year, which improves on the Vios’s already stellar fuel economy.