Britain's best value cars - About our best value cars

For many of us, purchase price is not just the main deciding factor in determining value – quite often, it's the only factor.

However, over a three-year ownership period there's a far bigger threat to value: what they cost to run. Choose the wrong car and the expense of keeping it going could more than wipe out any initial savings you made using What Car?'s Target Price.

Here we've identified Britain's best-value cars in the most popular classes, based not just on their Target Prices, but also on their True MPG and three-year costs.

The good news? Our selections show that ‘value' comes in all shapes and sizes.

The numbers we crunched to choose our winners

True MPG: We've driven every car over our own 50-mile route to produce an mpg figure you can expect to achieve.

Target Price: This is the amount you should be able to buy a car for, taking into account all available discounts.

Three-Year Cost: The three-year cost includes Target Price, retained value, insurance, road tax, servicing and fuel over three years/36,000 miles.

Next: Best Value Superminis and City Cars >>