When you buy a wheelbarrow or a table lamp or a half-gallon of milk, you probably don’t think twice about the Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price, if, indeed, there is such a thing for those consumer products. The only price that has any meaning is the price you pay to purchase most items. Every car buyer, though, keeps a weather-eye on the MSRP. For the savvy buyer, it’s the place from which negotiations begin, and for the surprising number of less educated buyers, it’s the price they pay, no questions asked, without even considering the fact they could pay less. Read more . . .

It wasn’t too long ago that Korean-built vehicles were thought of as shoddy imitations of the Japanese. After a series of big quality glitches in the early Nineties, Hyundai sales took a steeper plunge than a Magic Mountain roller coaster, and Kias were the butt of Jay Leno’s jokes on The Tonight Show. But this year’s Initial Quality Study from California-based research firm J.D. Power and Associates indicates the worm is turning. In this study, those once-derided Korean cars out-paced Domestic U.S. brands and, even more surprisingly, the aggregate of European brands. And while the term “paradigm-shift” is perhaps the most-over-used term in the car industry, this turning of the quality tables is a landmark moment. Read more . . .