Small cars are some of the most affordable cars on the road and also save you money on gas, making them the most practical and smart solution available. With a smaller car, it’s much easier to fit into a tight parking space, making them useful for city driving, side streets, and parking garages, where there aren’t a lot of big spaces. Smaller cars will fit more comfortably in a garage at home and maybe even leave room for two vehicles. Smaller cars are safer than they have ever been with rearview cameras, forward collision warning, and lane departure alerts, as well as some other added new features. Many small cars are surprisingly spacious in terms of legroom and some of these cars have gotten slightly bigger in recent years, making them more accessible for families. The top small cars for 2019 are the Honda Civic, Volkswagen Golf and Mazda3. Check out these FAQs to learn more.
The Honda Civic gets the best gas mileage, with 32/42 city and highway miles per gallon. Both the Golf and the Mazda3 are not far behind, with the Volkswagen getting 25/34 city and highway and the Mazda3 getting 28/37 city and highway.
Choosing which one gets the most power will depend on the trim levels for each car. The Civic offers a standard 2.0-liter four-cylinder engine with 158 horsepower, but the turbocharged 1.5-liter engine that is optional can boost the horsepower to 174 or 180, depending on the trim. The Golf comes with 147 horsepower from a turbocharged 1.4-liter four-cylinder engine. The Mazda3 has some different options for engines as well. The 155 horsepower 2.0-liter engine is standard, but to get a boost, you can choose the 184 horsepower 2.5-liter option.
There are subtle changes to the styling. There is a new Sports trim and the Honda Sensing package is now standard on all trim levels. Some of the safety features in the package include lane departure warning, adaptive cruise control, and forward collision warning.
The Volkswagen Golf gets a new 1.4-liter powertrain update for 2019. The Golf will also have more safety features standard. There is a new fuel saving engine stop start system on the automatic transmission models that will shut down the engine when the car is stopped.
While small cars aren’t notorious for the need for speed, the Mazda3 is the fastest with a top speed of 137 mph. The Civic offers a top speed of 127 mph and the Volkswagen Golf is behind that at 124 mph.
There are only going to be two trims for the 2019 version, the S and SE trims, while the SEL has been dropped.
There are quite a few trims available for the Honda Civic in both the Coupe and Sedan models. If you want the Coupe there are five trims available, including the LX, Sport with a six-speed manual engine, Sport with an automatic engine, EX, and Touring. The Sedan version has the LX trim with both the manual and automatic versions and the Sport with both automatic and manual versions. There are also the EX, EX-L, and Touring trims, which only come with the automatic option.
There are currently three trims for the Mazda3 with some different options for each. There is the Sport, Touring and Grand Touring trims, which can all come with manual or automatic transmission.