About DownTo1 Cars
DownTo1 Cars is a question-led car finder. Instead of a filter list that only ever takes cars away, it asks what actually separates one car from another for you — and re-ranks the whole catalogue, live, after every answer.
What it does
Answer as much or as little as you like: what you can spend, how many seats you need, how you would charge or fuel it, what it has to cope with in an ordinary week. Every answer re-ranks the entire catalogue on the spot and tells you which cars moved and why. Stop after four questions if you like — the engine works with whatever it has been given and says how sure it is — or answer everything and watch the field come down to one.
How the ranking works
Your answers become weighted preferences rather than filters, so a car that misses on one point can still win on the strength of the rest. Only what you mark as a deal-breaker is pushed to the bottom, and even then it stays on screen: you can always see what was ruled out and what it would have cost you. Between questions the engine works out which unanswered one would move your shortlist most, and asks that one next.
It is also market-aware. 417 models across 5 markets, each with its own catalogue, its own currency and units, and its own idea of an ordinary car. A European shortlist is not a US shortlist with the prices converted, so the two are kept as separate catalogues rather than one list in fancy dress.
Where the figures come from
Plainly: this catalogue is compiled estimates, not a manufacturer feed. The figures were assembled for this application so that models can be compared on a consistent basis, and a few attributes — comfort, reliability, how much fun a car is — are judgements written as numbers so the engine can trade them off against everything else. The ranking is meaningful. Any single absolute number is approximate, so if your decision turns on a small difference, check that figure at the source before you act on it. The full provenance, attribute by attribute, is set out here:
Independence
No manufacturer, dealer or marketplace pays to appear here, to rank higher, or to be included at all, and there is no sponsored position anywhere in the results. Where an answer links out to a marketplace, that link may earn us a commission at no extra cost to you. It is drawn after the ranking has been computed, from the catalogue and your answers alone — there is no path by which the commercial side can reach the score.
Who runs it
DownTo1 Cars is run independently, one of a small family of DownTo1 finders built on the same engine. There are no accounts, no adverts, and no tracking you have not agreed to. Who is responsible for the site in the data-protection sense, and how to reach them, is set out on the privacy page.