After driving all nine cars, each editor was asked to rank the vehicles in two categories. The first category was the order in which an editor would personally rank the vehicles in terms of "would I buy it." The second category was a ranking of "would I recommend it to an economy sedan shopper." Then all personal and recommended rankings were put together to come up with an overall ranking for each category.

As you can see, little variation exists between how our editors feel about economy sedans personally, and how they feel about them as a recommended buy. In fact, 4th to 9th place on the lists were identical. Only the top three positions changed, and only by a small percentage. It appears that, as far as Edmunds.com's editorial team is concerned, you simply can't go wrong with the Nissan Sentra, Mazda Protege, or Ford Focus.