2012年度畅销车型十大黑马

    整理2012年最畅销的明星车型时，我把目光放在了那些拥有出色销售纪录的赢家上：也就是更多依靠口碑和价值、而不是重新设计外观获胜的车型。

    整理出来的结果让我大吃一惊。

    我打算找出那些没有花大价钱“整容”，却照样吸引了新客户的车型，它们才是车企真正的摇钱树。新车型往往要上市好几年后才能开始赚钱，因为那时才能摊销掉技术开发、机器加工以及上市发布等环节的成本。因此，我没有只考虑同比2011年销售增幅最大的车型，而是筛选了所有改款车型后，专门关注那些一直畅销的老款车型。

    我本以为这张名单上都是福特（Ford）F-150皮卡和丰田凯美瑞（Toyota Camry）这样长销不衰的经典老款车。但经过汽车网站Edmunds.com的统计分析师计算后，胜出的多是更老款的车型。这些车一直通过大力促销不断吸引着客户，而购车人最看重的因素莫过于价格实惠。

    下面就是2012年10款无需改款、销量却大幅增长的车型。

    In compiling a gallery of 2012's top showroom performers, I went looking for the proven winners: cars with a track record of success that depended more on reputation and value than a fashionable new redesign.

    I was surprised by what I found.

    The plan was to identify those models that had managed to win additional customers without the benefit of costly makeovers. These holdovers can be the most profitable ones for automakers. New cars don't make any money until they've been on the market for several years because they have to amortize engineering, tooling, and launch costs. So instead of just recording the vehicles that recorded the highest percentage sales increases compared with 2011, I weeded out all those models that had been reworked and only looked at carryover models.

    I expected my list to be studded by hardy perennials like the Ford F-150 pickup and Toyota Camry. But after some number crunching by the crack statisticians at Edmunds.com, the winners turned out to be mostly older models that had been heavily incentivized to keep drawing customers after the new wore off. More than anything, car buyers like to find a deal.

    Here are the 10 models that made the biggest sales gains in 2012 without the benefit of a redesign.