New ratings site awards Ridgeline and F-150

Total Car Score, a new-vehicle ratings website, announced its 2012 award winners in 20 different categories, two of which are for pickup trucks.

This is how the website describes its scoring methodology, according to a press release:

"Total Car Score utilizes the ratings from multiple automotive authorities and converts them into a simple percentage, representing what the car could have scored from each source versus what it did score. The average number from all of these sources represents the vehicle's Total Car Score. A car must have a rating from at least 5 sources to qualify as a validated Total Car Score. Recently dubbed the Rotten Tomatoes of car review sites by Forbes, Total Car Score aims to make car buying easier by giving shoppers a high-level "industry assessment" of a vehicle in an easy-to-use format."

The winner in the first Total Car Awards in the Small Truck category (in some cases, two top-scoring vehicles were listed) was the Honda Ridgeline, with an overall score percentage of 78.64. In the Large Truck category (which is solely made up of half-ton trucks), the two 2012 vehicles that rose to the top were the Ford F-150, scoring 79.67, and the Toyota Tundra, scoring 79.09.

What makes this award and site unique is that they've collected data from as far back as 2000 in some cases to provide scores. For example, the top 10 small pickups (and their scores) are as follows: 2009 Ridgeline (82.4), 2010 Ridgeline (81.6), 2008 Ridgeline (80.3), 2007 Ridgeline (80.3), 2006 Ridgeline (80.2), 2010 Frontier (79.3), 2008 Tacoma (79.1), 2007 Tacoma (78.7), 2012 Ridgeline (78.6), 2009 Tacoma (78.0).

Other truck categories include High Performance trucks and Heavy Duty trucks. This one is worth a look.