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A key barrier to the widespread implementation of composite materials in automobile structures is the traditional relationship of cost/performance. Increased performance generally means increased cost and lower cost usually requires compromise in performance. To date, this relationship has been unfavorable for high volume composite applications. Resin selection offers one avenue of moving away from the traditional cost/performance relationship. New resin systems may allow the designer to achieve sufficient performance at an acceptable cost but there are still compromises which must be made. Not all resin properties are critical to all applications and through an in-depth understanding of performance throughout the range of anticipated component requirements, some non-critical performance areas can be identified. This paper presents an evaluation of five different types of resin systems and ranks the relative cost and processability.