Prior to selling Los Angeles real estate, I worked in mortgage banking.  One of my many job duties was answering the phone and quoting loan rates.  People would call and ask for the current interest rate. The answer was easy because in the early 80's all we had to offer was a thirty year fixed interest rate.  Well there was the APR issue.  I learned to explain it:

If you are obtaining an auto loan, the interest rate is the interest rate, there aren’t points.  Is there a processing fee, an appraisal fee, a warehouse fee, a walking the dog fee? The APR takes all of these fees into consideration, averages it out and there you have the recalculated interest rate. This is your basis of comparison.  So if lender A quotes you an interest rate of 5% with an APR of 5.89% there are a lot of fees bundled in, and if lender B quotes you 5.25% with an APR of 5.55% lender B is the better quote because after the APR calculation (all of the fees have been considered) their interest rate is lower.