GRM logic not equal to CR logic

Relevant to the discussion at hand:

The New Measurement Of Reliability Is How Annoying The Infotainment System Is

I hadn't considered that, but it makes a lot of sense when discussing the reliability of relatively new cars.

Driven5 wrote: So, I fail to see what the complaining is actually about here.

Actually, the majority of the country do not take a strictly utilitarian viewpoint towards vehicle purchases, if they did then we'd still have wagons available for purchase and there wouldn't be any "crossovers" (AFAICT they basically exist only so that people can buy a minivan while denying that they're buying a minivan). There's also the question of why CR would bother to review a sports car if they're going to pan it just for being a sports car -- seems like a waste of time and money if they already know they're going to hate it.

Anyway, I'm not passing judgment of the value of CR's reviews. All I'm doing is passing on some historical information. :)

In reply to codrus:

You're right, people don't view their vehicles from a strictly utilitarian viewpoint, but that hardly has to do with driving enjoyment either. The majority of the country also care greatly about the looks of the vehicle and image it portrays. Which is why their non-enthusiast based methods are similarly applicable across SUV's, trucks, crossovers, and sportscars...And explains exactly why it's reasonable for them to review image-heavy 'enthusiast' vehicles like the Wrangler and Elise, providing an honest account of how they compare to other more mainstream competitors from a viewpoint closer to that of the vast majority of their readers who might actually consider buying one new. Their experience may allow them to know which vehicles they are probably going to love or hate, most of the time, before they even test them. But the majority of their readers don't, and that's the whole reason for any of these publications to even exist in the first place.

Anyway, I'm not passing judgment of the value of your opinions. All I'm doing is passing on some up-to-date information. ;)

After being in the auto industry since 1965, I have decided that all cars are like "real" Christmas trees. None of them are perfect and they all have flaws. First time new car buyers have much higher expectations of perfection than buyers who trade/lease/buy every few years. Want the real life info on a brand or model, go ask the mechanics that service/repair them. My favorite Mazda dealer also sells VW. All of the Mazda techs and most of the VW techs drive Mazda.

outasite wrote: All of the Mazda techs and most of the VW techs drive Mazda.

I look at mechanic owned cars with a bit of extra scrutiny, because a few techs I know get cars that can suffer abuse and still get them to work, since they don't want to work on their own cars in their spare time besides oil changes.

Turboeric wrote:

dculberson wrote: The thing about Consumer Reports is that it's written for a certain audience. And that audience does not keep cars for 15 years.

Quoted for truth. If you're not part of CR's target audience, then you're wasting your time looking at their rankings. This would be exactly the same as sending Aunt Gladys to the GRM forum to research her next generic-mobile. Each serves a specific purpose, and those purposes are different.

Which is fine. I don't hate CR for serving a different target audience, and I don't hate that target audience for being different from me.

What I hate about CR is the masquerade of holy impartiality when they still pull E36 M3 like the laptop comparison mentioned above, or the famous cases like panning the Isuzu Rodeo while praising the Honda Passport.

dculberson wrote: The thing about Consumer Reports is that it's written for a certain audience. And that audience does not keep cars for 15 years.

Excuse me, but I tend to disagree with that statement. Both myself and my Dad are the sort of people who buy a vehicle new and keep it until it dies, and we both have subscribed to CR at one point or another. If you're going to buy a new vehicle and keep it for 15 years or so, you'd like to know that it isn't a E36 M3box that's going to eat you alive in repair costs.

CR and GRM or your standard brand specific enthusiast forums have 2 very different mentalities and purposes. I don’t doubt that CR does gather some useful data, but it’s a “customer satisfaction survey”, it’s not the same as the kind of anecdotal data that you find on an enthusiast forum. I’ve turned away from cars that I would have bought because of common mechanical issues that I discovered on enthusiast forums. If I buy said car am I absolutely going to have that problem? No. Does the perception of it being a widespread problem increase because people are sounding off about it? Of course.

I’m convinced that the greater majority of the car buying public doesn’t give a rat’s ass about how a car’s performance, and if they have any kind of preference at all about what type of car they drive it’s solely based on comfort not on what they actually NEED their vehicle to do.

I think it would be nice to own a King Ranch F-350 or a loaded 3500HD Silverado for what they can do, but I also think that people drive those daily to work are out of their berkeleying minds. Why drive a huge difficult to park behemoth with terrible fuel economy on a 50 mile round trip daily commute? Because you like the perception of being a “rugged truck owner”.

The most popular vehicle type on the market is CSUVs simply because people like a high forward visibility vantage point for driving and it hast the placebo effect of AWD or 4WD if they bought one with that. Other than that singular comfort characteristic they pose no advantage over a midsize sedan. Sarah the early 20 something single woman with no children doesn’t NEED a CSUV at all, but she’s going to get one because that’s what she thinks she likes to drive and thinks it’s “safer”.
I have a firm belief that if you want an enthusiast orientated car, you have to be willing to deal with a bit of mechanical problems.

If you want to go fast or have good handling characteristics then you have to make some sacrifices in terms of reliability, comfort, rattles, and road noise to get there. If that isn’t for you, then go get a damn Camry.

It's also worth pointing out the distinction between "daily driver" and "hobby car" and I realize that for some of you, they are one and the same. For me, however, they are very different vehicles, meant to serve very different needs/desires. So I might be very interested to know what CR says about my choice for successor to the Mazda MPV that is my daily, but I really don't care what they have to say about an old Chevy truck or a boosted RX-7, or whatever madness I might choose to indulge.