Clunkers boosts Ford sales; GM, Chrysler fall

And the facts are...?...

DAS

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The facts are that CR must sell magazines to make money, and nothing
sells them better than attention-grabbing headlines. And it never fails
to grab attention to write a headline that trashes something that the
majority
of people like.

There have always been more domestics on the road than imports - although
that is changing - so if your going to piss off people to get them to pay
attention
to you, then it works best if you piss off the greatest number of people.
Thus,
CR doesn't write headlines like "Yugo car is worst in customer service"
because hardly anyone owns a Yugo. Instead they write headlines that
trash domestics so that they piss off and get the attention of the most
possible
people.

Ted

 

Yes, there is something that sells better than attention-grabbing
headlines.

That is - writing headlines that appeals to a certain base. Writing
stuff that is in agreement and supports exactly what a certain
demographic thinks about a given subject.

Some of those in that majority will want to read something like that.
Most will simply be repulsed by it.

How many right-wing conservatives do you think are attracted to (and
therefore will buy) a book with the title "God is not great" (author
Christopher Hitchens) ? I'm thinking not many.

The same would be true if they wrote "Yugo is best in customer service"
- because there are not many prospective magazine customers who are also
Yugo owners or potential owners.

No, they write headlines that trash domestics in order to align
themselves with the mindset of the under-30 crowd (who also believe
domestics are trash) so that crowd will purchase the rag in question,
read the article, and get a buzz of endorphins as their belief system is
reinforced by the magazine.

 

Kinda like how they trashed the Isuzu Trooper because it was alleged to be
such a high rollover risk? Their test methods certainly didn't seem to be
very scientific. It's pretty obvious they did it to stir things up. Let's
just say they lost my respect...

But...then my wife had a 94 Plymouth Acclaim that was a lemon with problems
all the time (bought used). We were visiting her parents and they had a CR
car review magazine...I was flipping through it and found that in the short
list of "cars to avoid" - the 94 Dodge Spirit/Plymouth Acclaim was on the
list. *JUST* the 94 model year. So...maybe there is a small grain of truth
to their info...but I'm still not buying any of their magazines...

Wesley

 

They have gone thru several permutations of how they do the ratings.
At one time they pretty much ignored how much repairs cost so if a
Domestic needed 3 $50 repairs it would get down rated while a Mercedes
that needed only 1 $770 repair would get fairly high marks, after all,
it only had one third the problems of the domestic.

Then for a while they started including the cost of the repairs,
probably because it was becoming obvious how stupid their system was,
but that only lasted a few years, no doubt because suddenly their
favorite cars, which at the time were mostly the European makes,
suddenly started getting black marks because they cost so much to
repair. So then they went to some mixed system that they didn't
really explain, some hocus pocus behind the scenes that produced the
results they wanted. I gave up on them about that time and don't know
how they are stacking the deck these days.

Another thing I noticed about them was that even when the domestics
offered excellent performance/handling packages they NEVER order their
test cars with those packages. That allowed them to continue to bitch
that the large domestic cares handled poorly, which would not have
been the case if handling was their goal and they had spent they extra
$50 to $100 to order the package.

 

Oh crap. Anybody can make up a fairy tale like that. CR gets a very
high rate of return on surveys. And if people weren't sending them in
saying their cars had few problems, no car would be rated good in
reliability.

Or are you claiming Toyota and Honda owners send in surveys when they
have good things to say and Chrysler owners do not?

More BS. If true, CR would never have the data to rate Mercedes, BMW,
and Lexus. And you've got nothing but your prejudice that "CR readers
are more likely to be poor."

Doesn't matter. CR looks at the surveys. If the people who own
Chryslers say their cars are unreliable, why does the "penetration"
matter? If CR doesn't get enough responses on a particular model to
be statistically valid, they say that.

I've taken JD Power surveys too and they never ask that kind of
question.

No you can't. You just can't stand it that the owners don't rate your
favorite makes as reliable. Well, TS. Grow up.

 

Chryslers? No, more people like Toyotas and Hondas. So they would,
by your "reasoning", sell more magazines by trashing Toyotas and
Hondas.

CR reports Ford owners rate their vehicles as quite reliable. But
you've never read CR, have you?

Don't let facts get in your way.

 

What, an emergency lane change? Yeah, who'd ever have to do that on
the road?

Like losing a headache.

 

You could read the April Auto issue; that explains how they rate
cars. Or you could check out their web site:

http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/...0606_understanding-reliability-ratings_ov.htm
http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/...08_consumer-reports-carreliability-faq_ov.htm

They buy cars off dealer lots for the most part.

Why wouldn't a manufacturer make a good handling car for everyone and
not just those who order extra packages? You don't have to order
extra packages on, say, Hondas, to get good handling.

 

And it's still biased by their self-selecting methodology.

Yes and cars with the handling package were available on dealers lots.
They NEVER bought any, always CHOOSING to buy the same setup they
bitched about two years earlier instead of trying the OPTION that
might stop their bitching.

Because some people apparently liked the softer suspension. Under
your view, manufacturers who offer TWO choices get down rated compared
to a manufacturer that offers NO choice.

 

And you know this how? You CR bashers are good at fairy tales. Are
you the ones spreading the "death panel" lies about health care reform
too?

Some manufacturers (e.g., Honda) are able to achieve both good
handling and good ride. Are you saying domestics are incompetent?

I'm saying buyers should not have to give up one to get the other, and
don't have to with most imports. Are you saying Detroit has
incompetent engineers?

 

Because I subscribed for nearly a decade. I drove several of the GM
cars WITH the handling package, and I saw, in CR tests year after
year, that they made the SAME damn complaint as if they were too brain
dead to read the options list and choose the handling package if
handling was what they wanted. If a vehicle comes with a choice of 4
cyl and V8 would it make sense for them to be testing for towing
capacity and always buy a 4 cylinder? No, it would not.

No, I'm saying they offered people a CHOICE. And CR COULD have told
people in their reviews that they HAD that CHOICE instead of being
brain dead about it and always buying the soft suspension and then
complaining it didn't handle well. And a lot of people did not
consider the ride of the imports at that time to be a "good ride".

Since any COMPETENT auto writer would have known the available options
either the CR folks were incompetent or purposely choosing vehicles
they knew would not meet their requirements. Either way I realized
that their reviews were not very trustworthy for anything beyond the
same kind of info you could get by asking your neighbor "how do you
like your car".

The only valuable thing in the CR reports was that back then they did
test "normal" cars and their technical info from instrumentation and
measurements was useful even if their commentary was usually nonsense.
Most of the other car mags rarely tested the kind of cars 80% of the
people actually buy choosing to focus on the super high end high
powered models, esp the German imports of the time. But then CR
started getting like the other mags and instead of testing mostly
normal cars they also started buying loaded vehicles with all the
options, one more reason their reviews got progressively less and less
useful to the average buyer.

Semi-OT - CR in general has gotten a lot less useful over the years as
more and more stuff got more and more complicated and their staff just
isn't competent for most of the stuff they test. Their reviews of
cameras, computers and in fact most stuff, is rarely of much value
anymore. I bought a GE dishwasher based on their glowing reviews and
it was one of the worst dishwashers I've ever had. I switched back to
Whirlpool, which they didn't particularly like, and it's been great,
just like the Whirlpools I had before listening to CR and buying the
GE.

In short, CR has outlived it's usefulness and competence and needs a
bullet to it's head. Every so often I pick up an issue in a Doctors
office and marvel at how bad it is yet still being published.

No, I'm saying Detroit offered a CHOICE. You're beginning to sound as
brain dead as CR. Don't you understand English?

 

Trusting in CR's surveys, like gambling, is a tax on those who don't
understand mathematics.