Consumer Reports car ratings?

[ganchan]

How much weight do you assign to the various vehicle reports, ratings, warnings, etc. in Consumer Reports? My parents tend to swear by them, but then they also owned a Chevette at one time....  :s

Some of their evaluations strikes me as confusing, arbitrary, or even somewhat contradictory in nature. In their current issue, for instance, they'll issue a mildly negative statement such as "The Grand Caravan has some positive qualities but still falls short of the best minivans" -- and then they relegate it to the very bottom of their minivan ratings list while also putting it on their "Worst of the Worst" used cars list. 

I'm not personally experienced with enough different makes and models to know more than the generalities -- Toyotas are reliable, et cetera -- but I do know something about audio & video gear, and some of their evaluations in that department have been real head-scratchers over the years.....

I think one potential issue is their tendency to focus on numbers. For instance, they once "disproved" the common perception that Vizio TVs are unreliable by pointing to their just-average repair rate -- when as I understand it, one of the problems with Vizios is that they're often shipped "dead on arrival," resulting in returns/exchanges instead of repairs.

So what's your "rating" of Consumer Reports as a car-buying guide?

 

[LeeRevell]

The only time I read them was shortly after I bought my only 'new' car ever, a 1979 Mercury Monarch. The said it was a slight improvement over the prior years, calling it a "lime rather than a lemon". Gave me a laugh. Mine and my Mother's Monarchs, bought the same day, were certainly lemons. Totally craptastic cars.

 

[highdesertranger]

I would trust consumer report the most out of all of them. all the others take advertising money, big money. highdesertranger

 

[East]

I usually just go to car survey and check out what people who owned the vehicle have to say. They tend to have worthwhile input on common failings and preventative maintenance. NO vehicle is perfect, there is always going to be a pitfall. Example, my [former] 2001 Monte Carlo with the 3.8l, common problem is head gasket- replace it as soon as you can with a revised version and you're almost certain to be OK. You see a lot of vehicles have these quirks, in most cases if they're dealt with properly you're fine.

The only thing that will really make me not buy a car is if 90% of people say the transmissions fail before 100k or something ridiculous like that. I hate transmission work and it's harder and often more expensive to remedy a bad engineering design such as a transmission, part of the reason why I stay away from newer vehicle releases. There's really no way they've had a proper run to go off of unless they're based mostly on past platforms and designs.

 

[idn88]

Old post, sorry just found it browsing through.

Consumer Reports (and most others) base their reliability results on a pretty short window (I think under 4 years). I don't exactly consider that a measure of reliability.

They also give a lot of weight to whatever gizmo they like that year. For example this year all the rage is the active braking systems - that automatically engage the brakes if something is in the way and you do not. While I think this is probably a good idea as well, but consumer reports won't give a vehicle a good rating this year unless it has one. I find that biased to a degree.

They also give a lot of weight to the appearance of the vehicle and interior. Again, maybe important to someone who is going to trade if off in 2 years, but for a car dweller maybe not that high a priority.

What I know for sure is the two most reliable vehicles I ever owned got awful ratings on consumer reports.