Clunkers boosts Ford sales; GM, Chrysler fall

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.

snipped-for-privacy@pipex.net...

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:

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.