New Camaro Is Now Officially A Go

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razz
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so you think that what i am "spouting" is false? you think then that Fords are built as well as lexuses? wow, that is very very funny. everyone knows that toyota is hammering domestics on quality. the only thing that i am spouting is the truth. hey man, i would like to 'buy american' to better support the domestic economy. they used to build F-bodies in my home town. but, i wont become a charity case for a company building lousy products. you should read CReports and see what they are spouting about US brands. some are making a reliable models, but most are poor. Just compare a 2004 Cavalier to a 2004 echo. do you really think that they are of equal quality? Harry in montreal

Reply to
Harry in Montreal

On Mon, 7 Aug 2006 19:59:29 -0500, "Jeff H" puked:

The 2005-6 Camaros are limited in more ways than torque... ;)

-- lab~rat >:-) Do you want polite or do you want sincere?

Reply to
lab~rat >:-)

On Tue, 08 Aug 2006 12:17:15 GMT, Scott Moseman puked:

Those weren't options on the 4th gens.

-- lab~rat >:-) Do you want polite or do you want sincere?

Reply to
lab~rat >:-)

On 9 Aug 2006 08:04:22 -0700, "Harry in Montreal" puked:

What cars were built well in that time frame? My 68 Stang was a piece of shit. Nothing could compare to today's standards...

-- lab~rat >:-) Do you want polite or do you want sincere?

Reply to
lab~rat >:-)

CR's self selecting surveys and testing methods leave a lot to be desired. As far as valid science and engineering is concerned much of what they do results in garbage for data. The way they tested the Samurai is key to their slip shod and sloppy methods that can be influenced by their own biases.

Meanwhile, non-profit doesn't mean without bias. No matter what the CR commericals say. You don't have to profit from a bias to have one. CR's biases are pretty obvious after a little reading.

R&T and other car magazines aren't and don't claim to be what CR claims to be.

Reply to
Brent P

respectfully, the biases that you are talking about dont really jump off the page to me at all. they seem to rate certain domestic and foreign brands poorly, and sometimes only some models. i do not think they have a favorable japanese/german bias - they seem to dislike benzes and mitsubishis, while they like TMs and HMCs. the poorer cars that i have owned have been labeled by CR as-such, while the better cars reflected the same ratings. Re: the samurai - i have no idea what they rated-at, but i know they tended to tip real easy, nice reference!. contrary to what you say about CR liking the samurai once-upon a time, CR rated the Mitsu Montero as Unacceptable for a similar tipping problem. in sum, based on what i have owned, i have found that the cars that they label as reliable, turn out to be.

anyway, many people dislike CR - i dont really care. Brent, seriously, how do you interpret JD power's conclusion with respect to the quality of the big 460 Lexus? is it a fluke that it jives with CRs opinion? or is it just a similar bias? how about the fact that nearly every month lexus outpaces their sales targets while lincolns slip down into the red-minuses? its sad. dont get me wrong, i want to get a new Camaro or Mustang GT, but my last Camaro was so bad i would not do it to myself again! they have to make Q job one! H

Reply to
Harry in Montreal

They tip when made to tip and the test drivers try again and again and again to make it happen. CR's test from an engineering pov is bunk as well.

If you want to believe CR, have at it. It's been covered to death in rec.autos.driving in the last decade. You can look up the threads on google groups if you must. Trying to convince a CR true believer that self selecting surveys, etc aren't accurate is like arguing with a wall. BTW, justifying a self selected survey because it came out like another self selected survey I don't think has any merit.

Reply to
Brent P

Brent, i agree that we disagree - but i am not a wall. being slighly educated, you will have to work a bit to pursuade why CR's testing is misleading or designed to produce inaccurate conclusions. Please define what you mean by 'self directed' and tell me why giving individuals who have qualified characteristics the opportunity to judge the effectiveness of a product, is invalid. i suppose that you must disagree, or deem invalid, with just about any survey or testing method (medical products for ex.) involving a sample of the population which is prescreened? regardless, someone like myself uses CR gathered information to get a preliminary idea of which products that they deem are superior. THis is the only purpose for their information. With respect to reliabiliy, after having bought some poor cars myself, i find their reviews to be reasonable and quite accurate. i have been posting to newsgroups for years and years - and they are a great resource. but, i dont think that they are a substitute for CR. they compliment each other. Harry in montreal

Reply to
Harry in Montreal

Previous CR true believers have been walls. And I have no desire to go over it again. It's all in google groups, rec.autos.driving. Most threads involve dr. lloyd parker.

self selected.

If you don't even know what that means, it's going to be far too aggrivating for me to continue this thread. Basically it means people decide on their own wether to answer. It can skew the data in different directions. That's why CR gets the same car with different badges on it that came out of the same factory with vastly different ratings. There's also a lot of perceptions involved.

I've found their tests poorly thought out and done to achieve desired results.

I've just been in product design and development for the last decade, what the hell would I know about product testing?

Reply to
Brent P

I've read that way back when, the Japanese car manufacturers studied how Consumer Reports tested cars and more or less designed their cars to do well on Consumers tests. This was mostly in the area of ergonomics, but access to basic engine components, location of fuses, safety items and so forth were also designed specifically to make the car do well on the tests.

At that time the American cars, especially small cars, were horrid creatures.

There are many links all over the web explaining the faults in CR's testing methodology.

Reply to
freak

Brent, have you compared the Vibe and the Matrix on CR? Same car, same ratings. i guess you would have to give me an actual example to persuade me.

they may be poor, or maybe not. i have not audited them - but i know one thing: GM and FoMoCo seem to perform very lousy at the same tests, while Toyotas score well at the (assumed) same test. also, this woudl include offset crash tests, and other safety tests- which i think are the most important results to consider when buying a car. I suppose that in the GM and Ford design studios they make the same case as you do, which is why their products are so far behind in Q and technology.

Brent, you may be an amazing product designer, but i have been a consumer that has been blowing a nice healthy chunk of disposable income for a while - and i can tell you that regardless of what you think of CR, you cannot deny that japanese automakers are building better Quality products than GM and Ford. this was my orignial point... i am not alone. check the stock price of TM on NYSE versus GM and Ford. notice how the big 3 regularly discount their cars, while TM and HMC do not really have to. further, they still do not ever really offer zero-percent until they are selling end-of-yr models. as a product designer, i would be very surprised if you compared (say) a 2002 camaro z28 (the last yr, and assumed best effort to date) to a Celica of the same year. While the Z is a wonderful car, the quality and design is a complete joke. the bump on the passenger side floor, the distortion in the raked windshield, 1to4 shift T-56 transmission. these cars depreciated so fast they almost melted down the sewer (again, i bought one for $40k cdn). So, Brent, as a professional product designer and developer - would you say that the quality of materials and design of a TM and a GM product are equal (ignoring CR of course)? LMK, harry

Reply to
Harry in Montreal

Previously mentioned Nova. I stopped reading CR many years ago.

You don't have to. just read the articles. Their lack of even disclosing the test parameters is a problem. At least C&D had the guts to post an article about how they test cars. Their test was like an engineering experiment. CR's seem rather half-baked.

I haven't offered any opinion on that.

Product quality and stock price may or may not be related. There have been a great number of successful and profitable companies that made junk.

Ford and GM are run by marketeers and bean counters. Marketeers are about 'features' and 'price'. (features include such things as performance numbers). Ford however has managed better at mitigating the negative effects than GM has.

Thinly veiled insults are not winning you any points.

I think the last F-body was typical piece of shit GM car. The kind of product that goes out the door when the company cares about everything but the product. It's a marketeer's product, it was about price point and numbers. I've had to work on projects that were forced to be shit because of such idiotic corporate nonsense so I think I have a bit of a feeling how their engineers felt.

The japanese makes products bore me as much as GM's do. However at least they aren't total crap like GM's product. GM is capable of making good product, they just don't because of their enormous union labor costs that in turn have to be taken out of the product itself to compete and general idiotcy from their executive and marketing. The later being far more the problem than the former. But the former cannot be ignored. It is a legacy of confrontational labor practices and treating workers poorly decades ago. Now both sides are likely to lose.

And to ridicule using what I brought in to counter to trump your argument by authority, is just sour grapes.

Reply to
Brent P

Dont take this to be too agressive or offensive, but you are making bold comments on the validity of the testing methods used in a magazine that you do not read.

But you have not read the CR mag in years (per above) - so i guess you missed the issues with the articles that discuss the testing methods. let me know, and i can email them to you if you wish.

i completely agree with you here. but, in hte specific case of the US auto industry - people are not buying garbage in the numbers that they used to, as they have better quality alternatives. in sum, F and GM is losing the repeat customer due to quality. Like me :)

I dont know about that. have you contemplated buying an Explorer recently? how about crown vic with cruise control?

thinly veiled? give me an example otherwise. give me a long list to make sure it is not "thinly veiled".

agreed.

i totally agree.

i do not really understand your phrase, but it seems that we agree that Japanese products are better than US - which is my original point. since we agree, I do not see how "sour grapes" comes into your argument. i just like CR and you dont - i do not really care if you do not use it, or if you do not respect the publication as a whole - but, they seem to have the same overall impression of J and US vehicles taht we both do.

Harry in mtl

Reply to
Harry in Montreal

stopped reading. Stopped reading for a damn good reason. I suppose you continue reading publications you've found to be poor?

There is no reason to believe they have changed. Look. I don't feel like arguing this CR crap yet again. I don't have the time nor patience to bring you up from zero on the subject. Use google groups, there are tons of threads on it.

Take a look at the most recent JD powers... mercury #2. Since you have so much faith in such things.

Why would I buy a barn on wheels? Are you refering to the _owners_ not maintaining proper tire pressure? Because that was the root cause. I wouldn't buy a cop car / senior mobile either... Cruise control fires? is that what you are refering to? Did you know that japanese cars have caught fire too... due to various odd circumstances, design flaws, etc? The media in the USA will report the dramatic problems with the big three's cars on the network TV news. You want to read about a japanese model that has a problem with fires, you might find it as a tiny blurb in Autoweek.

There are a lot of different things that go into 'better'. I would say that japanese corporations are much more product focused as a rule. The corporate culture is often reflected in the products, but that is not enough to blindly choose the product based on the nationality of the company.

Ford and GM can produce good cars when they decide to be product focused. For instance, there is one GM car I would consider, the corvette. If I needed a 4 door sedan, the GTO (as it is from the more product focused holden division). These cars didn't go through the same process as say a new fwd monte carlo.... Mustang has its faults, but they are easily corrected with aftermarket parts. Buying something much more expensive from a japanese make is an option, however a FWD car at the same price point isn't.

Reply to
Brent P

How low is it? I had a 1979 Z28 and getting in wasn't so bad but getting out was a real pain.

BR.

Reply to
bigrenee

Too bad for some of us you cant get out of them the same way you can get in.. "Fall in, fall out"

;)

Reply to
Backyard Mechanic

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