Cadillac has taken out two-page ads in most every car mag I've seen
lately trumpeting the fact that their Seville STS is "The first automobile to
win every major automotive magazine award in the same year."  What does this
mean to you?  I mean, in what regard do you hold the judgement of these
'enthusiast' magazines?

8 responses total.

I take them with a grain of salt.  I trust Consumer Reports much more, but
will take all the information I can get into account before buying.  I also
wait awhile before considering to buy a new model (at least a year or two)
and ask mechanics about how reliable the vehicle seems to be (how often does
it show up in the shop) and how easy is it to maintain.  We blew it on our
Nissan van.  It was impossible to get to the oil filter and if you could
manage to contort ourselve into the small space you had to have a special
sized oil filter wrench to remove it.  The dealership didn't even carry the
toil in stock, it had to be a special order from one the floating tool
companies that came into the dealership once every 2-4 weeks.

I refuse to have a vehicle where I can't even do the simple things, like
change the oil.  My sister has a car where you practically have to remove
the whole quarter panel to replace a headlight.  This is silly.  With the
hourly fees a shop charges I don't want to have to take a car in for routine
maintainance.  The local oil quick change shops couldn't even handle the
Nissan van, we had to take it back to the dealership every time we wanted to
change the oil filter.

Another sister has the Nissan van as well (hers is an automatic, ours was a
manual).  She has had nothing but trouble with it (right now it doesn't want
to go into reverse and neutral acts just like drive).  She had it in the shop
a week ago to have the transmission fixed for this problem, the fix lasted
less than a week.  The mechanic told her that it wouldn't last long.  He also
told her that if she were to buy another mini-van to get the Ford Aerostar.  It
was the best made, easiest to work on and most reliable in terms of 
maintainance.  If she didn't want American made, get the Mazda - forget Toyota
(for the van, he recommended Toyota for other vehicles).

I think they make fun reading.  On the other hand, I don't think they're
necessarily real scientific or complete, and I know they don't cover the
things I care about in a car.  I care a great deal more about whether it
has comfortable back seats, than about how fast it can get from 0-60.  I
also care a lot about how long it's liable to last, and about how easy
it will be to service; issues I'm sorry to say even CR doesn't rate
quite the way I would like.  Most of the auto mags seem quite taken by
issues I care little about; such as styling, fashion, and flash.  There
was a period, for a couple of years, where it was considered acceptable
to bury the windshield wipers in a little crevice under the hood, where
it's hard to get at them, especially when there's snow & ice in the way.
Everybody today seems to be going for curved side windows.  It's a lot
easier to scrape the ice off when they're flat, even if it does increase
sensitivity to cross winds some.  On the other hand, I like the separate
lens & halogen bulb assembly.  Not because of styling, but because it
doesn't make much ecological sense to me to throw away that big huge
sealed beam affair.

Ford Aerostar...Easy to work on, well built?  Not from what I've heard.
Good friends of ours have one and the thing is constantly goinginto the
shop.  Another one I know about died in the middle cemetery during a
funeral (Not the cars).  We hoised the hood only to find the radiator
cap, fan belts and other fluid access points.  The entire V-6 was under
the dash!  ( Didn't look to see if there was a cap inside, though I doubt
it.

You might say the V6 was in a sort of well.

How do you get at the thing to change spark plugs, etc?  I wanted to
check for spark but couldn't even see the plugs.  (Turned out the spark
controller had gone bad.)  Do you need to pull the engine to do this?

If it is anything like what other mini-vans what you do is move one of the
front (usually driver's) seats.  To access the engine in the Nissan you
would undo a couple of levers and the drivers seat would tilt back out of
the way, undo another lever or three to move the console between the front
seats and wow, there really is a motor in here.  (To get to the battery, you
take out a piece of carpet and a screw down panel on the floor behind the
seats.  Real obvious, right.)

I have a chevy Astro (mini van). The engine IS under the dash. There is a small
cover inside that you can yank off (with great difficulty) and get at a fair
number of things. I had to adjust a valve rocker on an Astro once and the crap
involved in getting the valve cover off was phenomenal. That's the nice thing
about a pickup with a straight 6 - you can open the hood and climb right in
with the engine if you want/need to.

     I have quite enjoyed my experiences with the automotive magazines.  What
they cover is generally how well new cars serve the enthusiast driver (me).
Their testing runs about as intricately scientific as I think appropriate, and
the reveiws, like any other, must set the criteria to be judged and work from
there.  I think most of the writers do this fairly well.  The criteria used
to judge cars by the enthusiasts mags fit the ones I like to look at quite
well.  This varies from touring performance for the sport-sedans, to all-out
gut-busting acceleration and cornering g's for the almost pure racers.  
True, the criteria I would need to use in my personal purchases is very
different right now, largely a utility/price consideration, but these
magazines look toward the best, not excluding good values, but focusing
more on other aspects.

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