The Consumer conference has a lot of activity regarding Consumer Reports
and whether or not they are objective, etc.

Question:  Do you read/trust consumer reports for:
                  a)  New Cars?
                  b)  Used Cars?

11 responses total.

Read, yes.  Trust, no.

I tended to think the info on frequency of repairs was pretty worthwhile, 
but I thought their evaluations were from a viewpoint "how does this thing
compare to a Volvo?".

Beware of their "frequency of repairs" charts.  

I used to own a lawn-care business and was very familiar with 
some of the brands lawn mowers they were testing in an issue.

They had one of those handy frequency of repair charts in this 
article and showed Murry to require fewer repairs than John Deere--
and not by a slim margin, either!

Now, I had started my business using Murry lawn mowers exclusively.  
I bought the original ones at Wal-Mart because of it's liberal 
return policy.  Boy did I come to appreciate that!  None of the 
lawnmowers lasted me more than 3 weeks!  I mean, it wasn't just 
little things breaking on these.  Wheels would fall off, the handle
broke on several, nearly every cable snapped, the shroud tended 
to disintegrate, ETC.  

Now, I know that I was using them pretty heavily as I was cutting
about 40 lawns a week with them (the equivalent of about 1 year 
per week), but their flimsiness was just too much for me.  I 
could never keep myself supplied with working lawnmowers.  

So, I decided to go top-of-the-line.  I bought the most expensive
John Deeres available as consumer models (as the commercial 
incarnations lacked most of the desired features, oddly enough).
These, while not being entirely problem free, lasted me about
3 years (and they still work perfectly, too).  Now, this is 
the approximate equivalent of 120 years of usage on a single 
lawn.  (Get it?  Forty lawns by three years.)  The items that 
I had to replace most was the wheels--not because the broke, 
but because the tread would wear completely off.



It was after this that I stopped reading Consumer Reports altogether.

By the way, the previous was not the only reason I gave up on CU.
I noticed GLARING inaccuracies in every article about every product
that I knew about.  I mean GLARING inaccuracies. 

(More later.)

Wow!  Your first hand report is pretty convincing.  I know Deere fully
"Engineers" their product.  My guess is that Murry just buys pieces
at the lowest price and assembles them.


Thanks.

Is that the same as the Murray bike company?  The bikes are crap, although
all I know about lawnmorwers is that my Toro seems to work pretty well.  I
stopped trusting Consumer Reports when they did a bike review a few years
ago.  It was awful, and was a very goo dexample of people writing about
what they don't understand.

I don't know about the ownership ties between the two, but I'm going
to get around to entering a Consumer Reports item in the consumer conference, 
as soon as I can find the specific magazines that hold my examples.  

I'm sure that everyone has enough anecdotes to convince anyone to give
up on the magazine.  

Considering the amount of stuff CU goes through, I'd hardly blame them
for occasional inaccuracies.  They do make a good effort to test a wide
range of goods from an objective viewpoint; and from that end of things,
they do a commendable job.  I would agree that they don't always put
durability as high in their list of attributes as I would like, and
you're bound to be dissatisfied if you are looking at them from a
professional viewpoint.  When they evaluate something, they're clearly
evaluating it from the viewpoint of a relatively naive user.  Certainly,
if I was purchasing a computer, I'd not bother to look at CR; the things
*I* care about in a computer are going to be extremely different from
what *they* are going to care about.  At the same time, if I was
purchasing a stereo, or a washing machine, I probably *would* look at
CR.  There I'm not looking to go into the business, but something that
is a reasonable performer, at a reasonable price, and one look through
CR will give me a far better idea of what to look for than visits to 20
stores, even assuming I had the stamina to do the same.

The frequency of repair is based on what CR readers report.  I'd guess
very few run professional lawn mowing services.  At "3 weeks" = 120 lawn
mowings, that would be equivalent to at least 2 years of normal
residental service, assuming a *very* attentive houseowner who mows his
lawn once a week, summer & winter.  It could be a lot longer than that
up north, esp. if you think of shaggy grass as ecologically sound rather
than a sin against the neighbors.  For a lawnmower in such light-duty
use, a wheel that falls off is just one of those minor nuisances in
life, whereas, if it doesn't start after a year of neglect, having been
stored outside in the winter, without having the gasoline run dry, & an
oil change--what's that?; that's possibly cause to just get a new one
rather than pay nearly as much to get it fixed.

I actually own a volvo, and am quite happy with it; so it's quite
probable that my car expectations map well into what CU rates.  So
perhaps it's not so surprising that when I read through the frequency of
repair chart, what I find there "makes sense" when I think of what has
or seems to be going wrong with my car.  They mention electrical
problems; indeed, at one point, the connector to the backup light switch
got lose; and for a while, there was a connection in the engine that was
flakey, such that it tended to mis-fire some.  But I also know there are
things CU doesn't measure well; such as really long-term reliability.
I'm more or less planning to "drive it into the ground" if possible, and
I'm assuming it will last 10-15 years.  That's quite a bit longer than
CU's frequency of repair charts go back; so I know there are factors
they're not measuring that are relevant to me.  I just found out one
weird factor: the iron that goes into the cylinder blocks.  For
instance, ford apparently uses a softer iron that most; so one of the
way very old fords go is that they become oil burners.  The cylinder
walls wear enough that oil starts getting by the piston rings and into
the fuel-air mix.  On the other hand, Volvo uses a much harder iron, so
the engine just plain lasts a lot longer.

To MDW:  Your comments make a lot of sense.  I'd like to offer two
thoughts:  1)  I really doubt if Ford, or other american manufacturers
offer softer iron than does Volvo.  I do not have any knowledge of this,
but I can find out!
2)  My guess as to why you see a lot of Ford or other American oil burners
is that (a) There are a lot more Fords than Volvos, (b) The Ford, Chevy, etc
is an entry level vehicle, more likely to be abused and passed along to 
several owners, with less maintenance (than a Volvo), (c) Volvo owners 
would tend to be higher income, older, and thus more likely to say "I'm 
spending money for a car I expect to last a long time, and then set about
to make sure that happens.

 
The iron out of wich an engine is made has little to do with how fast
the engine wears.  Cylinder sleeves can be used in these high wear
areas.  I suspect Fords oil-burner reputation is due more to skimpping
on material long term durability in these areas and others.  I also
suspect that since there is more and more EPA mandated testing during
the life of the car, design practices will/have change/d.
 
We were out looking at new cars early this year.  We looked at the Volvo.
The base price of "only" $26,000 made us look elsewhere.  The $18,000
base price on a Ford Tortoise and it's declining quality (Since winning
the "Car of the year" award.) made us keep looking.  Our choice was the
Subaru Legacy.  It will last 10+ years, though I'd prefer a Volvo if they
were priced the same.

I heard the thing about the iron from a ford engineer.  Cylinder sleeves
are normally only used in aluminum block engines; they would be a very
odd design choice with iron and steel where it's pretty cheap to just
make the iron hard enough in the first place.

There is a lot of conservatism in the auto industry - long after the
rest of the auto industry had standardized on double toothed keys; GM &
Chrysler were still producing tooth down & tooth up keys.  Keys are
pretty cosmetic; but engine designs are not; the straight 6 that
Chevrolet used until 1979 was not much changed from their design in the
30's (when this engine design was first introduced, it was considered
something of a racing design, with its advanced overhead valve design.)

Ford makes its own iron, and has for a long time.  I think Klaus is
right, however, that ford doesn't design for durability.  They used to
-- the model T & A had very advanced materials designed to wear well.
But somewhere down the line, I think ford figured out that "built in
design obselescence" made more sense.  One of the watershed events that
made have decided their mind was the resounding flop of the Ford Edsel.
It was designed to be an engineering marvel, but was a resounding flop
on the market place.  Or perhaps the watershed event was the Ford
Mustang, which was entirely a marketing success; from the engineering
standpoint, the Mustang was not a very adventurous design.

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