I used to love Consumer Reports for their tell all articles and how they rated everyday items. I then ran across this article in CNN where they do some tell all on some of the cars Consumer Reports scores.

Officially their worst car is the Jeep Wrangler. When I saw this I thought they were nuts. Those things are awesome off road and just fun to hang out in with the top down no matter how old you are.

Then the report listed that it doesn't take off-road handling into account. Ummmm.... where is the fair deal there if you are testing SUV's and not considering oooooo the entire friggin northern states here. How about the snow handling.

I lost all interest in that magazine JUST from that article. They have alot of SUV's in that list and that are normal for people to take off-road but labled as they suck because they do.

http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2008/...x.html?cnn=yes

 

Well it kinda makes sense that they dont take off road capability into account. I see people driving jeeps and hummers and other 4wd SUVs around and I would bet that 80% of those people will never stray from the paved road.

 

It's true, but these vehicles are designed to go off road and in the Northern states I don't know a single Jeep owner that DOESN'T take their truck offroad at the minimum once a year much less how well they handle in the snow. It's just not a fair comparison and they should have let these vehicles out.

Can't wait for consumer reports to have a special off road or winter edition and see how well the Toyota Prius holds up in it.

 

i don't know of very many southerners who haven't been off roading atleast once in their lives.... i've been several times. we even got some of that nice slick red mud that will really puck you up if you're not careful.

 

You mean you have to have an SUV or truck to go off-roading...?

Went with my buddy once in the Plymouth Breeze he had, ended up totaling it on a deer this last summer but that was interesting nonetheless. I usually go out on my 400ex.

 

i think more of the problem is that consumer reports prints garbage, i'd really like to see behind the scenes, and what goes into thier reports.

i had been sceptical of the magizine for a long time, i remeber reading ratings a few years ago, the monte carlo, impala, regal, century, grand prix(these are all on the same platform).... all had widely varied ratings in most categories. so i looked some more, the grand am, malibu and alero(these are all on the same platform)... all had widely varied ratings in most categories. saw this on ford and cyrsler products too...

knowing that multiple cars on the same platform got widely different ratings seems to illistrate how worthless consumer reports is.

in contrast, in the past i've seen that j.d. powers ratings seem to rate cars of the same platform in a reasonably tight groups.

makes me think that JD power actually find things out, does real reasearch on products and/or get reviews from a much larger sample. maybe thier testing/questions for consumers is more objective and consumer reports is more subjective and they get skrewd up results by doing things like throwing out results they dont like, such as off roading... wonder what else they throw out because they dont like it

 

Umm. yeah, the off roading we are talking about involves you couldn't get your Breeze through... We are talking about casual off roading that involves tire ruts that would bottom the car out.

The good off roading I like going on involves a snorkel on the car and a change of tires. Every weekend here there is some kind of off road event that people can goto.

 

This will give you a bit better of an idea.

The bottom 2 pics is one of the lighter casual off roading. You will need to imagine the very bottom pic though with mud and water... The Breeze would get stuck immediately.

 

I have a `91 full-size Blazer that use when we go fishing on the Outer Banks here. We are always off-road with it and I think it`s one of the best 4-wheel drives out there today. It`s a daily driver but the fuel mileage sucks.

 

Those full-size Blazer's really suck it up. Awesome offroad but they sure have a thirst.

Dad has a 74 Dodge RamCharger fullsize that we used to take through everything!!! EG: the red Tacoma pic and the Chevy hopping pic in the mud. He sold it once the frame started coming loose from the body, but the engine and transmission were still top notch.