Consumer Reports and Saturn

While Consumer Reports is a very good and unbiased source, they do tend
to emphasize safety and reliability over other factors.

For another view look at J.D. Power's long term dependability ratings.

"http://www.jdpower.com/corporate/news/releases/pressrelease.aspx?ID=2008115"

Saturn used to hover just slightly above or slightly below the industry
average, but lately they've moved way down. This is probably one of the
reasons that GM decided to phase out the Saturn brand.

 

When Saturn came out, it was at the top of the J.D. Power's list.

It was the assimilation of Saturn into the GM (Borg) collective that
started its demise.

 

It was on the top of the list for "sales satisfaction," never for
reliability. Despite all the hype, the S series did suffer from some
widespread problems, including problems with brake rotors, oil burning,
and cracked heads.

They had to "integrate" it into GM because there was no way that a
company building only 200K of a model a year could survive and fund new
vehicle development. You need the critical mass of several million units
per year to make any money designing, tooling, manufacturing, marketing,
and selling mass-market, low priced vehicles.

 

What you don't understand is that the reliability ratings in Consumer
Reports come from their subscribers that fill out surveys, it's not CR's
opinion except when they're projecting reliability on new models based
on similarity with key components of earlier models.[/QUOTE]

CR's surveys are entirely self-selected, which right off the bat makes them
completely invalid from a scientific standpoint.

They note that *now*. They didn't used to, not until after they got caught
with their pants down on the Colt and a few others.

Or how they respond to surveys.

"Often" is not the correct spelling of "sometimes".

 

No, it simply makes them not double-blind surveys. Unless you think that
a Saturn driver is more likely to complain about defects than a Toyota
driver, the surveys are valid even though they're not double-blind. In
fact you could argue that a Toyota owner would have higher expectations
than a GM owner and be _more_ likely to complain about problems.

Because often is the proper word to describe the reality.

It's easy to understand why some people get mad at the CR surveys and
attempt to dismiss them simply because they are not the "perfect" survey
where they would call 100,000 people at random and ask them all the
questions in the survey, but it doesn't make their survey "completely
invalid."

And of course other publications and organizations reach largely the
same conclusions with their own surveys, i.e. J.D. Power. It's not like
CR is telling anyone anything that numerous other organizations haven't
confirmed to be true.

 

Sorry, that's not correct. Self-selected surveys are scientifically invalid.
Period.

You go on believing that if it makes you feel better.

No, many people dismiss CR's surveys because they bear much less relationship
to reality than CR likes to pretend they do.

No, what makes the surveys completely invalid from a statistical standpoint is
the self-selected sampling. That isn't statistically valid. Period.

Actually, it is like that. JD Power consistently ranks American cars much
higher than CR does -- like I said, CR's bias against American-made cars has
been obvious and widely known for decades. Your unwillingness, or inability,
to recognize that does not change it.

 

You just go on believing that if it makes you happy. But it's not
reality, it's sour grapes.

 

Nah, it is reality.

I've always wondered why CR rates good american cars/trucks as poor and
average/poor Japanese cars/trucks as "excellent." They do still rate poor
american cars/trucks as such and they do rate all good Japanese cars/trucks
as excellent.

Just curious.