I've always wondered about Consumer Reports' Objectivity. It's useful as one
source for making purchase decisions, but I take it with a grain of salt, as
any intelligent person should when reading or watching the media. They
happily give high marks to anything Toyota or Nissan, but talk to owners and
do your own survey of the Camry, and a different picture is formed. Same
with my '96 Chevy Tahoe (usually lots of black dots)-- it's been a lot more
reliable than my BMW, or my parents' Camry ever were!
Dan
73B
> But don't under-estimate the power this type of thing has, though.
> Consumer Reports single handedly destroyed the Suzuki Samurai a few
> years ago with the famous "tip over" picture. What's not widely known,
> however, is that they were testing several small SUVs that day, most of
> which had about 10 passes through the "tip-over" course. It took 44
> tries, 3 drivers and changing the course from what the other vehicles
> went through to successfully tip it. There is even a video, made by the
> testers, with shouts of "Yahoo!" when they finally tipped it.
>
> Then they printed the pic on their cover, it was their number one
> selling mag of all time, and the following year sales of this capable
> little vehicle were cut to 1/3 of what they had been.
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