Consumers Guide Auto Report Reliability

Body hardware, squeaks and rattles and power equipment got 1 notch below the highest. That can be a significant contributor to the Prius only getting an average overall for used car verdicts.

Judging by the various complaints about squeaks and rattles on Gen IIIs, I'd wager their results are pretty close to reality.

 

I agree!!!

I will take squeaks and rattles over a new transmission, tie rods, or major engine repair any day.

Squeaks and rattles are easy to fix with a little time and patients. My car never make a noise any more.

 

Could be CR feels obligated to say something negative about Prius/Toyota--which has become fashionable in the American media. That isn't their usual style.

 

Since when has CR ever been reputable? I've always taken them with a grain of salt. CR is as bad as cnet

 

I do not agree. Too bad there is not a "No Thanks."

That said .... do you have a positive opinion of any consumer magazine?

BTW, I always read CNET as well before making an electronic purchase .... alone with any other source I can find. Then I make my own decision.

 

I would argue the opposite. CR has an excellent reputation and their data is as unbiased and unemotional as possible.

Good, bad or average, you aren't going to find data-backed "advice" anywhere else that is more accurate imo.

 

Yep, CR is excellent. Their tests are standardized, and they shoot for transparency. I tend not to share 'typical' american feature wants which CR mirrors, but it is easy enough to focus on the areas I care about.

E.g., Prius has never been a CR favorite because its handling is not sporty and the ICE is on the small side, but it is always clear those are the reasons for the less than stellar overall grade. Since I care very little about either of those, I know that CR finds the rest of Prius top notch.

As an exception, on computers CR failed for the longest time. Recommending windows was just silly. I think they could not see past the purchase price.

 

It's the same on every car-specific forum I am on. The slightest negative about "their car" by CR means that they are unreliable, corrupt, or just don't "get it.".

But if CR put's "their car" to the top of a list? Well obviously they know what they are talking about.

It's only natural for a car's owner to feel this way. We all think our kids are angels, too, right?

CR has taken Toyota to task over the acceleration issues and they gave the Lexus GX a big black mark for what they considered a flaw in it's traction control.

Unlike every magazine that sells advertising space to the very manufacturers they are reviewing, CR have absolutely no stake in the rise or fall of any brand.

That's why I trust them, even if I don't agree with every word. They are consistently fair and unbiased imo.

They DO, do test drives btw, it's how they uncovered their issue with the GX. But the red and black marks all come for data collected from current owners.

 

What you describe is exactly what happened to the 2006 Acura RSX. In its (the 2006 MY) first year, it got a bad overall grade due to lots of negative feedback for one category (I forget what that was). Now it is on their list of best used cars. Interestingly, in the case of the RSX, 2006 was the *last*, not first, year of production--the first year got good ratings from the start. Maybe they ran out of Genuine Honda 100K Mile Guaranteed Super-Handling Blinker Fluid and had to back-order it or something. Go figure.
~T

 

The CR reliability info is based mainly on Customer feedback and survey responses. A lot depends on what customers are willing to overlook when the respond. My Acura TL required an entire new 5 speed transmission 2 years into the Ownership experience. I was disabled ...stranded by the breakdown so pretty serious. I was told by the service manager that 30K 3.2 TL's had to have the tranny replaced so the problem was pretty widespread...Consumer reports gave the Transmission a half red dot for the affected year...go figure.

 

^GEEZE, what is it with Honda (especially their supposedly luxury brand, Acura) and transmissions? I had two Acuras (Integra and Legend) that required rebuilt transmissions.

 

Bet the tranny problems of the models in the years you had them were recorded as minor by CR....Meanwhile a minor reprogramming warrants a solid black. It just depends on the respondents to the CR surveys...It does not always reflect reality on the ground.

 

Regarding, the TL transmission, there was Honda Worldwide | World News | News Release | September 20, 2002. Before Honda extended the warranties, the transmission problems on the affected vehicles listed above was fairly well known.

 

So back to the point of the thread...why didn't the news make it to CR? Why the black brake mark for Prius (which to my knowledge never stranded anyone) vs the half red for Acura TL in which the Tranny's basically self destructed? TMP CR cannot be trusted fully.

 

^^ Why do you assume the owners 'overlooked' the problem, rather than not having the problem ? You should also realize that the marks are relative to the fleet average, so if brake problems are rare in general a few percent of complaints for a specific model will earn a black mark.

Most answers are not conspiracies. Just sayin'. Triple that for CR

 

Huh? Not sure I follow you there.... "if brake problems are rare in general a few percent of complaints for a specific model will earn a black mark". Please explain.

 

If a black mark is given to a model that has at least 50% more complaints than the fleet average, and the fleet average is 2%, then a model with 3% of owners complaining wins a black mark.

If another category has a fleet average of 0.1%, then a model with 0.15% complaints wins a mark in that category.

CR treats incidence rates below a certain threshold with what amounts to skepticism, but one can view it as just taking statistical power into account. I recommend you read their methods -- they are, as I have said earlier, a transparent company.

 

So for the Acura Tranny issue fewer than 150% of the fleet average complained? That seems logical but in that case it was obvious (from Acura's own recall info) that more than 2% had serious trouble...yet CR did not pick up on it...still there is no comparing the seriousness of the Prius Brake issue to the Acura Tranny issue for near or long term drivablity/safety or owner inconvenience (I would put a little bobble of the brake way behind walking at night down a busy freeway). Anyway eigther you are missing my point (that some issues that dont earn a black mark are more widespread and serious than CR can determine and some issues are not serious but earn their unwarranted scrutiny) or your point is simply that the survey process used by is honest democratic but by definition inherently flawed. On the latter I agree their methods are transparent and (imo) subject to flaw and error (based on personal and others experience).

Again there is no way a 2000 Acura TL deserves even an average on its transmission based on Acura's own TSB! and there is no way a Prius deserves a black for its brakes...there just is no comparison imo. (excused me this acura issue and CR's reporting of it has been bothering me since 2002)

 

I can't speak to the TL specifically, but it might be helpful to track CR's reliability info for a given model and model year over the years. From Consumer Reports Car Reliability FAQ

It's very possible for there to be a window of time of a whole bunch of failures that then passes because all/most of the cars w/failures have been fixed and if the new parts are better, they might not fail again for a long time.

 

It's very possible for there to be a window of time of a whole bunch of failures that then passes because all/most of the cars w/failures have been fixed and if the new parts are better, they might not fail again for a long time.[/QUOTE]


Thanks for the insight...I always wondered...In other words its lucky timing for Honda then and bad luck for Prius...But then again Prius sold 100,000 Gen III's in 2010 to Honda's 11,000 Insights so maybe Karma came back to haunt Honda.

Anyway I own a Pilot too so I should'nt wish Honda too much ill will. I suppose walking away from a nearly new broken down 32K Acura for a scary walk down a highway at night through a bad part of town in the rain is something I can get over....no wait I cant...