Worst on Consumer Reports

[BaliMawr]

As someone who sold cars I can tell you that that makes a HUGE amount of sense.

Someone isn't going to come in and tell you that the Gladiator is slower, 10k more expensive, and doesn't do as well in crash testing as the (Brand X) pickup.

The term is cross shopping. I don't think its happening much. Because by the numbers the Wrangler / Gladiator doesn't make much sense.

When I sold cars, I quickly learned that much of the sales training that they taught us was crap. Oh, they will cross shop the Saab convertible against the Infinity, Lexus, and Benz convertible, the sales trainers would say.

But in the end, I didn't lose sales to "competitive" cars. I often lost sales to cars that were nothing like the Saab convertible. I lost one deal to a Corvette. Another to an ESCALADE!!!.

When you have a vehicle that is primarily purchased based on WANTS not needs. There is no logic to the buying decision.

I think that there are also wants and needs that are counter to the mainstream. I looked at towing numbers for mid-sized trucks, because I hate full size trucks. I had a Honda ridgeline, because they were quirky (the originals, not the invisibly vanilla new version). I like the jeep because it's quirky, but also, objectively, because it's not bulbous and jacked up like the Ford Ranger. I like it because it will do the truck stuff that I need, but it's SMALL like I like. It actually has better sight lines than my ridgeline, and WAY better than the Ram 1500 I had been towing with. And that low bed rail and associated visibility doesn't exist in anything north of the Ford Maverick. If I hadn't NEEDED to tow my TT and haul garbage to the dump, I'd be driving a MINI. Am I happy with my JTMT? Oh hell yeah! There isn't anything else that would do what I need, the way I want it to do it any better.

Now... WTF were we talking about?

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[Uparms]

I like to use the CR Used car and sometimes the new car "Buying Guide" and reference the past 6 or so model years of reliability and areas of Positives and Negatives by year. Otherwise, it's a nice read but I would never make my final decision based just on their report. So many other ways to compare products, CR is just one tool. Use it as part of research on tractors and appliances too.

 

[Uparms]

Another 2..

 

[Glad_he_ate]

Based purely on practicality, a Ranger or Colorado does everything ours does for $10k less.

But the top and doors can't come off, and it has no soul. You can tell me that the Colorado or Ranger are boring and I'm with you 100%. But they do every useful task a Gladiator can do in comparable comfort, with better fuel economy for 10k less.

Again, I'm not knocking the Gladiator. I just chose to buy one. But what differentiates the Gladiator from a ranger is a bunch of things that fall squarely into the Wants category. Not needs.

and ps. I love my truck more every day. I spent a half hour with my 14 year old daughter on the way home from skiing blasting around on a dirt road in a few inches of fresh snow. Ha. with her egging me on faster faster. I wouldn't have that time with my Volvo. Which is why I bought the Jeep. As a family fun vehicle.

Eh my zr2 duramax with full delete and tune was not boring at all ….ever.
But I wanted the removable roof and diesel v6 over the i4 duramax.

 

[Glad_he_ate]

And it was actually only 2 k less….

 

[redriderjf87]

Based purely on practicality, a Ranger or Colorado does everything ours does for $10k less.

But the top and doors can't come off, and it has no soul. You can tell me that the Colorado or Ranger are boring and I'm with you 100%. But they do every useful task a Gladiator can do in comparable comfort, with better fuel economy for 10k less.

Again, I'm not knocking the Gladiator. I just chose to buy one. But what differentiates the Gladiator from a ranger is a bunch of things that fall squarely into the Wants category. Not needs.

and ps. I love my truck more every day. I spent a half hour with my 14 year old daughter on the way home from skiing blasting around on a dirt road in a few inches of fresh snow. Ha. with her egging me on faster faster. I wouldn't have that time with my Volvo. Which is why I bought the Jeep. As a family fun vehicle.

I can relate to what you're saying, coming from a Colorado myself. Objectively it was a great truck, and the manual still made it fun to drive. If the manual was available with 4x4 I may have ended up keeping it

But it's not meant to be easily taken apart and customized like the jeep is. And open air driving is fun.

 

[Klutch]

Sadly I dropped mine off today for the 3 dash lights and the Ess not ready battery charging issue for the 4th time and they put me in a fucking Renegade.

Clearly you are biased against your own truck.

 

[jeepinmike]

Who cares what these reports say. I dont see Lamborghini or Ferrari on these lists and I certainly wouldn’t pass one up because consumer reports didnt like it or it didnt have 5 star crash test results.

 

[Pakdoc]

Owning a Gladiator/JEEP is more of a lifestyle choice than a decision based on just economics.

 

[alyn]

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.foxnews.com/auto/consumer-reports-best-worst-car-brands.amp

Well they can take their consumer opinion and shove it! Ha! I love my Willy’s!

CR has NEVER met a Honda it didn't idolize. I've bought products that they've marginalized and been quite happy. My neighbor has a Ridgeline and can't wait for his lease o run out so he can buy a SantaCruz.

 

[Wolf Island Diver]

Consumer reports, et al, are classic examples of bad sampling. For sure there is major self selection bias. The ratings come from CR readers (small population subset), who choose to respond to the survey (smaller population subset), who are more likely to respond if they have something to complain about (this is a documented tendency and even smaller subset).

But there’s also endogeneity bias. I’m defining endogeneity as dependent and independent variables effecting each other. An example in car reviews is how they are heavily skewed by bad experiences with modern tech. But those experiences are in part a direct function of the owners comfort with modern UI/UX. In other words the population of CR reviewers as they skew older, I would argue are more likely to have issues with a lot of modern tech features, complain about these negative experiences and skew to overall quality or repair ratings downward.

At one point a few years ago Ford fell to the absolute bottom of quality ratings almost solely the result of MFT and Sync. Now to be clear MFT and Sync were terrible but when you take a deep dive on the actual quality complaints themselves, you find that the majority of them were related to lack of user familiarity or UI design choices and not actual system failures. Bad design choices are not quality issues. Likewise both initial quality ratings and “repair” instances for late model Volvos are heavily skewed by people having difficulty using their Sensus infotainment system, that while having legitimate problems, is mostly guilty of being unintuitive for many users. The same thing happened with BMW iDrive. People take their car in because they don’t know how to use their infotainment system and we get an instance in the statistics. Get enough cases of grandma not knowing how to turn on the radio and quality and repair ratings of the whole line of cars begins to drop. While these complaints might be informative in an of themselves, their contextless aggregation is bad sampling.

The other problem is that CR plays to their audience and their in-house reviewers have their own biases. In the 90s I remember the buying guide, in reference to the Camaro, called it a “primitive rear-wheel drive muscle car” while simultaneously calling the 300zx “and exciting rear-wheel drive sports car”. The same attribute is applied in opposite directions depending on maker. You see this all the time with CR.

My own observation is that they tend to rate vehicles starting with a default standard of the Honda Accord. Ironically, Honda went through a phase in recent years where their quality and owner satisfaction fell off to such an extent that their CEO isssued a mea culpa. This event didn’t seem to affect their love of Honda. It’s also a bad practice to compare radically different types of vehicles. If a Jeep or Porsche Cayman handled like a Honda, people wouldn’t buy them.

I’ve read couple of glib and obtuse write ups
In CR about the Wrangler where they attempt to reconcile the low quality reviews with the fact that the Wrangler has some of the highest owner loyalty. The owner loyalty tells you something. Why do the same people keep buying Mazda Miata’s and Jeep Wranglers if they are so compromised? I think CR lacks imagination here. It’s obviously the focus of purpose that drives people to buy these vehicles and what some may see as a bug are actually a feature. I for one am glad that I can go to a dealership and buy both a car like a Camry or Accord but also a Wrangler or Miata.

 

[Hootbro]

But there’s also endogeneity bias. I’m defining endogeneity as dependent and independent variables effecting each other.

Thanks, now I have to find a way to use the word "endogeneity" at work tomorrow.

 

[Wolf Island Diver]

Thanks, now I have to find a way to use the word "endogeneity" at work tomorrow.

I will say, I’m using the term somewhat loosely, in the sense that the result or error is related to something within the system. At least in my opinion.

I’m considering CR users as part of the model even if their input could also be considered outside the system or the IDs themselves. I guess its whether you believe that just being a CR reader tends to skew your responses which I do. So to me they are part of the model. Therefore the error term in their model is a function of CR reader biases. Others might say that’s ridiculous and the system is the survey and it’s methodologies and the readers are just inputs.

 

[Eaglebob]

Here’s what I see. Every wanna be 4x4, basically ridgelines and subarus turn their heads and stare as I go by. And I always imagine they are saying “damn, I coulda got one of those!”. And to c&r… bite me!

 

[Eaglebob]

Oh and the Rock The Park guys could not get to their desired campsite because of a couple rocks in Gold Butte Nat Mon in their subaru. Come on back boys, I’ll get you to your campsite with all of my gear and yours. “Glad” to help you out there.

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