Worst on Consumer Reports

[Geoarch]

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 think you're mostly right. But manual transfer case shifting, and MT was top of my list, and it's standard on the Gladiator. Sure there is other stuff I got like the hard top, winch bumper (I always have a winch on my 4X4s), tonneau cover for some security, larger and better tires than my Tacoma etc. It's true my Tacoma TRDPro is "more comfortable", but it doesn't have live axles which has been an issue in the situations I must be in for my fieldwork. So, yeah you are right and wrong. Still, I think the Gladiator looks bitchen not to put too fine a point on it.

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[Geoarch]

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.

Is "EcoDiesel" oxymoronic?

 

[Geoarch]

Honestly? If you need this sign, I’m fine with nature taking it’s course.

Boy howdy it sure is. What 2500 dead a day in the US? Maybe a bit less now. In my state with about 2 million people (NM) it's about 25-35 a day.

 

[Geoarch]

I’m not saying that at all and this isn’t my opinion or my logic. You’re assuming that there is only one kind of survey methodology or the because I expressed the view (which happens to be uncontroversial) that voluntary surveys are not scientifically rigorous I must dislike all surveys. I don’t even dislike Consumer Reports on the whole. I’m speaking from my educational background in economics/political science and engineering, and my professional experience in operations
research, data science and modsim. I’ve spent a career working with data sets trying to avoid problems that reduce validity. I’ve lead teams designing studies and conducting surveys.

Go to any university on the planet and ask a any social scientist, economist, political scientist or someone who works in OR or data science and they will tell you the same thing. Email the folks at FRED https://fred.stlouisfed.org/ and ask them about survey methodology. Voluntary surveys suffer from self-selection bias and are not considered reliable within all of those fields.

Researchers do conduct surveys all the time that are valid. Many of those political survey calls we get are those kinds of surveys. They’re built around standard, peer-reviewed methodologies. They are attempting to get a representative sample of the total population. This is why they cold call people rather than allow people to contact them. This is why they’re not being done via Buzzfeed or FB.

If CR called a random sample set of the American public or got purchase data from manufacturers and contacted owners like other automotive researchers do, then their surveys and thus ratings would be of better quality. They don’t do that. They rely on self selection within of a specific subset of the total population. It’s classic bad sampling.

Little known to most folks is something called the GSS ( general social survey) https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2007/nsf0748/nsf0748_3.pdf
It’s the gold standard for social science data, it’s used to shape public policy that affects many aspects of our lives. It exceptionally important and it’s survey-based. Any political science undergrad will spend a lot of time with this data.

You’ve probably heard of “consumer confidence.” This too is based on surveys. https://www.conference-board.org/topics/consumer-confidence. There’s the ASM https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/asm.html, again critical to understanding what is happening in the economy.

Survey data is critical to the proper functioning of society, the economy and federal and state governments. But like any data collection tool, it has to be rigorous to be valid and applicable

As far as automotive data, there are also other sources. JD Power is a mixed bag. Some of their methodologies are better in that they try and get a more representative sample, but their relationship with the industry presents a potential conflict of interest. The government also collects statistics on vehicle repair and safety issues.

I would argue that people have to take a look at a lot of sources when buying a car. I’m not saying that CR is never a valuable source. I took the CR survey obviously because I’m a CR member. But I do recognize that there are some problems there and as someone who is trained and worked in some of the above mentioned fields, CRs casual glossing over of the limits of their surveys reeks of institutional arrogance and I find that troubling.

I taught SPSS at university for 23 years that took many of its examples from the GSS. We were geologists and archaeologists, but I did get a better, sometimes frightening, grasp of American society.

 

[Wolf Island Diver]

Is "EcoDiesel" oxymoronic?

Like “clean coal” maybe, lol? I guess in relative terms, diesel is eco. My truck gets a lot better mileage than any other truck or Jeep I’ve owned, so from a CO2 perspective it is.

Compared to a compact car, no. Of course with anything there’s the total life cycle energy of all the materials. With all the rare earth elements and lifecycle costs of all the specialized emissions equipment, I’m not sure it offsets the smog benefits. Europeans seem more concerned with CO2 than NOx. I think they’re right but then I don’t live in Southern California.

My ideal mix would be more diesels with more relaxed NOx rules for passenger vehicles and light trucks with the emphasis on mileage, electrics and diesel electric hybrids and some small 4 cylinder hybrids. I’m talking about preferences and the market, not some kind of mandate. The American market loves gas engines. I’ve never been impressed with the mileage of small 4 cylinder SUVs that everyone drives.

 

[Wolf Island Diver]

I taught SPSS at university for 23 years that took many of its examples from the GSS. We were geologists and archaeologists, but I did get a better, sometimes frightening, grasp of American society.

Ha ha, I used SPSS in college. That was a very long time ago. Never used it in industry. We used R and Minitab, but we were engineering and OR focused.

 

[dcmdon]

Is "EcoDiesel" oxymoronic?

Yes, its like "clean coal".

Its mind boggling that people actually tried to sell diesels as cleaner than gas. They make fewer greenhouse gasses than gas. But that's about it. In every other measure of "dirtiness" they are much worse.

 

[Geoarch]

Yes, its like "clean coal".

Its mind boggling that people actually tried to sell diesels as cleaner than gas. They make fewer greenhouse gasses than gas. But that's about it. In every other measure of "dirtiness" they are much worse.

I was a tracked vehicle mechanic in the Marines on tanks-diesel, and amtracs-gas, both with the same engine bottom end. When I finished Warrant Office school, I did a study on diesel, and while CO2 is better than gas, particulates and sulphur dioxide were pretty bad, the former bad for the lungs, and the latter for the brain. That was in the 60s-70s, and nobody cared, especially in Vietnam.

 

[Geoarch]

Like “clean coal” maybe, lol? I guess in relative terms, diesel is eco. My truck gets a lot better mileage than any other truck or Jeep I’ve owned, so from a CO2 perspective it is.

Compared to a compact car, no. Of course with anything there’s the total life cycle energy of all the materials. With all the rare earth elements and lifecycle costs of all the specialized emissions equipment, I’m not sure it offsets the smog benefits. Europeans seem more concerned with CO2 than NOx. I think they’re right but then I don’t live in Southern California.

My ideal mix would be more diesels with more relaxed NOx rules for passenger vehicles and light trucks with the emphasis on mileage, electrics and diesel electric hybrids and some small 4 cylinder hybrids. I’m talking about preferences and the market, not some kind of mandate. The American market loves gas engines. I’ve never been impressed with the mileage of small 4 cylinder SUVs that everyone drives.

A diesel hybrid sounds interesting. We have rooftop solar, and a 220 connection in the garage anticipating a hybrid in my future. I'm waiting for the hybrid Gladiator.

I considered the diesel, but wanted an MT.

 

[ShadowsPapa]

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).

Yup. What he said. That's been one of my points all along on voluntary participation and this sort of sampling but he said it far better than I.

And the real hum dinger... does anyone actually know anyone personally who was trying to purchase horse dewormer for the purposes of thinking it would treat covid...

I have a friend out west who is a horse person. She and her husband have a ranch and raise horses. She knows horses and horse medicine. Not me personally, but SHE does know people who have done such - and she posted a message from a person who was telling of their personal experience, getting sick, the runs and so on. The key ingredient was all those people had to see - no thinking of the form of said chemical or the dosage, etc. It had that key ingredient and that was all it took.
And if you look, you used to find "influencers" posting of their experiences with the stuff. It's one reason I avoid tiktok and instacrap............

 

[ShadowsPapa]

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).

Yup. What he said. That's been one of my points all along on voluntary participation and this sort of sampling but he said

So far I like how my 3.6L Willy's behaves on the road.

This truck is wonderful on the highway, fun to drive. It's become our daily driver, even to church and back each weekend. It handles and steers fine. I've had it up to 95 and I've driven in crazy winds and storms and yes, it gets blown around....... but for normal driving, it's been great. My wife drove it back from Colorado Springs - almost non-stop and it wasn't tiring at all. It's a pleasure to drive, easy to drive, rides nice on the highway, the steering is as good as any truck I've owned (now it is, with the second steering gear)
For those who still say or believe their Gladiator doesn't drive or handle well on the highway - then YOUR truck has a problem - either from the factory or you introduced the problem yourself with some mods.

 

[DirkG]

Is "EcoDiesel" oxymoronic?

Ah, the greenwash method of marketing. Another great example: Ford's "Ecoboost".

Companies love to add the "Eco" and "Enviro" prefixes to ordinary products to insinuate some type of immediate or downstream environmental benefit. Which is often not the case.

 

[ShadowsPapa]

Is "EcoDiesel" oxymoronic?

Yeah, maybe also akin to Senate intelligence committee?

 

[ciagw]

My report is the only one that matters! Completely happy driving my brick on wheels. Makes me happy just starting up my Ecodiesel and letting it idle for a few and then feeling the grumbling of it as I pull up the on ramp!

Same here! Smiles every mile.

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