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Sedans Luxury Performance Sedans
10006 messages, Last post on Nov 26, 2009 at 6:59 AM
You are in the Sedans Forum. Your Hosts are pat & karens
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Replying to: calhon (Jul 04, 2006 12:12 pm) I agree that you need to look at the history of a brand's cars for a totally new model. Using a single number or rank though for an entire brand is not very useful. "Volvo is ranked X, Mercedes is ranked Y" is largely useless information, as is CR's "predicted" score. Despite the "average" predicted rating, owners of '05 S40s reported many more problems in specific areas than owners of '05 A4s and C classes. If I were going to buy a new S80 for myself, I would not pay any attention to what Volvo's overall rank in IQS is. I would look at other recently introduced Volvos, such as the S40. Cars that have been in production for a long time, such as the S60, will have had the bugs worked out by now. They'll improve Volvo's "average" rank for the year, but the data on an S60 thats been in production since 2001 is not useful unless you're going to buy an S60. What CR is actually useful for is that it shows what areas owners reported problems in. Engine or transmission problems are definitely worse than electrical problems. It would be nice if, rather than "2-5%" of owners equaling a half red dot, CR just said "3.8% of owners reported electical issues", but its still much more useful information than some "PP100" score for an entire brand.
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Replying to: lexusguy (Jul 04, 2006 3:11 pm) I agree with you on brand rankings, and the absolute differences behind them are fairly small in any case. Despite the "average" predicted rating, owners of '05 S40s reported many more problems in specific areas than owners of '05 A4s and C classes. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. The "average" rating is a weighted combination of the problems in all areas for the model. (Engine and transmission problems weigh more heavily in the calculation than electrical problems, for example.) The S40 and the A4 got the same rating, which means the A4 had more problems in other specific areas. As for the C-Class, it's rating was lower, so it had more problems overall, despite being in production since 2001. What CR is actually useful for is that it shows what areas owners reported problems in. Engine or transmission problems are definitely worse than electrical problems. It would be nice if, rather than "2-5%" of owners equaling a half red dot, CR just said "3.8% of owners reported electical issues", Good luck with that! You clearly haven't been keeping up. As of the 2005 survey (the current data) those little colored dots no longer have fixed ranges. The half-red dot used to mean 2-5%. Now, it just means less problems than the clear but more than the solid red dot. Furthermore, each dot doesn't have the same range in each of the problem areas, or in the same problem area for different years. Now everything is relative to the hidden averages for each year. See, we're right back to my point about not being able to tell how much better/worse a thing is from purely relative data. You're absolutely (pun intended) correct that it would be better if CR just said "3.8% of owners reported electical issues". Similarly, it would be much better if CR provided the actual overall problem rate/probability for each model, rather than percentages below/above some unspecified average, or yet another little colored dot.
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Replying to: calhon (Jul 04, 2006 8:23 pm) Perhaps the reason CR doesn't share real data is because, for many "specialty" vehicles the sample is far too small to be statistically valid. As I've alluded to earlier, filling out the survey form is a "bring your lunch" event, and the predisposition of people who are willing to fill out the thing may not be toward "impractical" vehicles. I'm not holding my breath, but it'd be great to have the Annual Auto Issue tell the reader the total number of respondents, the number for each vehicle rated and (as you suggested) the percentage of those who experienced each category of "problem." What constitutes a problem isn't defined either. As an example, an electrical failure that leaves the car immobile is a much bigger deal than one that leaves the sunshade immobile. Whether CR or, more importantly, the people who fill out the survey, share that opinion is anyone's guess. Then there's the possibility, as with any self-selected polling population, that people are far more likely to participate if they have a beef than if they're satisfied. The CR data is possibly of some value for Accords, Camrys, Impalas & Altimas (among others sold in the millions) because the sample is probably large enough to be valid. For the others, who knows? But, other than being a time-consuming survey completed by a self-selected group, the results of which are vague at best, what's not to like?
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Replying to: cdnpinhead (Jul 04, 2006 8:48 pm) These days, with BMW [for instance] selling between 35-45,000 5 series, it would be amusing and maybe even significant to know what the issues were and then spit out a calculated percentage. The best source of this data would be the manufacturer's themselves who certainly keep records (at least for 50,000 miles for most of these cars here in LPS land.) Probably won't happen unless it would be to counter the vague and perhaps statistically insignificant rankings CR provides. Of course, CR seems to be hell bent on making its results harder and harder to interpret in any meaningful way -- perhaps the best thing is to keep quiet if you are a mfgr. |
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Part of the problem (and emotion) associated with CR and JDP is what we consumers have brought to the relationship with them -- namely, the usual wish to find another individual or group whose agenda is nothing other than our best interests. The prime directive -- from genes to magazines -- is survival and proliferation. CR does that by conveying "we have all the information you need to know exactly which car you should buy". Any method of gathering data or reporting it that subverts that agenda ain't gonna happen. |
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Replying to: cdnpinhead (Jul 04, 2006 8:48 pm) CR has a magic number of reponses below which they wont publish reliability data for a model\yr. It would be nice to know what that number is, what all of their magic numbers are, actually. I'm disappointed that the individual data dots don't actually mean anything anymore, that at least used to be the one area where you were somewhat clued in to what CR's stat machnines know.
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Not a huge amount that hasn't been said before, but they do explain why the "new" 3.2L I6 is so weak, its not a brand new engine as has been reported previously, just a displacement bump for the old car's 2.9. http://www.autoweek.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060626/FREE/60616004/1009/V- EHICLEREVIEWS |
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Audi June Sales Highest In 2006 (from Car and Driver) * Sales up 9.0 percent in June, best June since 2001 * First half sales up 6.8 percent over year ago * Q7 launch off to a strong start * A4 and A6 models continue robust sales pace AUBURN HILLS, Mich., July 3 -- Audi of America, Inc., today reported 8,039 vehicle sales for the month of June, a 9.0 percent increase over year ago sales. This is the fourteenth monthly sales increase over the past 17 months, and a positive indication that Audi will meet its goal of record sales in 2006. Sales in June were up or on par across the Audi line up. The all-new Q7 performance SUV tallied 1,310 sales in June, the first official month of sales for that vehicle. Sales of the A3 and A6 models were up significantly again, 17.9 percent and 10.5 percent, respectively. |
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