"Capt. Rob" wrote in message
oups.com...
I'm sure the "many hybrid owners" are more orgasmic about their cars
than
about the second coming of Christ. After all they already bought them
and
are stuck with an cost-inefficient technology that will be superceded
shortly.


Plenty of folks give bad reviews to their new cars, Maxi. Just cruise
the Ford or GM forums.
As for Consumer Reports, every auto enthusiast considers them a joke,

I'm an auto enthusiast, and I don't, which clearly refutes that statement.

even worse than MotorTrend. They're fine if you need help buying a
washing machine. And CR thinks Bose is world class sound. Nuff said.

The Consumer Union does three things that no one else does: 1) they *buy*
the cars they test--they are not specially-prepared cars, provided by the
manufacturers, owners, or dealerships like ALL the other automotive press
uses. They just go buy an example of the car off someone's lot, and they
don't tell them what it's for. 2) they test the car over a period of months,
not just a one or two-day trial at some track and over a piece of roadway.
3) they take no advertising from manufacturers, thereby not committing
themselves to fluffing a road test in order to keep an advertiser happy.

Every other American road test group, whether automotive printed media or
on-line source, uses borrowed cars. And if they pan the car too severely,
they can kiss getting future vehicles for testing goodbye, not to mention
lost advertising revenues. The British magazines are somewhat less beholden
to the manufacturers, but they, too, use borrowed cars.

It's not surprising that lots of enthusiasts dislike Consumer Reports. If
you've paid $50K for a new Corvette, and CR has just published a road test
calling it a piece of plastic junk with more rattles than a wealthy baby,
you probably are going to take issue with them. It's like Practical Sailor
magazine--I hear far more hate-speak toward them than praise, but then they
call 'em the way they see 'em, too. Any time someone knocks your particular
boat, car, anchor, or whatever, you're going to be ****ed. And you're
probably going to do whatever you can to discredit that source.

Consumer Reports does one other thing: they do the most inclusive and
extensive owner surveys in the industry. Only Road & Track magazine does a
good job in this area, but not as extensive as CR.

Go ahead, Bubbles--shoot the messenger. But if the foo ****s . . .

As for Bose, they made some very fine speaker systems years ago. I have no
idea what they produce now, but I'm guessing you're prejudice against them
is long-standing and based on seriously out-dated information from CR. I've
never seen CR refer to Bose as "world-class sound," so I have to conclude
that this is something you heard from other prejudiced types. I'm under the
impression that you've probably never had an original thought in your life.

I have B&W speakers in every room that has a sound system. There are none
finer at any price, but the old Bose 901s I used to own were certainly
within the 95th percentile compared with my B&Ws.

Max