New Car - What Should I Get?

[Provost Harrison]

Such ugly, overgrown pieces of ****...and knowing American cars, the interior is probably built from old polystyrene cups...

[Arrian]

German cars here are famous for always being in the shop.

I'm probably going to get an Outback (Legacy Outback, not Impreza - Outback is Subaru for "jacked up wagon" not just wagon. There is such a thing as a plain Legacy wagon, and I think the same for Impreza). The reliability issue does give me pause, though.

Oerdin, as usual, appears to be talking out of his ass. I love that Ben popped in to back him up. That's perfection.

-Arrian

[Provost Harrison]

That's certainly not the impression I have of German cars. Although I've never had one myself, mine is Japanese.

Although saying that, I once had a French car. Never again

[Arrian]

The only german cars here are high-end cars. They're... temperamental. At least based on experiences of people I know. Small sample size caveat applies. I'm not looking at consumer reports here.

-Arrian

[Provost Harrison]

They're quite popular here...highly sought after. Let's face it, you don't get too many British badges nowadays, now Rover is over...

[Dominikos]

I would have to agree with Asher on this issue here.

First off, consumer reviews only mean something after the car is already a few years old. The first year never really matters.

Second, surveys and statistics are bull****!! You can read 200% of Nothing and How to Lie with Statistics for further information on this one.

Statistics are generally regarded by the scientific community as a pseudo-science and a bunch of hogwash. It's liked by sociologists and social "scientists" who are clammering to get sociological research methods to be regarded as scientific, which they are not.

Survey results are notoriously manipulated.

But again and most IMPORTANTLY, it's only AFTER A FEW YEARS that you can judge a car's real worth. Not the first year or even the second.

~Dominikos~

[Kontiki]

48 listings for the entire US with the last name Nuguyen? Holy ****, that is a common name.

[Dinner]

And what exactly is Consumer Report's incentive to "notoriously manipulate" the results? They don't accept advertising money or any money from manufacturers or anyone else. Also Consumer Reports ranks cars based on survey results for model years 2000-2009 so it is much more then "a year or two" as certain people have claimed. Hell, they even put the raw data on their website and tell you how many people filled reports on each given type of car.

So, yes, someone here is talking out of their ass but it isn't me.

[Dinner]

Now CR isn't perfect because it uses some nebulous terms like "excellent", "good", "poor" etc and asks respondents to judge their car in various categories but the defect data is at least a hard quantifiable number which can be compared between cars and brands.

[Asher]

And what exactly is Consumer Report's incentive to "notoriously manipulate" the results? They don't accept advertising money or any money from manufacturers or anyone else. Also Consumer Reports ranks cars based on survey results for model years 2000-2009 so it is much more then "a year or two" as certain people have claimed. Hell, they even put the raw data on their website and tell you how many people filled reports on each given type of car.

So, yes, someone here is talking out of their ass but it isn't me.

Allow me to let Oerdin answer your question:

http://www.apolyton.net/forums/showpost.php?p=4473235&postcount=18

To compare Consumer Reports, dispite its protestations that it's nonprofit status make it superior, is a completely subjective report which renders it utterly unreliable and nonreproducable. Consumer Reports relies upon people to write into their publication and rate cars on an "excellent, good, average, and poor" system which they do not explain and which no two write ins have the same standards. Such a system does not represent a statistical sampling. One person's excellent is another person's good and yet another person's average ranking. There are absolutely no numbers to back up Consumer Reports ratings. They are 100% subjective and thus based upon conventional wisdom and wishful thingking which always lags reality.

http://www.apolyton.net/forums/showpost.php?p=4473918&postcount=20

Consumer Reports has nothing; nothing other then their bias and inconsistant nonrandomly selected personal opinion. They just don't measure up.

http://www.apolyton.net/forums/showpost.php?p=4473937&postcount=21

Consumer Reports continually beats the drum of "we're a nonprofit so we're better" because that's all they have to stand on. Consumer Reports knows that their surveys don't even pretend to be scientific or mathamatical and that fact has got them into legal trouble on more then one occasion.

Note the case where Consumer Reports falsely accused Suzuki of building unstable and unsafe cars. They deliberately set up conditions where the Suzuki truck would flip over in order to sansationalize their story. Their claims were so malicious and unfounded that the courts ordered Consumer Reports to pay millions and millions of dollars to Suzuki for their malicious and completely false claims. Consumer Reports is unobjective crap which even the courts have laughed at.

[Asher]

Is this what the kids call a "slam dunk"?

[Wezil]

Oh my.

I think someone has some uncomfortable squirming ahead.

[Asher]

I didn't think this could get any better than the Nuguyen stuff, but man, does Oerdin deliver.

[Dinner]

Before you even posted that I already conceded that it had problems with subjectivity in some areas but that others were quantifiable numbers.

I would also like to point out that you claimed in that thread that CR was a great source but now you claim it isn't so much.

[Asher]