Consumer Reports announced its Annual Auto Issue today. As in past years, the press treats the reliability ratings in it as news, even though they’re the same ratings that have been around since the New Car Preview reached newsstands last October. And are based on a survey that was sent out nearly a year ago, in April 2009.
For some reason, no one ever mentions this. Certainly not CR. But not the media, either.
So we get forum posts like this one. It’s easy to understand why people, hearing there’s a new Auto Issue, think that the results in it are new. It’s just not remotely accurate.
TrueDelta recently updated its reliability stats to include owner experiences through the end of 2009. So they’re based on data that is over eight months ahead of CR’s.
When shopping for a car, do you want to know how it was faring a year ago, when it was a year younger, or how it’s been doing lately?