CR is also available on line at my county’s public library. I just log in at home and can review anything CR has to offer any time of the day.
The Nissan Leaf is an inexpensive used car if you can charge it. Electric cars seem more friendly if you have a house with a driveway and especially a garage. Charging in a parking lot at an apartment, townhouse development, or condominium seems like a lot of trouble unless they have commercial chargers available. That seems unlikely. I’d be concerned about leaving the electric car connected to my electric outlet overnight. How many extension cables did you buy this week?
The late great Len Frank of KPFK’s The Car Show told people to consult Consumer Reports but also Car & Driver or Motor Trend or some other aficionados’ mag, that CR told you how good a car was as a utility but not how fun or stylish - if that mattered - cars had to be fun and stylish for him but he appreciated that they were just utilities for most people.
CR does present opinions about driveability, comfort, and styling, but they rank their importance differently than the automobile magazines. Find an autozine that tests vehicles that you are interested in and ranks the characteristics in about your order of importance.
I used to be a faithful Road & Track reader, but as time went by I became more interested in the practicality and reliability of cars. I now only occasionally read it at my dentist’s office!
CR is a good balance between safety, handling, reliability and operating cost in my opinion. If you read nothing else you will end up making good decisions.
+1
Let us not forget that CR is the only publication that doesn’t accept demonstrator cars–gratis–from the manufacturers.
Acceptance of one of those cars led to Car & Driver’s humiliating publication of acceleration times for the original Pontiac GTO that were impossible–unless a GTO owner bored-out his engine and installed a hotter cam than was actually supplied in factory-stock models. A car that comes directly from the mfr always carries the possibility of “special” preparation, as that particular GTO had been given in GM’s efforts to hoodwink the magazine and its readers.
CR buys its cars anonymously at dealerships, and then sends them directly to their own shop where the alignment is checked/corrected, and everything is brought up to mfr’s specifications in order to assure a level playing field for their testing.
It seems to me that anyone that reads Consumer Reports will make decisions similar to the ones you would make. That isn’t a bad thing, but it does reinforce what I said about finding sources that suit the buyer’s interests. CR will review family transportation the most, and maybe exclusively. If someone wants unusual transportation, it is likely CR won’t cover it. They would not test the Range Rover Sport since not enough readers drive them to show up in CRs annual reliability ratings. Retired auto journalist James Healey said after testing it that if he could afford to buy the Range Rover Sport, that would be his first choice and he didn’t care how much it cost to repair.
My love for Motor Trend has been declining for a few years now. It seems like they have become ever so slightly arrogant, proud of their own reporting, car testing processes, etc. I switched over to Car and Driver, which is much more to my liking, with a healthy dose of humility. Just my two cents.
Agree! Their selection of Car of the Year is sometimes ludicrous. I still read it when visiting my dentist, who has it in his office. Car and Driver is the best all round car fan magazine. I’m also a long time reader of Road & Track, but age has made me less and less interested in the cars they recommend and their test procedures…
I read them all if they happen to be in front of me. I buy only Automobile. I used to buy the English rag with Clarkson and crowd, but no more. It was fun to read back then, but is about as exciting as a wet piece of pasta now. I occasionally buy Street Rodder, and less often Hot Rodder, if they have a good “how-to” article, but they’re pretty much the same stuff every month now. I used to get Car magazine, but it became the victim of budget cuts… MINE!!
Cr isn’t perfect, and I think they’ve gown downhill these past years, but they’re unfortunately the only source with an extensive database that doesn’t take free goodies from the manufacturers and doesn’t make their money selling their “awards”. IMHO they’re the most objective source available… although I’m starting to wonder… something seems “off” these past few years.
I guess the best sources now are your own experiences combined with those of your family members, friends, coworkers, and acquaintances, combined with a bit of “gut”. If a make or models has a longtime reputation for reliability, that’s a good sign. If it has a reputation for problems, that’s a bad sign.
And then there’s the variable of passion. I’d love a Nissan 370Z. It’s the only true roadster that I can still fit in. Reliability be damned.
And of preference. I like smaller cars. Some like big barges. Neither is good or bad, they’re just different.
Is that the magazine where the late David E. Davis used used to be editor-in-chief, or something along those lines?
I’m asking because the magazine that he was associated with, that’s the one I used to enjoy reading. But it’s been awhile and I don’t remember the name of it
I don’t know. I never paid attention to that.
I just go to the local bookstore, browse, and if I see something interesting I buy it. I no longer subscribe to any magazine, because they’re not reliably interesting, only occasionally.
David E Davis used to run Automobile Magazine, then Jean Jennings took over for a few years, it’s now moved from Michigan to California under new leadership.
One thing about Automobile that I don’t care for is that some of their photographers seem to be more interested in their own creativity than in the cars. They had an article on Tesla van, and the photos were so distorted by the “fish-eye lens” that I never did find out what the car looked like. They had another on the Dodge Demon a few moths later, and the photos were all taken under extreme low light conditions. I finished the article totally unaware of what the car looks like. Their photos were only dimly-lit isolated areas of the car. Their article on the new Ford GT was the same way. The photos were all too highly distorted. These photographers were only interested in showing off their creative skills, not in showing the automobiles.
I wrote a “letter to the editor” suggesting that if I wanted to see highly distorted photos I could buy “Creative Photography”. I only wrote it in October, so time will tell if they read it.
There are so many Dodge Challengers on the road here that all a person has to do is look out their windshield to see three of them. Perhaps the journalists at Automobile magazine believe that it is the same everywhere, nobody really wants to see more pictures of them.
