2002 Toyota Tundra SR5 from North America - All Comments

Consumer Reports "buy the cars to do their road tests which are done much like those in C%D, Automobile, R&T, Autoweek, etc. The comments related to performance come from these road tests. CR also has a heavy emphasis on safety (like most consumer organizations)."

That is pretty much right. CR does the same kind of testing that the car magazines do, which means they prefer fast cars with big engines and are more tolerant of road noise and stiff suspensions than the average consumer. I wish they understood us average buyers better and adjusted the reporting for that.

CRs attitude on safety is somewhat schizophrenic. They criticize the manufacturers for safety issues, but they are too wise to offend the readers and point out that consumers should consider safety more. CR should put more effort in educating readers about real safety issues.

CR is good a posturing, like in the last issue saying that the government should toughen the roll over crash standards and showing a picture of a man in a wheelchair who could have been helped by a tougher roll standard. But why has CR hardly ever said a word about which cars (like Volvo) that have been designed to much stronger roll over standards for many years?

I'd rather ask what warranty I am getting and then test drive. I am tall and my options I choose and driving gives me a first hand observation. Sitting in a chair at home with piles of magazines doesn't work. A review from someone 5'4 for a 6' driver is perhaps overlooked. Maybe someone likes driving a car as slow as a slug and vague handling. I like my own determination. I do compare pricing however online.

15:47

I agree wholeheartedly with most of what you said. Unfortunately your use of the Aveo vs Cadillac will be used by some to dismiss your whole argument. The Aveo is a Korean car with a Chevy nameplate slapped on... much like the Geo Metro.

"I'd rather ask what warranty I am getting and then test drive. I am tall and my options I choose and driving gives me a first hand observation. Sitting in a chair at home with piles of magazines doesn't work. A review from someone 5'4 for a 6' driver is perhaps overlooked. Maybe someone likes driving a car as slow as a slug and vague handling. I like my own determination. I do compare pricing however online."

You make some very good points. I agree, but would add that publications can be used as a source of info in the process of elimination. For example if you do some trailering you can find out which vehicles fit the need. You may find that one vehicle has a better stock trailering package. You might find that one was more troublesome in some meaningful area.

What I mean is that magazines should just be a means of informing your test-driving process.

"#2 Your logic is only valid if a subscriber KNOWS what the surveyor wants them to say... in other words, you presume bias as a part of your premise... even though you begin by saying it is unintentional."

Any one who is a regular reader of CR knows what the expected responses are. CR does not want that confounding factor in there data, but I guarantee you they know it is there. Any one who handles market research data struggles with this. I have been in numerous data review meetings where we look at the data, discuss the problems, then at the end say, you know, all we can do is analyze and report what we got.

This kind of thing is one of the very hardest things about doing good market research. Even though what a researcher can present to the subjects is very neutral and unbiased, like the form you mentioned, that form is really only a very small portion of what the subject is responding to. The responders carry with them a world of experience, conversations, TV ads they saw, remembrances of things they read in previous CR issues. And it affects how they respond.

I do not mean to disparage the fine work that CR does, and the positive contributions they make to our society. I am just trying to share a little knowledge about these issues so people can better understand how to interpret and use the results that CR gives.

Any one who has been involved in data collection in market research has seen a subject trying really hard and getting frustrated and saying something like "what is my response supposed to be?" One way we normally try to control for those kinds of overly involved people is to throw out the very most positive responses, and the very most negative responses. Maybe you don't know that if you ever filled out a survey and gave a product all 10's for very best of everything, that response probably got discarded and not factored into the final tally.

I think we're all smart enough to realize what "domestic" and "import" stands for.

Don't bring that kind of technicality to a debate like this. Domestic means the big 3. Import or foreign means Toyota, Honda, Nissan. And always will.

Were they are built is irrelevant. It's simply a label to separate the two.

"But my truck is a Toyota because as with the previous items, it too is the best quality for the application, which is proven reliability."

The Tacoma has exactly the SAME reliability rating as the Ford Ranger, which is less expensive and comes with a better warranty.

"The Chevy Aveo is garbage. A Cadillac on the other hand is vastly better and more dependable"

I don't understand how people who are supposedly car-literate keep confusing the Aveo with GM-built cars. The Aveo is Korean. It is basically a mechanical twin under the sheet metal to the Hyundai Accent. I have driven the Aveo and found it to be an incredibly smooth and good riding car for a sub-compact. The ride is better than that of the Accent. Friends who own Aveos and follow the recommended maintenance procedures have had no trouble with theirs, though the highest mileage any of them has on theirs is just over 98,000 miles.

"#5 It is equally a stretch to call their method biased when you are only comparing it to data collection you say you did. "

I am sorry if it sounded like my work was related to the car industry in some way. I am but a small cog in a giant big pharmaceutical firm. Our market research is only used internally to help us figure out what projects to pursue and what features to include. I have been very unimpressed with how well that works. In reality, all the real decisions are made by top level executives who ignore the market research. It is just like a Dilbert cartoon.

Like any other big company, my firm makes us sign papers that say we understand that we are subject to immediate termination if we say things that can reflect poorly on the firm or are outside the narrow confines of press releases from the PR department. We are told that as long we don't identify who we work for, we can say what we want. But as soon as we represent ourselves as belonging to the firm, we can't say anything interesting.

The thing I was trying to point out was how hard it is to get good results. I think CR does a great job on data collection and a pretty good job on reporting fairly raw results.

But I lost any notion that CR is "unbiased" when I found out that they gave the 2007 and 2008 Camry "better than average" reliability ratings when in fact they had not collected any data on those cars yet. Then they had to recant their ratings and report they were actually "worse than average" and remove the "recommended" status. Judging from my experience in a big bureaucracy, it looks to me like the same kinds of Dilbert cartoon behaviors happen at CR just like they do in any organization of any size. Little cogs like me collecting good data - executives above me ignoring it and following their internal biases.

"Then they had to recant their ratings and report they were actually "worse than average" and remove the "recommended" status."

Thankfully they also stopped recommending new models on the previous model's reliability as well. That reflects well on them too.

My biggest single problem with their data handling is that the final symbol given is based on much below average through much better than average without ever telling us what average is. For all we know the very worst to the very best is an insignificant margin. Maybe the very worst are still extremely good. We should be made more aware. Truedelta helps in that regard.

"Any one who has been involved in data collection in market research has seen a subject trying really hard and getting frustrated and saying something like "what is my response supposed to be?" One way we normally try to control for those kinds of overly involved people is to throw out the very most positive responses, and the very most negative responses. Maybe you don't know that if you ever filled out a survey and gave a product all 10's for very best of everything, that response probably got discarded and not factored into the final tally."

Do you think this includes simply failing to report problems or, worse yet, reporting problems that didn't occur? I ask this because, as I recall, there were no questions like "how would you rate this car on a scale from 1-10". All the questions were objective: What do you own? How many miles are on it? What went wrong?

It would seem unlikely that a respondent would become flustered and *create* a problem with their car (or someone else's). That would seem to be more of an issue if the survey was done via phone. Was that the kind of surveying you did (do)?

When I received my survey, I owned an 04 Honda Civic EX that wasn't screwed together too well. There were several rattles and the B pillar trim kept coming off. I was interested in filling out the survey, in part, so that my experience would help to AMEND the results as displayed in the magazine.

I wasn't interested in being a "yes man". I was interested in getting my more negative experience included in the whole. That kind of response, if typical, could skew the result the other way (the other way from saying that "all my cars are just wonderful") and help to mitigate the errors. The other net effect it could have is that it could make all vehicles look more troublesome --- if only those driven by poor experience respond.

Anyway... it's too bad no one from CR could respond to these comments to further enlighten us.

"But I lost any notion that CR is "unbiased" when I found out that they gave the 2007 and 2008 Camry "better than average" reliability ratings when in fact they had not collected any data on those cars yet"

This is typical of the brainwashing job Japanese companies have done on our media. Only recently has ANYONE really bothered to see if these supposedly "superior" vehicles are all they have been (erroneously) portrayed to be. It turns out that not only are Toyota and Honda (and Nissan) building much lower quality and more unreliable vehicles, but domestics (Ford especially) are literally running rings around all of them in quality, reliability and performance. Any time ANY American automotive publication publishes ANYTHING remotely complimentary about a domestic vehicle, you know that the real truth is that the vehicles are really about TWICE as good as the media outlets claim.

Even when Honda was replacing transmissions at 30,000 miles in many of its vehicles Car and Driver was STILL fawning over them and ignoring the problems. Motor Trend hastily jumped to name the 2007 Camry "Car of the Year" just because Toyota FINALLY had built a V-6 engine for it that could actually do 0-60 in UNDER 10 seconds. They never bothered to look into the dozens of issues Toyota was having at the time with reliability problems.

20:19.

The data isn't skewed. GM agreed that they had fallen below industry standards for both quality and innovation. Everyone isn't just "brainwashed" into thinking that the Japanese vehicles are more reliable. The automotive media isn't telling lies, but domestics (Ford especially) are NOT literally running rings around all of them in quality, reliability and performance.

The 07 Camry goes from 0-60 in 6.5 seconds according to Edmunds (and just about everyone else), not 10 seconds like you incorrectly infer. The 06 was also far quicker than 10 seconds too.

Nearly every company replaces transmissions in vehicles before 30,000 miles --- transmissions are complicated and they sometimes present troubles in varying measures. It's unlikely Motor Trend KNEW that the 07 Camry had any issues since they likely made their selection in 07.

"Nearly every company replaces transmissions in vehicles before 30,000 miles --- "

Yeah, none of our domestics ever needed a transmission within 30k miles.

"Yeah, none of our domestics ever needed a transmission within 30k miles."

You owned all of the cars they ever made? None of my imports did either, but that doesn't mean that some don't. Your (or my) experience isn't universal.

I tow and absolutely none of my full size domestic pick ups has ever needed a transmission in 30,000 miles ever... A simple solution is to have every manufacturer warranty their vehicles to standard 100,000 miles with proof of oil filter and transmission scheduled changes. I always do mine at the dealership during the warranty periods. Many mfrs have very weak warranty periods and for some unfathomable reason many consumers have the blind faith it will never happen. How about making it a reality? If it's never used (or supposedly never needed) it will not cost a dime to offer it.