CR and the Avalanche

Did anyone notice what Consumer Reports (CR) picked for its best pick-up truck for 2009? Just to show how out of touch they are with reality, in their words, “And thanks to improved reliability, the Chevrolet Avalanche replaced the Chevrolet Silverado as our choice for pickups.”

The Avalanche, to the best of my determination, is a vehicle that gets truck fuel mileage without the usefulness and tries to pretend it’s a car with (again) bad fuel mileage, poor ride and handling qualities (as compared to a car) and a leaky trunk, unless you put a cap on it, which will further limit its usefulness as a truck. And they picked it instead of a Silverado because of its improved reliability which is pretty amazing due to its having the same mechanicals as the Silverado. To further confuse the issue, they recommend the Ford F-150 for those who would like a truck that is useful as a truck. Apparently not only did the Avalanche improve its reliability but the Silverado must have gone down in reliability for the Ford to sneak in there.

This all goes to prove the uselessness of CR’s reliability reporting system. People who buy weird, unusual or (back in the day) foreign vehicles will never report anything negative to CR as they feel a need to justify their inane purchases. The Avalanche and others of the same ilk beginning with the Subaru Brat of many years past, are probably something maybe five percent of the buying public has any real use for. GM just had to produce this Honda fighter to further stretch its meager resources and, like the GM built mini-Humvees, should never have been built in the first place. And yet, CR, with all its preaching about only buying good, sound, economical and, nowadays, “green” vehicles, selects this morphadite as their pick-up of the year!

And the media pundits carp about how Detroit foisted such ill-designed vehicles on the American public. Lord help us all.

What’s with the New York Times? Part II.

So… the 2009 Dodge Ram has gone from the best to the worst truck in a single month. At least, that’s what I gather when I read in the New York Times that the 2009 Ram is now the worst truck on the market, because it’s such a gas guzzler.

I mean, don’t bother to drive it, or use it, or read reviews from people who have done one or the other. Why should a person writing for an international newspaper do anything like that, when they can get a cheap shot in?

Why should an editor bother to fact check an article to see if the Ram really is so bad in gas mileage that we should ignore its superior ride and handling, brakes, interior, and features?

I’m going to look at the rear wheel drive pickups’ gas mileage now. Forgive me if I start to bring facts into a car blog.

I’m going to look at the top and bottom engines for the Ram. The V6 is rated at 14/20, the Hemi at 14/20. Ouch.

What about the Chevy? Their C15 2WD — the equivalent of the Ram 1500 – V6 is rated at 15/20, one mile per gallon higher around town than the Ram. Their big V8 is at 13/19.

The much vaunted Ford? No V6, but the V8 with the four-speed automatic gets 14/19, less than the Dodge V6 and the Dodge Hemi. The six-speed V8 is rated at 15/20 – yes, a whole ONE MILE PER GALLON higher than the Dodge – around town only.

Well, one mile per gallon separates best from worst. And Chevy apparently isn’t counted at all, because their mileage is worst of the domestics.

How about Toyota? Well, you can’t have Toyota on bottom. But let’s see how they’d fall out. Tundra V6, 15/19 – not quite up to Ram standards. The V8, with the same power rating as the Dodge Hemi: 14/18, TWO miles per gallon LESS than Dodge.

So we might not know what the worst truck on the market is, but we know what newspaper not to trust when it comes to car summaries… which makes me wonder about their regular news coverage, too.