Now that Consumer Reports has finally joined the 21st century and acknowledged that American brand vehicles are superior in quality to their European counterparts, the concepts of quality and reliability may need to be discredited as a factor in evaluating a car.
After all, how can the automotive rag "journalists" maintain their bias--part of which is built on the myth that European cars are well-built--in the face of increasing recognition of the facts? They have no choice but to subjugate the whole concept of quality and reliability to other far more important factors, like how cool they look sipping a latte' behind the wheel of their overpriced over-hyped foo-foo European convertible.
I had a feeling it was coming; and this morning, some tangible proof showed up in my e-mail Inbox in the form of an edmunds.com news alert:
It would be easy to say that edmunds.com is simply reporting the facts--just calling it as they see it. I could buy that argument if the conclusions reached by a Consumer Reports quality survey were for the purpose of indicating buyer trends; but that is decidedly not the purpose of this particular survey.
When you report news regarding quality surveys, the facts of the story center around the conclusions drawn by the results of the research that was conducted. When you introduce mitigating information unrelated to the facts, it becomes commentary.
This is a very common ploy used by so-called "journalists" when they want the story to reflect their bias. You'll see it a lot this election season, i.e. when a candidate makes an appearance at some venue and the reporter feels the need to include man-on-the-street reactions that uniformly cast a mitigating or outright negative view of the candidate, even if the candidate's appearance involved little or no politicking.
The candidate in this case is the American car. Sure, it's going to be more reliable than its European counterpart, but how about those cool BMW ragtops!! :woot2:
After all, how can the automotive rag "journalists" maintain their bias--part of which is built on the myth that European cars are well-built--in the face of increasing recognition of the facts? They have no choice but to subjugate the whole concept of quality and reliability to other far more important factors, like how cool they look sipping a latte' behind the wheel of their overpriced over-hyped foo-foo European convertible.
I had a feeling it was coming; and this morning, some tangible proof showed up in my e-mail Inbox in the form of an edmunds.com news alert:
(source: edmunds.com e-mail alert)
Reliability Off, but Euro Ragtops Still Loved
Consumer Reports says that American car companies are doing much better at reliability these days than the European brands -- yet many Euro cars, like the BMW Z4 and Porsche Boxster remain popular with buyers though they can be less reliable than domestic models. CR's latest survey of reliability finds that American brands have made vast strides in quality in the past two decades, hurdling ahead of European brands when it comes to problems reported on average for each new car sold. American brands rated 18 problems per 100 new vehicles sold, while Euro brands came in at 20 problems, with all Audi, Jaguar, Land Rover and Mercedes models scoring below-average reliability. In the same survey, when ranking the vehicles that they'd buy again, BMW's Z4, the Mini Cooper and Porsche's Boxster ranked highly, along with the Corvette, Hummer H2 and Chevy Tahoe.
It would be easy to say that edmunds.com is simply reporting the facts--just calling it as they see it. I could buy that argument if the conclusions reached by a Consumer Reports quality survey were for the purpose of indicating buyer trends; but that is decidedly not the purpose of this particular survey.
When you report news regarding quality surveys, the facts of the story center around the conclusions drawn by the results of the research that was conducted. When you introduce mitigating information unrelated to the facts, it becomes commentary.
This is a very common ploy used by so-called "journalists" when they want the story to reflect their bias. You'll see it a lot this election season, i.e. when a candidate makes an appearance at some venue and the reporter feels the need to include man-on-the-street reactions that uniformly cast a mitigating or outright negative view of the candidate, even if the candidate's appearance involved little or no politicking.
The candidate in this case is the American car. Sure, it's going to be more reliable than its European counterpart, but how about those cool BMW ragtops!! :woot2: