July 7th 2006.

When you are very successful and almost unique in your endeavours, there's always someone out there that wants a piece
of your action and will try to knock you off your pedestal.

Consumers Reports annual quality guide, unlike the fantasy J.D. Power "Initial quality survey'"- which isn't anything of the kind,
is methodical and well ordered.

Some automotive journalists, kow towing to their master in the PR departments of the unfortunate manufacturers that are rated
"not acceptable" or "cars to avoid" by CR have tried unsuccessfully to debunk the CR results.

But here's the problem, our experience in the repair of older cars is completely in sync with the findings of the CR organisation.

If they say it's a bad vehicle, we find we see the thing far more often than we should.

If they rate the vehicle very highly, then we yawn as we change the oil once again after 250,000 kliks (150,000 miles).

Just lately, there's been a movement afoot to seduce car owners into sending information to another outfit that wants to take over
CRs spot in the sun. To do so, they are finding all kinds of holes in the CR surveys and have a survey of their own, that is so
elaborate you'll need a PhD to sort your way through it and you're doing this for free.

If you want to find out what they think they found out, you'll have to PAY.

But the problem is that these people are re-inventing the wheel, answering the question that no one has asked, simply to make money.

Don't kid yourself, if you can get 5000 suckers to subscribe $5 a month that's $300,000 a year for someone else when you actually did
all the work.

And to repeat myself, hopefully not ad nauseum, CR are already "spot" on.

Their "red spot - black spot" method of rating vehicles is being criticised as too vague, but I've got a little experiment you can try:

Hold the page at arms length, select a section of the page that is loaded with red spots and then look to see what it is you selected.
It'll probably be Japanese.

Then turn a couple of pages and find a large section of black spots. Bring the page close and you'll probably find the vehicle is
American, or in the last few years, German.

So before you cancel your subscription to CR and go with one of these upstart rivals, remember I already told you that you're
wasting your money.