Since the average number of problems is small for most models, is Consumer Reports overemphasizing differences that may not be important?
Beyond statistical significance, we believe these differences are also meaningful to car buyers. We think that car buyers should expect a new car to be entirely problem-free in its first months or years of service. While the difference between a and a may be small, a pattern of several less-than-perfect trouble spots in a brand new car should be cause for concern and does not bode well for a model’s long-term reliability. We have not yet seen a single model in our survey that is entirely problem-free. More than that, the Volkswagen Touareg, which had the worst new car prediction score in the 2009 survey, is 27 times more likely to have a problem than the best, the Honda Insight. Those differences among models are important for car buyers to consider in choosing a car. We present these scores for trouble spots primarily to allow consumers to compare the relative incidence of problems among models. While there are no guarantees, you can improve your odds of buying a reliable car if you c
Beyond statistical significance, we believe these differences are also meaningful to car buyers. We think that car buyers should expect a new car to be entirely problem-free in its first months or years of service. While the difference between a and a may be small, a pattern of several less-than-perfect trouble spots in a brand new car should be cause for concern and does not bode well for a model’s long-term reliability. We have not yet seen a single model in our survey that is entirely problem-free. More than that, the Jaguar XF, which had the worst new car prediction score in the 2010 survey, is 17 times more likely to have a problem than the best, the Porsche Boxster. Those differences among models are important for car buyers to consider in choosing a car. We present these scores for trouble spots primarily to allow consumers to compare the relative incidence of problems among models. While there are no guarantees, you can improve your odds of buying a reliable car if you choose a
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