mmarshall

It's hard to take MT itself seriously. I gave up on them long ago.
Car and Driver blows them out the water when it comes to evaluating cars.

-J-P-L-

This got me thinking how interesting it is that MT gives Camry Car of the Year honors but C&D doesn't even put it into their 10 Best.

bitkahuna

iTrader: (20)

Maybe Toyota advertises more in MT.

Max707

I love to read all the car mag's. You just have to read their decriptions to determine what they are basing their real evaluation on. I love it when they do the points thingy charts. Then you can look at the scores and what the diff's are along with what you know and care about and I normally come up with a completely different ranking.

doug_999

EXACTLY!

Take the latest C&D test where the LS460 placed last. Take a close look at the rankings and depending on what is important to you, the LS460 can easily be first. C&D ranked them based on what would be important to a person passionate about driving - but as we know, there are plenty of LS owners that have other priorities and that's totally cool.

Also for those wondering about the Camry being MTs car of the year.... C&D requires a car to be new or substantially changed OR be a past winner of 10 best in order to qualify for this year. MT only has the new requirement - I remember one year where it was between two different K cars (the Dodge and the Plymouth) - a nail biter for sure!

mmarshall

You guys also have to consider that the Camry and Avalon, which is Camry-based, being designed primarily for comfort and easy-riding ( though not quite so much as past models ) are naturally not going to strongly appeal to the people at Car and Driver......Csaba Csede, Pat Bedard, John Phillips, etc....

Like their colleagues at Road and Track, Autoweek, and Automobile, these magazines place a high emphasis on power, acceleration, steering dynamics and feedback, handling, and braking. Ride comfort is not one of their high priorities, although, of course, they appreciate it when a car can acheive good track figures and manage to keep a civilized ride as well.

But that is not why I said in my earlier post that these magazines blow Motor Trend away....not just for the sporting aspect of it. They also know how to rate a car much more objectively than Motor Trend, even aside from sportiness. MT, over the years, has picked some real junk,and I mean JUNK, for their Car of the Year title....vehicles so poorly built that they spent more time in the shop than out. I know....I owned a couple of them, decades ago.

ff_

I guess that I just don't see anything in the Camry's feature list that's special when compared to the Accord, outside of the addition of knee airbags. Otherwise, it appears to have new sheetmetal, new interior layout, but is still the same old car with bouncy/numb handling and cheap interior plastics and assembly quality. New doesn't necessarily mean better.

mmarshall

I was more of a Camry than Accord fan for years, primarily because I liked ( and still do ) the Camry's better ride quality and noise isolation ( I don't like noisy, stiff-riding vehicles ), but I have to admit that the Accord appears to have recently overtaken the Camry in overall build quality. The Accord had some minor transmission issues in 2001-2002, but that is long gone.

Neither the Camry nor the Accord Hybrids, though, impress me much for the money. They both cost substantially more than their conventional versions and, IMO, don't add much to either performance or gas mileage.....certainly not enough to justify their greater complexity and higher prices.

Max707

You guys ever check-out truck trend. Man is it bad. They don't even list the right stat's with the right test results. I've never seen so many errors in a magazine in my life. I like to read it every month just for the laugh's of finding all of the mistakes, trucks with the wrong weight, engine, 0-60 times flip/flopped. I feel for anyone that ever uses that magazine to make a buying decision

sdbrandon

+ 1The difference between Lexus' reliability and the next 10 makes is very, very close. Although Lexus continually rates #1, the rest are right on lexus' coat tails.

I think Lexus folks get upset when these lists happen because their only come back is a little better reliability. It has been discussed at length that CR surveys are severley flawed and the sampling is quite small.

I know Lexus is a nice luxury car. However, for the money, and based on testing there is no way an ES350 with FWD can compete with a G35when you consider performance.

The "Lexus reliability" excuse is old and tired. Most cars are "reliable enough" that is why they sell. Otherwise we would only see toyotas on the road.

sdbrandon

What about ES350 recall, tranny issue, wind noise, and cold starts.

The Camrys? I won't mentioned oil sludge class action lawsuit either. I think some folks are so clouded by Lexus' perceived reliability they cannot see the trees before the forest.

Lexus leases most of their cars. So the folks responding to CR surveys only keep the car a couple years and move on. I doubt the next owner completes the survey for the same car twice.

Performance of a car needs to be measured in many ways not just reliability. This is where Lexus gets it wrong and does not understand why someone would choose a BMW over a Lexus.

ES350Bob

sd..

Lexus was also part of the class action suit for oil gel..I received a notice of entitlement in the mail about it within the last several weeks and posted same on here and subject was locked rather than combined with existing because it seems it had already been posted on here, though i would have prefered it simply be combined not locked as I had no idea it had already been posted.

When CR came out with it's predictions just the other month based on no prior data for the ES350 I realized what they had done and now believe you cannot take what they print seriously. the cnsumer must do his/her own hands on research and ignore most the stuff printed on cars after seeing that.

The same though may be true for C&D as well. From now on I want to know exactly what the criteria is for these sweeping (assumptions) claims made about any manufacturer.

-J-P-L-

sdbrandon,

Based on your above post's, I can't believe you even own a Lexus.
Never mind an LS460.

You think the only reason people choose Lexus is reliablity?
That may be one of the last things some Lexus buyers look at.

As for your statement that all others are on Lexus' coat tails in quality...
Maybe a couple of makes but most fall well behind.

My SC400 has 233,000 miles on it an looks and runs like new. Most cars never see this mileage never mind get comments like: "Is that like a 2003 or something?" I say, "Nope, it's 14 years old".

-J-P-L-

Let's compare appropriately.

So why does Lexus build the IS350/250? To compete with cars like the G35.
Don't compare an ES with a sports sedan, compare it with a luxury sedan.

While BMW, Benz, Infiniti, and others give you ONE choice in this price segment, LEXUS gives you TWO. A focus on luxury OR a focus on sport.

Max707

I think reliablity is going up for the entire industry. Quality is another story. BMW and Mercedes quality is going backwards, I wouldn't buy a Mercedes at this time and that goes back to 2000 model year forward to the new ones. Never been much of a BMW guy not very good lookin and everyone I know that has owned one talks about crappy dealer service and problems with their over priced cars. Lexus is the leader and continues to lead. If BMW and Mercedes doesn't get their shat together they will end up like GM and Ford.