Conspicuous Consumption

Chances are you associate Consumer Reports with boring, sensible cars - transportation appliances. Chances are you also, like me, sneak off to the library to consult their ratings when buying your own daily driver, whether it's new or, like mine, well used.

Yesterday CR opened their test site to the automotive and mainstream media, giving us a glimpse of how those ratings are made and revealing that there are plenty of car guys and gals on their 21-member staff. Scribblers on hand were as diverse as columnists for the San Francisco Chronicle, the online broadcast "Auto Lab" and popular Professional Car Reporter Gregg Merksamer.

Senior Director David "Champ" Champion led the tour of the facility, located on a 327-acre campus originally the site of Connecticut Dragway. Included were demonstrations of CR's tests for cornering abilility, road handling, headlight performance and wet-road braking. Particularly convincing was a dramatic demo of electronic stability control, a feature Champ calls the "single most important recent advance in safety." Comparative runs showed that ESC could make the difference between controlling a car in an evasive maneuver and losing it. He and the CR staff feel it should be standard equipment on all cars.

CR testing now includes all types of cars, economy to luxury, compact to SUV. A dedicated course called "Rock Hill" sorts out 4x4 prowess, rating yesterday's cars, in descending order of agility, Land Rover, Toyota Tundra, Hummer H3 and Ford Explorer (the lack of daylight under the Explorer exposes its Achilles heel - its skid plates got a workout). Sports cars, like the Mazda MX-5 Miata and Pontiac Solstice, are included, as are hot hatches like the VW GTI. Interesting ongoing investigations are a "grease burning" modification to a VW diesel and aftermarket supercharger on a Toyota. Of course practical tests, like cargo capacity and installation of child seats, are still a staple of CR evaluations.

CR had an agenda for all this festivity, the launch of the annual Auto Issue, which debuts today. Of no surprise to anyone was the fact that all ten Top Picks are Japanese (last year's single holdout was the Ford Focus). New (or redesigned) TPs are the Honda Civic, Toyota Highlander Hybrid, Infiniti M35x and Honda Ridgeline pickup. They join returning alumni Honda Accord, Acura TL, Subaru Forester, Honda Odyssey, Toyota Prius and Subaru Impreza WRX/STi.

While all CR-tested cars are new (they buy them from dealers and keep them for 6-8 months and about that many thousand miles) there's evidence that somebody on staff has a fondness for old cars - British ones at that.