Car and Driver's 10Best a GM smackdown
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Car and Driver's 10Best a GM smackdown
Remember when folks said GM could never break into the 10Best with anything other than the Corvette? The magazine was just too biased in Honda's favor, they said.
Well, it turns out that they "favor" good cars, cars like the Chevy Malibu, Cadillac CTS, and yes, the Corvette. Along with the COTY award, its a clear validation of GM's new product strategy. Perhaps the public will follow along.
It will also be interesting to see if any of the General's crossovers make it to the 10Best truck list.
Well, it turns out that they "favor" good cars, cars like the Chevy Malibu, Cadillac CTS, and yes, the Corvette. Along with the COTY award, its a clear validation of GM's new product strategy. Perhaps the public will follow along.
It will also be interesting to see if any of the General's crossovers make it to the 10Best truck list.
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From: Osan S Korea
Well good...this is a step in the right direction. Attention to the detail seems to be paying off at the moment. Now if they can just find a way to focus on everything else as well with that same level of thought and care.
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Motor Trend limits their "Car Of The Year" choices to all new or "significantly redesigned" vehicles, so Motor Trend's COTY isn't usually the best car available, nor is it normally a car that holds it own with the best on sale. Included in MT's guidelines is impact on the car market. If you reproduced a late 80s Yugo powered by hamsters running on a wheel, the car would be eligible for MT's COTY consideration. If you happened to bring it out during a year where there wasn't much going on in the way of all new cars, you'd stand a pretty decent chance of actually winning.
Car & Driver's 10 best list IMHO is far better because it considers cars from each market segment for a good cross section, and good cars aren't banned from consideration simply because they came out last year or year before.
After the 1970s, I thought Car & Driver (although a longtime favorite magazine of mine... I have about 3 milk crates of issues in storage!) was a little too biased towards Hondas an later so infatuated with anything BMW that it bordered on the edge of being a mental issue.
Today, looking back at alot of the cars they turned their noses up at, it's pretty easy to agree with most and see the virtues of alot of the cars they praised.
Corvette's been the planet's best sports car bargain for at least a decade. The CTS was a breakthrough luxury car for an American carmaker, and was only a matter of time before it got props, even if it wasn't quite a BMW. However, when mere-mortal cars like the Malibu landing squarely in their radar, that is a howling endorsement of the direction GM is going, let alone a ringing endorsement of the Malibu itself.
If a US made car makes the lists at Car & Driver, then it's something to be proud of.
Car & Driver's 10 best list IMHO is far better because it considers cars from each market segment for a good cross section, and good cars aren't banned from consideration simply because they came out last year or year before.
After the 1970s, I thought Car & Driver (although a longtime favorite magazine of mine... I have about 3 milk crates of issues in storage!) was a little too biased towards Hondas an later so infatuated with anything BMW that it bordered on the edge of being a mental issue.
Today, looking back at alot of the cars they turned their noses up at, it's pretty easy to agree with most and see the virtues of alot of the cars they praised.
Corvette's been the planet's best sports car bargain for at least a decade. The CTS was a breakthrough luxury car for an American carmaker, and was only a matter of time before it got props, even if it wasn't quite a BMW. However, when mere-mortal cars like the Malibu landing squarely in their radar, that is a howling endorsement of the direction GM is going, let alone a ringing endorsement of the Malibu itself.
If a US made car makes the lists at Car & Driver, then it's something to be proud of.
Last edited by guionM; Nov 28, 2007 at 12:32 PM.
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From: Memphis
I agree with that entire list so long as you have a bias toward cars that have a bit of driver feedback to them. If they preferred luxury over sport then some of that list would be changed, but from their perspective that list makes perfect sense.
5-10 years ago when people were claiming media bias and brainwashed 'sheeple' were plotting against general motors who was making perfectly great products... that was BS. The General was putting out crap and even the general knew it. Hell it's still putting out some crap here and there. But back then almost everything it put out was a mess of cut corners and unfinished work to save a dime or two.
In the last 2 years I've seen some validity to people's complaints as GM had a couple of solid products that were still dismissed by the media and people in general.
You can't expect people or even the media to react immediately to large scale changes like this - especially when they're first beginning and people wonder if it's just yet another round of "the boy who cried wolf". I don't know how many years I've heard people claiming the second coming of Chrysler quality and I've still yet to see it happen. Almost everything that has come out to good reviews, for Chrysler ends up being a thinly veiled POS.
Now that it has been 2 years since GM has put out the first of its truly good products and is now releasing even more, people are finally starting to believe that this is for real, and they're starting to pay more attention to GM products in general.
In other words what I'm saying is the reason the mags are finally recognizing GM as producing some good vehicles is that they finally are producing some good vehicles!
Yes there might have been a couple year delay for them to get the credit they might have deserved but that's, IMO, understandable.
Likewise, Toyota quality recently has been slipping - I don't expect magazines to really start focusing on this fact for at least another year or two, and consumers will take even longer.
How long did it take for people to recognize that Nissan/Infiniti's quality had gone from great to terrible? 3, 4 years? Some people still haven't realized it, and they're already starting to recover. GM on the other hand was in a decades long slump... people had just gotten used to thinking of GM as a substandard designer and manufacturer. The walmart of cars. It will take some time to change that for better or for worse! Just be happy you're reading it in the mags. Hell, just be happy that GM even turned things around in the first place! For all of you people that said you knew it would happen - that's fine, but how long had you been saying that before it actually happened? People were saying it in 97.... were they talking about 07 or were they talking about 99-01?
The boy who cried 'GM is turning things around' has been crying this for decades now. Hopefully this time it's for real, and for good.
5-10 years ago when people were claiming media bias and brainwashed 'sheeple' were plotting against general motors who was making perfectly great products... that was BS. The General was putting out crap and even the general knew it. Hell it's still putting out some crap here and there. But back then almost everything it put out was a mess of cut corners and unfinished work to save a dime or two.
In the last 2 years I've seen some validity to people's complaints as GM had a couple of solid products that were still dismissed by the media and people in general.
You can't expect people or even the media to react immediately to large scale changes like this - especially when they're first beginning and people wonder if it's just yet another round of "the boy who cried wolf". I don't know how many years I've heard people claiming the second coming of Chrysler quality and I've still yet to see it happen. Almost everything that has come out to good reviews, for Chrysler ends up being a thinly veiled POS.
Now that it has been 2 years since GM has put out the first of its truly good products and is now releasing even more, people are finally starting to believe that this is for real, and they're starting to pay more attention to GM products in general.
In other words what I'm saying is the reason the mags are finally recognizing GM as producing some good vehicles is that they finally are producing some good vehicles!
Yes there might have been a couple year delay for them to get the credit they might have deserved but that's, IMO, understandable.
Likewise, Toyota quality recently has been slipping - I don't expect magazines to really start focusing on this fact for at least another year or two, and consumers will take even longer.
How long did it take for people to recognize that Nissan/Infiniti's quality had gone from great to terrible? 3, 4 years? Some people still haven't realized it, and they're already starting to recover. GM on the other hand was in a decades long slump... people had just gotten used to thinking of GM as a substandard designer and manufacturer. The walmart of cars. It will take some time to change that for better or for worse! Just be happy you're reading it in the mags. Hell, just be happy that GM even turned things around in the first place! For all of you people that said you knew it would happen - that's fine, but how long had you been saying that before it actually happened? People were saying it in 97.... were they talking about 07 or were they talking about 99-01?
The boy who cried 'GM is turning things around' has been crying this for decades now. Hopefully this time it's for real, and for good.
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Joined: Mar 2005
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Motor Trend limits their "Car Of The Year" choices to all new or "significantly redesigned" vehicles, so Motor Trend's COTY isn't usually the best car available, nor is it normally a car that holds it own with the best on sale. Included in MT's guidelines is impact on the car market. If you reproduced a late 80s Yugo powered by hamsters running on a wheel, the car would be eligible for MT's COTY consideration. If you happened to bring it out during a year where there wasn't much going on in the way of all new cars, you'd stand a pretty decent chance of actually winning.
Car & Driver's 10 best list IMHO is far better because it considers cars from each market segment for a good cross section, and good cars aren't banned from consideration simply because they came out last year or year before.
After the 1970s, I thought Car & Driver (although a longtime favorite magazine of mine... I have about 3 milk crates of issues in storage!) was a little too biased towards Hondas an later so infatuated with anything BMW that it bordered on the edge of being a mental issue.
Today, looking back at alot of the cars they turned their noses up at, it's pretty easy to agree with most and see the virtues of alot of the cars they praised.
Corvette's been the planet's best sports car bargain for at least a decade. The CTS was a breakthrough luxury car for an American carmaker, and was only a matter of time before it got props, even if it wasn't quite a BMW. However, when mere-mortal cars like the Malibu landing squarely in their radar, that is a howling endorsement of the direction GM is going, let alone a ringing endorsement of the Malibu itself.
If a US made car makes the lists at Car & Driver, then it's something to be proud of.
Car & Driver's 10 best list IMHO is far better because it considers cars from each market segment for a good cross section, and good cars aren't banned from consideration simply because they came out last year or year before.
After the 1970s, I thought Car & Driver (although a longtime favorite magazine of mine... I have about 3 milk crates of issues in storage!) was a little too biased towards Hondas an later so infatuated with anything BMW that it bordered on the edge of being a mental issue.
Today, looking back at alot of the cars they turned their noses up at, it's pretty easy to agree with most and see the virtues of alot of the cars they praised.
Corvette's been the planet's best sports car bargain for at least a decade. The CTS was a breakthrough luxury car for an American carmaker, and was only a matter of time before it got props, even if it wasn't quite a BMW. However, when mere-mortal cars like the Malibu landing squarely in their radar, that is a howling endorsement of the direction GM is going, let alone a ringing endorsement of the Malibu itself.
If a US made car makes the lists at Car & Driver, then it's something to be proud of.
10Best really gives you a feel for which cars and manufacturers are really ahead of the pack.
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Motor Trend limits their "Car Of The Year" choices to all new or "significantly redesigned" vehicles, so Motor Trend's COTY isn't usually the best car available, nor is it normally a car that holds it own with the best on sale. Included in MT's guidelines is impact on the car market. If you reproduced a late 80s Yugo powered by hamsters running on a wheel, the car would be eligible for MT's COTY consideration. If you happened to bring it out during a year where there wasn't much going on in the way of all new cars, you'd stand a pretty decent chance of actually winning.
Car & Driver's 10 best list IMHO is far better because it considers cars from each market segment for a good cross section, and good cars aren't banned from consideration simply because they came out last year or year before.
Car & Driver's 10 best list IMHO is far better because it considers cars from each market segment for a good cross section, and good cars aren't banned from consideration simply because they came out last year or year before.
The invite list works as follows: Last year’s winners are automatically invited back, as well as other all-new or significantly upgraded machinery for 2007 — each car gets only one shot at making our 10Best list, but many stay on the list for years. This year, all cars had to have a base price no higher than $71,000, which is 2.5 times the average new-vehicle transaction price as of August 2006. Eligible cars must be on-sale no later than January of 2007, and the manufacturer must, of course, deliver an example for our evaluations.
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Yeah ummm... you may want to dust off some of those milk crates Guy. C&D restricts 10 Best consideration to last year's winners and new or significantly revised models. It's been like that for as long as I can remember. The consideration of the previous year's winners is the only difference between C&D and MT.
http://www.caranddriver.com/bestcars...best-cars.html
http://www.caranddriver.com/bestcars...best-cars.html
Makes sense to me.