Consumer Reports is for the Average Consumer. The Average Consumer doesn't look past the crickets, taillight condensation, road noise, and rattles for the "driving experience" like you do.

Now if you want to debate whether or not the car should be in Consumer Reports at all, that is another story. It is Consumer Reports, not Top Gear.

Then the average consumer is an idiot and needs to smarten up when he or she buys using something like Consumer Reports to educate them better on what actually matters when buying a car, not pander to their current level of ignorance.

Fair enough. But I would consider my parents to be typical consumers when it comes to a new car. If my mom's Accord had the squeaking like my car does, I would tell her to take it to the dealership. Honestly, for her, if the car is in the shop for a day for warranty work, it doesn't matter if they are replacing a taillight or the entire engine. The only thing that affects her is having to take her car in for a day. Thus, reliability to her isn't affected by what breaks, but instead how much time her car is in the shop...

wanna know what bad consumer ratings mean to me? Car will be cheaper in the future, yeaa!!

If your left knee decided to make a popping sound with every step you took, but it functioned perfectly normally with zero discomfort or pain, would you ignore it or get the sound checked out?

Checked out & if the doctor said "it may annoy you to death but it isn't going to do damage", I'd say "okay, cool" and go on my way. It's not causing me pain and not doing damage, therefore it's not a problem. All that had to be "fixed" was the nut in the head case getting reassured that his body wasn't breaking down on him.

But I wouldn't say I had an "unreliable knee" after the Doctor said it wasn't a wear-n-tear issue that'd come to haunt me later.

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This thread is interesting.

Consumer Reports has nothing against anyone - it's math. Number of cars sold, versus number of cars with reported issues, etc. In some cases, I am sure the FRS/BRZ has over 100% failure (repeated failures on the same car).

We all know this car has issues, proven facts (condensation, gear grinds, pops and squeaks, etc.) which all of the members have kindly decided to share and we all learn as a group (and hopefully Toybaru as well) so there is no point crapping on CR.

I personally use CR for other stuff like tire reviews, microwaves, ovens, fridges, etc. and I find their stats quite nice but however, like all stats, they can be skewed to make something look exceptionally bad (percentages are the worst - one more defect out of a thousand this year versus none last year is an INFINITE increase in percent - wacky example but possible).

The key thing is, the demographic doesn't suit their usual consumer base and so they wouldn't recommend it purely on their stats.

Very simple example: if your grandpa, in his 60s is looking to buy a reliable A-B car, would you recommend this car or a Camry which can sit in the same price range?'

Also, Toyota took the Camry, RAV4 and Prius V being removed from their recommended list quite well: http://www.latimes.com/business/auto...#axzz2lhIVuI9Z

Rise to the challenge. Don't ignore it.

I drive it as advertised, and it's been nothing but reliable.

Sorry about your tranny, but that's one in a thousand.

Correction:

One in 10,000.

i love my BRZ and that's all that matters, the less of these cars on the road the better, nothing like rare sportscar.

You're talking one specific incident. I'm talking numerous incidents. Go check the warranty/TSB forum, there are numerous guys who have had their tranny replaced or drained it to find metal shavings. The 3rd/4th gear grind is more than a 1-1000/10k trend, and pulling numbers out of your ass doesn't help your argument.

I disagree. The BRZ/FRS will never go back to being even remotely rare...I see them pretty much every day now.

Further, the more that are sold, the better. Greater sales lead to subsequent refinements, special models, and generations from the manufacturer, more upgrades, more spare parts being available, more places that know how to properly service/repair the car, more of a community hanging around, and some great chances to have some mega meets which are great fun.

If you want rare sportscars, go restore an old Triumph or Jag from the 60's and drive that around...that's rare.

How many were "numerous"? and what is total number of manual BRZ's and FR-Ss built?

The number of issues in my thread alone blows your "statistic" to crap. The fact that dealers and SOA are aware of the issue should point to how prevalent it is. But I'm not researching your ridiculous argument for you, go to the warranty/TSB forum.

The transmissions can have bad syncros. Those in turn have the potential to kill your clutch prematurely. All in all, it's a shit sandwich many have had to take a bite from. And saying "nuh-uh" doesn't do much in the way of solving problems, does it?