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You don't get **true** results from CR as they are based on **voluntary** surveys, and you're most likely to hear from those who complain most. I don't have much use for anecdotal reports either...but that's the core of what CR collects in its, uh, surveys. Nobody to the best of my knowledge conducts a true reliability survey. CR is useful as far as it goes, but your own intelligence and experience are far more reliable.
Here's the variable CR doesn't cover that skews the results: expectations. If you pay $15K and you need new brakes and rotors at 30,000 miles you don't care as much (your expectations are lower) than if you paid $30K for the car. You think you should get maybe twice as many miles out of the brakes, even though you're stopping a far more powerful and substantial automobile in shorter distances. Hence the complaint that Volvos 'eat brakes.'
The CR info is useful as a general guide...but it is not statistically accurate in terms of probability. What gores my ox is the way they position themselves as the arbiter of objectively accurate information (compiled from subjective data - huh?). Objectivity would require them to do what C&D does, only on a larger scale - buy and maintain several of them, reporting the results.
Believe me, I've bought plenty of stuff they've recommended and been disappointed...and the Volvos they've trashed have been the best and most reliable cars I've ever owned. (And exceedingly more fun than their Best Buys.) For me, case closed. There's no subsitute for your own intelligence.
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(98 S70 T5SE misc mods, mostly lighting, red calipers) (92 940GLE)
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