Is Consumer Reports biased in their car testing?

My personal experience. Owned, 5 Japanese , 3 German, 5European Fords and 1 American car.

Japanese way less problems, USA by far the worst.

Consumer Reports is a magazine that ask People who already purchased the vehicles what their opinion was of their purchase. It is a questionnaire sent out to the people and they send in the Replies of their experiences. The Consumers are rating their purchases. That is as unbiased as you can get.

-. Car&Driver and Motor Trend is getting part of their funding by the Big 3 car makers.  So of course U.S. is number 1.  Pay attention to who sponsors them.  I seem to remember a redhead BABE with Hooters over a tire on an STP page of advertising.  So big oil is adding money too. And Dunlop tires.  I can't remember them all.  Also Headers.  They all bought AD Space.

-. Consumer Reports do not just focus on Cars.  It focus's on all products you can purchase from Sunscreen to lawn mowers to cooler chests to refrigerators to Fast Food.

-. I received the car questionnaire when my car was new as I subscribed to the magazine.  The questions were about the car and my experiences with it.   I gave them the actual facts, not an opinion...or a guess. MY CAR, MY PROBLEMS & LIKES.& dislikes of the vehicle.   

They also do not sell ad space in their magazine.

- That is as unbiased as you can get.

(maybe you should look up the word Biased?)  Then decide who is lying...the thousands of people that bought the car or the car manufacturer.  - Am betting you ask your buddies for advice about their new purchase over- listening to a salesman tell you how perfect the car is.  The salesman makes his income from selling a car.....your buddy loses your friendship or you pound their face into the pavement as you punch it out or you get punched out.  Or buddy lies because he does not want to admit he bought a PoS.(so he has to keep up his image)  Only his garage mechanic KNOWS FOR SURE.

. As for performance and driving experience...that is the FIRST THING TO DIE...as you get used to that after the first WEEK(tops).  Now it comes down to reliability and longevity.  Unless you got $40,000,00 to spare every couple of years - most people don't. Most people drive cars. For 10 or more years.  The auto manufacturers want you to buy a new car every year because it makes them RICH.  

Hell, you can't get a new girl friend just because the thrill is gone with the last one. SUCK IT up.  It is part of the package.  You grown accustomed to her & her ways and she has HAD to put up with you.  

.  Consumer Reports also have a reliability history that goes back 7 years on all the models they get sufficient responses for.  So you can see the trend of the problems the vehicle does have and whether they ever FIX IT OR NOT.  It gives you an idea what to look for when buying a used vehicle(as all cars have weaknesses) somewhere.  Knowing that and knowing your mechanical skills as "maybe it is something you can fix as you specialize in that field means you could score a fairly new car that has those problems that YOU can fix.  Your labor is free on your own car.

.- some cars you just avoid because too much is wrong with them.

Brand new all cars SHOULD BE PERFECT.  But no one owns a new car Forever.

Consumer Reports has always had a left wing bias, and the left is usually down on this country. 

How much of that do you believe anyway as an Australian when I look back at some of the cars some our car magazines gave car of the year to were nothing but buckets of dung on wheels 8 years later. 

Experiment look back at some of the cars they rated 10 years ago now how did these vehicles last what condition are they in at 10 years 100 thousand miles were they good value for money?  A quick google or go find 10 of them and put them on the hoist and do a critical safety check on them then a road worthy report.

Apples and oranges comparison.  CR focuses more on "more car for the money" and reliability.  CD and MT focuses more on the driving experience.  A Camaro will rate very high in CD and MT.  Not so much in Consumer Reports.

CR has a different focus than C&D or MT. CR focuses on quality and reliability of the cars, while the other two are enthusiast magazines, who focus on performance, looks, etc.

CR is also very negative towards German/European cars too. But the enthusiast mags absolutely love them. If you read enthusiast mags, you'd think cars like BMW, MB, Audi were just the ultimate cars to own, while CR considers them to be nightmare cars to own and maintain. The bias comes from both sides of the coin, enthusiast mags have a subjective (feelings) bias, while CR has an objective (cold-hard facts) bias.

Yes, Consumer Reports is biased.  Has been for many decades.

As any magazine, website, so-called expert.

Their readers are biased to Japanese cars, hence the magazine is.

have you ever driven a japanese car?   if you had you would know the answer ...i have driven most makes of american cars ..drove a thunderbird from LA to miami ..i personally love older americans ..for their look ..not the way they drive ...nowadays in europe we are moving to ward  south korean cars ...and their 7 year warranty ..the main difference for you guys is your driving style ..you drive slowly ..are all over the road ..you have zero lane discipline ..so its soft and easy for you ..thats not how modern cars like to be driven ..the other advantage is their cars go a lot further per gallon

No. They're not. Who are biased are Car and Driver and Motor Trend. 

 Consumer Reports is a nonprofit magazine. It has no advertisers.  As such, it is not beholden to advertisers, which is what allows it to be unbiased. 

Car and Driver and Motor Trend, on the other hand, are for-profit magazines. They are beholden to advertisers because they are beholden to their stockholders, so their awards are literally up for sale. The car that wins Motor Trend's car of the year, for example, is the car of the advertising manufacturer that Motor Trend gets to pay the most money for the award. 

So when you see in a commercial that a car has won all of these awards, if it doesn't mention Consumer Reports, know that those awards are trumped up awards, awards the manufacturer has itself purchased for the sake of advertising in order to make the car seem more appealing. 

It's exactly because of Car and Driver and of Motor Trend, along with magazines like them, that Consumer Reports came into being, its organizational mission as a nonprofit being to provide unbiased reports to consumers by remaining nonprofit and by not selling ads, thus only being beholden to consumers, not stockholders or auto manufacturers with their advertising dollars needed to sate those stockholders.

If you're going to take anyone at their word about automobiles, take the one who isn't paid by automobile manufacturers over the ones who do do, whose primary revenue stream, in fact, flows from automobile manufacturers.

If you've got to choose between hiring Susan or hiring Paula and Joe recommends Susan while Tom recommends Paula, knowing that Paula is paying Tom to say nice things about her but John isn't getting paid by either one, whose hiring recommendation are you going to believe?

What reason do you have to think they are not simply accurately reporting that because Japanese cars are genuinely more reliable?