Who’s Watching Out for Safety?
Consumer Reports built its reputation as the bible for savvy shoppers on the strength of its take-no-advertising business plan and take-no-prisoners product reviews.
Perhaps nowhere is that more evident than in the magazine’s coverage of new cars and trucks. Indeed, the nonprofit publication’s auto issue every April is perennially its biggest seller on newsstands. And the influence of a Consumer Reports thumbs-up or thumbs-down can have a lasting effect on a vehicle’s reputation and even sales.
The 63-year-old magazine and its publisher, Consumers Union, continue to wield influence on the automotive front, as evidenced by the federal rollover test proposal being readied for public comment and a pair of product defamation suits being brought by Japanese auto makers Isuzu and Suzuki (see related stories, this page).
With that in mind, Highway 1 recently visited Consumer Reports’ 327-acre automotive test facility to see what tortures the cars and trucks reviewed by the influential publication are put through.
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Vehicles selected for review are bought anonymously by members of the Consumers Union staff from dealerships in Connecticut and neighboring states.
The annual budget for purchasing new cars and trucks is about $1.2 million, said auto test program director David Champion. The vehicles typically are sold to staff members after Champion and his team get through with them, enabling the group to recover about 85% of the purchase price--money that goes back into the budget for the next group of vehicles.
The magazine tests about 40 vehicles a year, usually in groups of four--one issue might deal with small sport-utility vehicles such as the Honda CR-V and Toyota RAV4, another with luxury sedans such as the Lincoln LS and Chrysler 300M.
Champion, an engineer who worked for Land Rover in his native England and as senior engineer at Nissan North America in Carson before joining Consumers Union, oversees a team that includes four engineers, four technicians and a statistician. Together they prod, poke, drive, crunch and otherwise examine each vehicle for a period of up to six months before their reports are forwarded to the magazine’s editorial department for use in published reviews.
After a vehicle is purchased, it is checked in at the test facility, which is hidden in the Connecticut woods about 50 miles south of Hartford, just outside the small town of East Haddam. The vehicle is visually inspected to ensure “that there are no loose parts, that all the components are there and functioning and that there are no problems with safety-related equipment,” Champion said. Testers also rate the quality of the paint job and the way the doors, hood and trunk lid--if there is one--fit the body.
A stack of old luggage on one side of the test garage is used to rate cars, minivans and SUVs for storage volume. The magazine uses real luggage instead of paper bags, cardboard boxes and other devices to get a “real-world” measurement, Champion said.
All vehicles are put on a scale to determine the front and rear weight distribution.
Then they are put into fleet use, signed out each night by a staff member and used for daily commutes, weekend jaunts and long-distance vacation trips. Staffers keep detailed notes on everything from how well the vehicle handles in rain or snow to how supportive the seats are, how ergonomically adequate the radio controls and how well-spaced the accelerator, brake and clutch pedals.
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By the time a vehicle returns to the facility for on-track testing, it has been driven about 2,000 miles and is ready for the magazine’s own low-speed bumper effectiveness crash test, Champion said. Then it’s back out for more real-world driving and evaluations. The cars and trucks often have 5,000 to 7,000 miles on their odometers by the time Consumer Reports puts them up for sale, he said.
For the bumper tests, technicians propel a hydraulic ram into the front and rear bumpers of each vehicle from three different angles and at two speeds to simulate the kinds of 3- to 5-mph bumper-bashing accidents that occur in parking lots. Consumer Reports’ engineers note any visible damage, and the vehicles are sent to a professional body shop, where damage estimates are prepared and repairs are made.
On-track testing varies depending on the type of vehicle. Passenger cars are run through a series of tests for handling, ride evaluation, acceleration and braking and are then put through Consumer Reports’ “long course” accident-avoidance test--one in use since 1973.
(The controversial short-course avoidance test used for evaluating the stability of SUVs and light pickups was instituted in 1988 as a result of Consumers Union technical director R. David Pittle’s near-rollover in a Suzuki Samurai. The validity of the short course, which requires more dramatic steering maneuvers and abrupt changes of direction than the long course, is being challenged in the pending lawsuits by Isuzu and Suzuki.)
The avoidance maneuver involves driving a vehicle at ever-increasing speeds through an abrupt double lane change in which the driver must negotiate through a set of traffic cones, making abrupt 90-degree turns to the left and right, straightening out and then making abrupt 90-degree right and left turns, as if steering around a car that had suddenly skidded to a halt. A vehicle fails the test when it loses traction or cannot make the required directional changes without knocking over the cones that line the 18-foot-wide lanes.
All the driving tests on the track, including the accident-avoidance maneuvers, are done by Champion and his engineering staff--and all of Consumer Report’s auto testers must have engineering degrees, he said. None are professional test drivers, but all are trained to drive the track and most have extensive driving experience either as weekend racing enthusiasts or from previous positions in the auto industry. Champion, for example, was a test driver for Nissan and Land Rover; he supervised the construction and initial operation of Land Rover’s Arizona test facility.
Sport-utilities and pickup trucks are run through an off-road course that includes mudholes, creek crossings, a section of rock-strewn path and a steep hill embedded with hundreds of boulders. SUVs and pickups considered to be true off-road vehicles because they have four-wheel-drive systems capable of operating in low range must also negotiate a steep, boulder-embedded course knows as Rock Hill to test their suspensions and off-road capabilities.
“We don’t use the hill for testing vehicles such as the Lexus RX 300 or Subaru Outback,” Champion said. “They don’t have low range, and their owner’s manuals state they are not designed for serious off-road driving.”
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Consumer Reports’ track is the center of a facility that was the site of a regional drag strip until noise problems forced its closure in the 1980s. Consumers Union acquired the property in 1986 and, under the guidance of facility manager Alan Hanks, spent almost three years building the test garage and offices and installing additional track surfaces and test equipment.
Today the facility includes a 4,300-foot-long straight track used for acceleration, braking and the accident-avoidance tests; a 3,600-foot-long serpentine road course used to test handling; a 300-foot-diameter skid pad used to test tires under wet and dry conditions and to measure a vehicle’s grip in tight turns; and an 1,800-foot-long rough-road segment used to test interior noise levels.
Vehicles are supposed to be able to handle the road course at speeds of up to 55 mph, but during a tour of the facility Hanks confided that at least one recently tested--the Ford Expedition full-size SUV--”wouldn’t get up to 50” on the course without giving the drivers problems on some of the tighter turns.
The 60-foot-wide straightaway includes a section with two different road surfaces--a 30-foot-wide slick pavement next to a 30-foot-wide “normal” asphalt roadbed--used to test anti-lock braking systems. The difference in grip as the vehicle straddles the two surfaces and the brakes are applied lets the test driver assess the effectiveness of the ABS.
In addition, there are a wet section of the track about 200 feet long used to test tires for their resistance to hydroplaning (a slight depression holds a 10-millimeter film of water to mimic road conditions on a rainy day) and a pair of snow hills used to test snow-tire traction (complete with snow-making equipment for winter days when the Connecticut weather doesn’t cooperate).
Hanks and his crew recently added an “ice arena,” 220 feet long and 24 feet wide, in which an icy surface is maintained during the winter to test SUV all-terrain tires and passenger-car all-season tires.
The track is open five days a week, 50 weeks of the year. To keep it up and running, Hanks boasts, he and his three-member maintenance crew have more heavy equipment (including tractors, a grader, a snowplow and a water pumper) than does the town of East Haddam. The entire test area is covered by a network of cameras linked to a computer system that permits Hanks to monitor the facility from his home.
The cost of operating and maintaining the track, Champion said, is about $17,000 a day--$4.2 million a year.
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Times staff writer John O’Dell can be reached at john.odell@latimes.com.
