Pilot still CR's choice ... *yawn*

[TheEaglePilot]

This month's issue of Consumer Reports has a comparison of some new-ish midsize SUVs including the Outlook, Veracruz, CX-9, Pacifica, and Edge.

The result? After all these years, GM almost built a CUV as good when new as the Pilot (of course, the jury is still out on reliability). But the Pilot is still CR's vehicle of choice in the category (79/100 vs 76 for the Outlook).

The order of the rest was Veracruz (75), Pacifica (74), CX-9 (73) and Edge (60).

Honda was smart not to redesign for 2008. Apart from stiff competition from the Highlander, the 2009 Pilot will blow everything else out of the water.

Chris

[Sportymonk]

A follow-on from Forbes and Jerry Flint

http://www.forbes.com/2007/08/06/car...tos_newsletter

.... It took decades for GM to drive itself into this ditch, and that is why it is so hard to back out of it now. What will it take to make GM a winner again?

The drive for better vehicles must intensify. Even the new Saturn Outlook, highly praised as it is--and ahead of a flock of others, such as the Toyota Highlander, Hyundai Veracruz, Nissan Murano and Mazda CX9 and CX7--ranks a few points beneath the Honda Pilot on the Consumer Reports scorecard.....

Sure hope Honda does well on the redesign. It is looking sort like the stock market, expectations are getting so high they may have to do the impossible to meet expectations.

[krygny]

The cars won't get substantially better until the company gets better and the company is still #&%ked up. They're still doing things too much like they did them in the '50s and '60s and it stopped working in the '70s and '80s. They don't engineer cars, they engineer components. Then, they integrate the components into four or five versions of the same vehicle. Most every other manufacturer has two versions of a vehicle, at most.

Saturn is their only nameplate that distinguishes itself. They have to do the same thing with all their divisions. Let them all become their own products. Let them sink or swim on their own. Don't cram the same engines, trannys, chassis, etc. down the throat of every division.

Sure, you can make cars cheaper if you shutdown your Chevy plant for 3-6 weeks and retool for Pontiacs. But you still lose money if they don't appeal to anyone and don't sell. As long as they design cars at the corporate level, they'll never make a decent car. Cars have to be designed by stylists, designers and engineers.