Well, first, I would never, ever buy a car not well rated on Consumer Reports. Major appliances and electronics are also good to check on.

When I worked at a bike shop, the owner used to keep an old copy of CR around. It had a comparison of bicycles that hammered one that we sold. Unfortunately, it was a false comparison if you looked at the component groups and the fact that they'd apparently gotten an improperly tuned and assembled bike. Final assembly and tuning are done by the local shop not by the manufacturer, but CR had painted our product line as inferior based on a bad assembly.:headshake Now I take everything they say with a grain of salt because they had no expert knowlege of bikes.

They were also the ones that caused a panic recently by saying that all but two brands of infant car seat had utterly failed their crash tests and would kill your baby!--and then retracted the whole thing when it turned out their testing methods were flawed.

They are a tool, but not a bible. I've also been unimpressed with reviews they have done. Can't remember what it was now, but they clearly didn't know what they were talking about in one a read a while back.

you make up your own mind, of course, using the tools that are available. They do have lots of good advice.