The least reliable car of all, according to Consumer Reports survey, is General Motors’ Pontiac Solstice sports car. Its reliability was calculated to be 234 percent worse than average. It was followed closely by GM’s Cadillac Escalade EXT, which is calculated to be 220 percent less reliable than the average vehicle.
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Is there anyone on board who can decipher what is supposed to be meant by terms like”234 percent worse” and “220 percent less reliable”? When I went to school such terms were not permissible and would have been considered meaningless.
Good question - by “234% worse”, I’ve seen people mean 234%, or 2.34 times, as well as 3.34 times (234% increase).
What MANY, MANY people are missing is that they define “average” as no worse than 3%.
So it appears they claim to have measured the solstice at either 7.02% at the most or 10.02% at the most.
Meaning even the worst vehicle they tested, well above average, really is a far cry from the days of yore, when a 7% failure rate would have been average or even better.
They’re reporting 93% of Ford models with failure rates of *less than 3%*, and not saying in this article how the other 7% did. In other words, 93% of Ford models they rate as more reliable than a v6 Camry.
Do I believe that? Should you? No. Why? Because they have small sample sizes, and it is impossible even with a perfect survey (theirs isnt) to measure differences of 1-2% when your sample sizes are 200-300.
But an alternate hypothesis, that the difference cannot be large, is much easier to prove with small sample sizes.
That’s the entire point. Their data doesn’t prove v6 Camrys are lousy. But it does prove there is little to no difference in reliability, and it really only identifys the low-end outliers.
But there are bashers on both sides who will twist this to prove some horrendous bias or whatever.... We really need to teach people statistics in school...