[Grumman]

The April 2011 issue. They state it has many issues due to Honda introducing a new model and not having good quality control with the product. Seems strange to see a Honda on this list.

 

[BigBoat]

I thought you already posted about it? Do you work for CR? You like posting CR stuff, since 2007

http://www.odyclub.com/forums/54-20...-reports-dec-honda-odyssey-below-average.html

http://www.odyclub.com/forums/52-2005-2010-odyssey/148394-2007-odyssey-unacceptable-cr.html

 

[nguyentt1]

Really?, I did not know about that. Too late now, I already bought the 2012 Odyssey.....

 

[Happyvan]

CR does not say don't buy, although it recommended the Sienna due to slightly better QC (average vs worse than average). Despite this, Odyssey is the highest scored van with the best owner satisfaction as found by CR. To protect yourself against any QC issue, take out an extended warranty. If you are well informed you will make a well rounded decision.

 

[hondafan14]

I never trusted CR, they said the transmission on 04 Odysseys were good and I bought one and low and behold the transmission gave problems. Should have came to this forum

 

[watchman]

CR was the only reviewer I recall that gave the Odyssey a negative review because of "handling"? I thought the basis was kind of ridiculous. Funny thing is that when I bought an Odyssey, the only problems I had were with the accessory installations. A hitch was installed but the installer forgot to bring his customer service hat to work. I ended up having the vehicle into the shop 4 times after that just because they couldn't get interior trim replacement correct. That has nothing to do with initial quality or the manufacturing process whatsoever. Just a dumb dumb installer. I've been extremely happy with the vehicle overall.

Watchman

 

[gin man]

As part of the report, CR dinged Honda big time for quality issues on largely their entire lineup, not just the Odyssey. If you look at all of the posts on the 2011/2012 Odysseys complaining about QC issues, you can understand how they arrived at their rating. I know it has us thinking twice about if this is the vehicle that we want to buy.

 

[flexdmc]

Excess oil usage
transmission shift roughness
radio system went haywire
sliding door trim came off/loose
Yeah I'd say year one QC issues

 

[Grumman]

I thought I would just provide CR info for those that don't read it. I do. I sell my vehicles my self and always have. That is why I use CR for a reference as well as a selling point when I sell a vehicle. I can say CR says this for the not so informed. I plan on purchasing a 2013 and hope the quality issues are resolved by then. Typically I have about 6 people on a list to buy my vehicles when I sell. I hope it stays that way and Honda improves QC

 

[ChaseMe]

CR lost all credibility with me when a couple years back they did a side by side on the RAV4 and Forester. Forester bested the RAV4 in all criteria, they recommended the RAV4 at the end with no real explanation as to why. I take all 'reviews' from major publications with very little merit.

 

[BigBoat]

I thought I would just provide CR info for those that don't read it. I do. I sell my vehicles my self and always have. That is why I use CR for a reference as well as a selling point when I sell a vehicle. I can say CR says this for the not so informed. I plan on purchasing a 2013 and hope the quality issues are resolved by then. Typically I have about 6 people on a list to buy my vehicles when I sell. I hope it stays that way and Honda improves QC

No issue with you being an avid CR follower, glad you see the value but, Are you saying that 6 people are on a list to buy your 2007 Odyssey in 2013? Are you following a Barrett-Jackson Automobile Auction type process? Oh man, these vans are hawt...

 

[gatorblue92]

CR lost all credibility with me when a couple years back they did a side by side on the RAV4 and Forester. Forester bested the RAV4 in all criteria, they recommended the RAV4 at the end with no real explanation as to why. I take all 'reviews' from major publications with very little merit.

It seems to me whenever I read CR that they are basically shilling for Toyota. That article doesnt do much to dispell that notion.

 

[jbrain1]

I used to be a big fan of CR. I would subscribe and renew for 5 years at a time. Then they went downhill. The last couple of years before I cancelled the magazine was about 20-ish pages. Half of it advertising for their books and such. Big disappoint now.

 

[rpenumud]

Toyota products reek of cheapness. When the stuff is so cheap QC is probably much easier. Probably harder to make sure quality is maintained with better stuff that honda puts in. So, the toyota might have better "quality" but that does not necessarily translate into a better/more satisfying product.

 

[codex57]

I used to subscribe to CR.

Then I realized I rarely buy home appliances. I buy a lot of electronics and cars (unfortunately cuz it's frickin' expensive). CR is just too out of date, not knowledgeable, or just flat out dishonest about those categories. Since they aren't up to date and have no credibility, there's no reason to subscribe to them or care what they say.

By lack of credibility, I mean their altering tests or gross, gross negligent in using faulty tests and simply blaring the headlines anyways in Suzuki, Isuzu, and car seats.

 

[watchman]

Consumer Reports Hate Factor

After I read that Consumer Reports was not recommending the 2011 Odyssey I decided to dig into the CR numbers some more to see if there is something other than pure objectivity in the ratings. I did the analysis as follows:

1. The CR ratings are based on a 5 point scale where the solid red circle indicates much better than average and the black solid circle indicates much worse than average. In order to compare the ratings I converted the color codes to a number so I used 1,2,3,4 and 5 to represent worst to best. I then went through the CR 10 year reliability ratings (I have an online subscription) and manually entered a score for each rating of each of the reliability characteristics they use (e.g., engine major, transmission major, suspension, body hardware, paint etc.). There are a total of 17 characteristics and for each historical year there is a "verdict rating" based on thousands of consumer inputs. There is also an extra row in the data where CR provides an overall rating (between black and red or 1 and 5 respectively). I started with the assumption that CR has been getting progressively "emotionally" biased towards the Odyssey over the last few years. To test that hypothesis I took the sum of all 17 of the ratings for one particular year and calculated an average. Then for that same year I converted the CR colour code to a number and compared the two. I did this for all of the available years (2002 through 2011) and summed the differences to arrive at what I have coined an annual CR Hate Factor (AHF). If the value is negative then it could arguably be called the Love Factor.

2. Based on my calculations the annual CR Hate Factor was zero (no hate, no love) from 2002 through 2005. After that the Hate Factor became consistently positive, with the value being +1 from 2006 through 2010 and then +2 in 2011. I don't know the exact scoring method that CR uses prior to converting to the 5 point color codes but I can imagine there may be some mathematical rounding going on here. That being said, even if I remove every other year from the calculation there are still 3 years where the numbers don't jive and for some reason CR rated the Odyssey worse than the numbers suggest. If you assume that hate is cumulative then summing each annual hate factor gives an Overall Hate Factor (OHF) of +7.

3. More troubling than this is the fact that the calculated rating for the 2011 Odyssey using the CR color codes is above average which corresponds to a numeric value of 4. However CR chose to rate the 2011 as below average or 2. They must be really hating the 2011 (AHF = +2...see above). Who at CR has shares in Toyota?

4. I suppose that maybe CR is using some kind of weighting to rate some of the 17 reliability characteristics as more important but this defies logic. In my opinion more important characterstics are things like "Engine Major", "Engine Minor", "Transmission Major" and "Transmission Minor". Looking at the 10 year data, all of these characteristics are BETTER between 2006 and 2011 not worse. What gives with that? There have been some problems with body hardware and electrical on the 2011s but those in my mind are not as serious as a transmission failure or an engine failure.

5. I've done some weighting analysis on my own and when I weight the Engine/Transmission/Fuel Supply higher than the other characteristics the reliability ratings get even better (except between 2002 and 2004 with the tranny) and the OHF increases to between +11 and +12. At this stage I'm not going to send any of this to the newspaper or notify Honda that they are getting bad/inaccurate reviews from CR. I am going to do this analysis with some other vehicles that CR has reviewed and see if this is an anomaly with the Odyssey. If anyone is interested in looking at my calculations let me know and I'll send you a copy.

Watchman

 

[baseball]

After I read that Consumer Reports was not recommending the 2011 Odyssey I decided to dig into the CR numbers some more to see if there is something other than pure objectivity in the ratings. I did the analysis as follows:

1. The CR ratings are based on a 5 point scale where the solid red circle indicates much better than average and the black solid circle indicates much worse than average. In order to compare the ratings I converted the color codes to a number so I used 1,2,3,4 and 5 to represent worst to best. I then went through the CR 10 year reliability ratings (I have an online subscription) and manually entered a score for each rating of each of the reliability characteristics they use (e.g., engine major, transmission major, suspension, body hardware, paint etc.). There are a total of 17 characteristics and for each historical year there is a "verdict rating" based on thousands of consumer inputs. There is also an extra row in the data where CR provides an overall rating (between black and red or 1 and 5 respectively). I started with the assumption that CR has been getting progressively "emotionally" biased towards the Odyssey over the last few years. To test that hypothesis I took the sum of all 17 of the ratings for one particular year and calculated an average. Then for that same year I converted the CR colour code to a number and compared the two. I did this for all of the available years (2002 through 2011) and summed the differences to arrive at what I have coined an annual CR Hate Factor (AHF). If the value is negative then it could arguably be called the Love Factor.

2. Based on my calculations the annual CR Hate Factor was zero (no hate, no love) from 2002 through 2005. After that the Hate Factor became consistently positive, with the value being +1 from 2006 through 2010 and then +2 in 2011. I don't know the exact scoring method that CR uses prior to converting to the 5 point color codes but I can imagine there may be some mathematical rounding going on here. That being said, even if I remove every other year from the calculation there are still 3 years where the numbers don't jive and for some reason CR rated the Odyssey worse than the numbers suggest. If you assume that hate is cumulative then summing each annual hate factor gives an Overall Hate Factor (OHF) of +7.

3. More troubling than this is the fact that the calculated rating for the 2011 Odyssey using the CR color codes is above average which corresponds to a numeric value of 4. However CR chose to rate the 2011 as below average or 2. They must be really hating the 2011 (AHF = +2...see above). Who at CR has shares in Toyota?

4. I suppose that maybe CR is using some kind of weighting to rate some of the 17 reliability characteristics as more important but this defies logic. In my opinion more important characterstics are things like "Engine Major", "Engine Minor", "Transmission Major" and "Transmission Minor". Looking at the 10 year data, all of these characteristics are BETTER between 2006 and 2011 not worse. What gives with that? There have been some problems with body hardware and electrical on the 2011s but those in my mind are not as serious as a transmission failure or an engine failure.

5. I've done some weighting analysis on my own and when I weight the Engine/Transmission/Fuel Supply higher than the other characteristics the reliability ratings get even better (except between 2002 and 2004 with the tranny) and the OHF increases to between +11 and +12. At this stage I'm not going to send any of this to the newspaper or notify Honda that they are getting bad/inaccurate reviews from CR. I am going to do this analysis with some other vehicles that CR has reviewed and see if this is an anomaly with the Odyssey. If anyone is interested in looking at my calculations let me know and I'll send you a copy

Hold your horses. You wrote "hate" 8 times. Why so much hate? Someone who writes "hate " 8 times in a post like that is not unbiased. Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones.

CR recommends several Honda Acura models. So why claim that CR hates Honda. Just another excuse for Honda.

Complex formulas can be made to show almost anything. CR actually has data more detailed than 1-5. I am not an insider so I only make inferences where more data is revealed in text. Like the time when the Acura CL and TL had 25% transmission problems mentioned in text. Way more than the level needed to get the black circle of unreliability that this model richly deserved. When the calculation uses extrapolated data like a 1-5 scale the result can be misleading or just wrong.

CR did correctly call the bad transmission problem that my year Odyssey had. I had the problem like many others.

True Delta shows the 2011 Odyssey with 71 trips for problems. 71 is in the orange range. Red bad. Green good. 2011 Odyssey is closer to bad than good. 71 is many more than most other newer cars. More than any year Sienna and 2010-2011 Dodge Caravan.
I suppose there is some excuse for Odyssey's bad numbers on True Delta. Must be True Delta's Honda hate.

 

[Happyvan]

Watchman and others, this level of Consumer Reports bashing is simply unfair and uncalled for. Consumer Reports did not recommend the 2011 odyssey for one pure and simple reason, it has a below average reliability record. For anyone who is familiar with CR's principle should know that they never recommend anything with poor reliability record, no matter how well it performs. CR remains that one rare organization that evaluates consumer products without taking any money from manufacturers in one way or another, direct or indirect.

 

[Happyvan]

Indeed if you go to JD Power,s Odyssey also has more problems than average. Let's just accept it, the 2011 Odyssey was not reliable enough. According to CR, most of the problem appears to be electronics, which aggrees with the many complaints here on the battery, Nav, Bluetooth, blind spot, ... You name it..

 

[akemi27]

Nowadays it's foolish to depend on one source of information over another. Do your research by reading not one, but several sources (i.e. CR, internet sources). If there's a general concensus of what the strengths and weaknesses of the product is, make your decision from there...

If not, test drive it, fall in love and make an impulse buy!!!