RLSH700

The thing that amazes me is that any of you are surprised by CR is already indicating that they Challenger will loose their competition. They hate Chrysler with a passion. If you ever watch their videos you can tell hear the loathing in their voices of Chrysler and their respective products. The thing to remember about this is CR is basically like a whining child, they will pound on the floor yelling out "I want it, I want it, I hate you, I want it..." in the sense that they think they can change people's minds by taking cheap shots at who they don't like and it will succeed.

The thing I find humorous is that the proudly state that they didn't like the Charger but loved the G8. That should tell you something about their connection to customer's likes and the free market offerings as the Charger has been a success; meanwhile, the G8 that they loved is far underperforming it's predecessor's (the Grand Prix) sales that they hated and sadly is going down with Pontiac (I'm not happy by anymeans about that move, I think Pontiac is part of the path to getting GM back on the path of success).

I have very little stock invested in the automotive press's OPINIONS, but CR in my view hold the least level of credibility. Their reliability ratings hold next to no credibility with me as I've owned several cars that they say are awful in reliability and never had the problems they were complaining about and know many other people who will confirm this prespective. Most of the time, their complaints are subjective and a matter of taste. The other problem that they have is they don't even try to balance out their opinions like the other ones do.

The normal magazines will list 3 positives and 3 negatives. CR will often list one positive and a laundry list of negatives. This is a foolish and non-objective approach. Even the worst offerings if you look have more than one positive point. They just pick favorites and do little to cover for that throwing a blanket up that "we are non-profit; therefore, since we are not a normal company we must be honest." Garbage, all organizations non-profit, Gov't, and for profit are run by human beings and human beings are flawed and as a result their works will have flaws in them as well. It's the people who claim to be perfect that you should be aware of and CR likes to do this all the time.

We also must remember this, GM won the bang-for-your-buck war nearly every time against the Mustang and in the magazine comparisons, but the Mustang won ultimately in sales because it was a better balanced car. I think from what I've seen the Mustang and Challenger are better balanced models. The only problem I can see the Challenger has to deal with is it's massive size as it is closer to a GTO than it is a Mustang. I think the other area where the Challenger is going to need work is I think the sooner they can come out with the Pentastar V6, the better and hopefully they will have a more efficient transmission to come with it. I also hope that a new SRT engine is on the way.