Sometimes the things we believe to be the best aren’t. We as humans have a habit of judging things by what they cost. The more expensive an item is, the better we think it is.  Recently Consumer Reports came out and listed the worst cars in 10 different categories. Some of the results were surprising. Take the lowest rated luxury car for example, Consumers stated is was a Mercedes-Benz. Some might argue this is the cheapest model and they would be correct if they were talking about the Mercedes-Benz cars sent to the United States. Still Mercedes-Benz is considered the ultimate car by many people. Is it badge to envy and do people really think it is the best car? I guess you would have to ask each person. Another surprise has to be the fact the Lincoln MKS was the lowest rated midsize luxury car. Years ago I said to a Lincoln executive I believed letting the Lincoln Town Car to be used as a fleet car was pulling down the brand. He never responded. Maybe this had something to do with the choice?

The lowest rated compact SUV was not really a surprise to me, it was the Land Rover Discovery Sport. While many people think this is the ultimate compact SUV, I remember the television show Top Gear panning this car when they borrowed one to test it. The first thing that happened to it was the dome light filled with water in a rain storm. When it comes to large SUVs we are really talking about trucks so I find it hard to agree with Consumers panning the Cadillac Escalade. They said it had a stiff ride, was not that roomy and the Cue Infotainment system was confounding. The ride will always be hard unless the Escalade is not adapted from a truck. As far as the other comments go I have no argument with them.

A new report has come out from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and it found out something quite surprising. It turns out that the distance and brightness of headlights can be very different from car to car. They tested 31 new cars and 82 sets of headlights. I didn’t know this, but you can have the same bulbs on two different cars and yet the distances one can see at night can be completely different. The Institute rated the headlights as good, acceptable, marginal and poor. It turns out the bulbs are not the only thing which gives you good distance seeing at night, it is also the reflector setup. The only car to achieve a “good” rating was the best model of the Toyota Prius V. The reason for such a good rating was this car and this model had LED lights and high-beam assist. When other models of the same car were tested that had regular halogen lights and no high-beam assist they earned a poor rating. The institute stated among the worst headlight system tested was a BMW 3 series, yet another BMW 3 series which had a swivel LED system was in the top one-third. It seems companies may not have given much thought to headlights as neither have most of us, but I think this will change now that the report is out. By the way in 2016 in the midsize car catagory, 11 cars received an “acceptable” rating, 9 a “marginal” rating and 10 a “poor” rating. The following is the address for a list of cars and their ratings, you can copy and paste it into your browser. Sorry Truth Facts does not use live outside links. http://www.iihs.org/iihs/news/desktopnews/first-ever-iihs-headlight-ratings-show-most-need-improvement

When we look at the cars picked by the institute as top picks for crash protection we have to notice something new has been added. Technology is advancing and because of this some of the cars now have crash avoidance. Others have an alarm to alert the driver to step on the brake or swerve. The institute not only checks the crash worthiness of a car, but also determines how good the front crash prevention system is, after all the best thing one can have is a car which doesn’t crash. My car has a crash alarm, but if I am driving in adaptive cruise control it will stop on its own if there is an impending crash. This is a little strange, one would have thought this should have been included in regular driving mode. Is it ALWAYS a good thing for a car to be able to override the driver and stop? There could be certain situations where this might get you into trouble, but overall it seems to be the way to go. It is like the question of how safe it is to wear a seat belt. Overall it is the best thing to do, but there have been people who were saved from dying, because they were thrown out of their cars.

One thing I never understood was the reports on gas mileage. It always seemed I got less than advertised and I know many people who felt the same way, but there is an exception to this. When I purchased a 2006 Honda Civic new and took it on a trip it was rated at 36 or 38 miles per gallon highway but I actually got 42 miles per gallon. I usually don’t check my gas mileage, but I did on the trip just to see what the car got. I never had a car, before or since, which got gas mileage that good. I remember a friend who made the mistake of buying a Yugo thinking it was cheap, light and would get great gas mileage. The problem was a Yugo motor only lasted a couple of months before burning up and the car was a horror to drive. This car has to be on the list of the worst cars ever made.

I have seen many different cars in my lifetime and sometimes the better ones don’t catch on. I am really going to show my age by saying one of the best cars made was the Packard. I remember wanting to buy a used 1953 Packard in 1960 for my first car. A family member wisely stopped me and said I shouldn’t buy it, because they didn’t make the car anymore and it would be hard to get parts for it. He was right and I bought a new 1960 Volkswagen Beetle. It was the worst piece of junk I ever owned. The door locks kept falling off, it had no gas gauge or heater and was so poorly made that when I took it into the dealer for a maintenance, the mechanic kicked my front tire and my headlight fell out. If you wanted heat there was a knob which supposedly would let in warm air from the air cooled engine, but there was no circulating fan so you never got warm. There was an emergency gas tank and you could reach it by pulling a lever. This was important because without a gas gauge you have to be careful you didn’t run out of fuel. Well I did once in the middle of a very busy intersection and pulled the lever and nothing happened.

I am sure we all have had some interesting experiences with cars and if anyone wants to tell me theirs I will post it and if I get enough responses I will post them. My email address is on the home page.