Chevrolet Colorado car reviews
Reading our car reviews
Our reviews always start with some form of our summary box. Here's an example:
| Review Notes: GMC Envoy XUV Straight-Six | |
| Personality | Cleverly and heavily modified heavy-duty pickup |
|---|---|
| Quirks | Somewhat bouncy suspension |
| Unusual features | Midgate, convertible, washable cargo bay |
| Above Average for Price | Utility |
| Needs Work In | Suspension, transmission refinement |
| Notes | Passed driveway test; written by David Zatz |
- Personality is a quick one-line summary which you can safely ignore.
- Quirks are things that struck us as particularly strange - you know, like the expensive Audi TT having a cheap plasticky interior, or the Dodge Neon doggedly sticking to a climate control system that so many owners don't understand.
- Scrape Test and Driveway Test are the same thing (we changed the name): we drive the car at increasing speeds over a slightly worse than average driveway entrance and see if it scrapes. It's a rough measure of ground clearance in real-world conditions.
- Notes in later reviews are the driveway/scrape test and review writer. Nearly all reviews are written by the same person, so this is mainly inserted for the benefit of the nice people who loan us the cars.
How we review cars
Most car reviewers do the same thing: the automobile company drops off a car for a week, and we drive it, and write the review. Some reviewers do acceleration and economy tests; some are big-time enough to get cars for longer periods; but nearly everyone gets the cars from the automakers, and some of them play games. At least one popular German automaker swaps tires depending on the weather - their all wheel drive system was horrible in snow using the tires they provided to us - and possibly other automakers do the same, successfully biasing test results and personal impressions among reviewers who don't check. We toyed with gas mileage for a while, but the EPA has a very rigorous test which we finally settled on as being the best available. It should really have more idle time built in - the test was designed decades ago when traffic was lighter - so it punishes smaller, lighter engines. There are other problems, but they are still just about the best out there.
We try to keep our biases to one side. We also try to figure out the good and bad points of each car; few are really great for everyone and few are terrible. After looking at what people value, we suspect that, if people bought without looking at the label, Chevrolet, Mitsubishi, and Chrysler would do much better, Mercedes, BMW, and Honda would sink, and Toyota would stay about where it is...which is progressing towards being the world's second largest automaker. Generally, we tell you everything we think, even though we suspect some automakers are upset by this (others seem to prefer it).
Our basic outlook is partly pragmatic, which is why we nearly always pick a minivan over an SUV, but we keep things like performance, comfort, and space in the balance. Styling is entirely personal and so we keep it out of overall evaluations and don't spend much time talking about it.
We hope you enjoy and agree with our reviews, and find them useful.