Let's put this in perspective.

Consumer Reports sends out surveys to their customers that ask people the number of problems they've had with their vehicle and things like that.

For surveys, the way that the questions or the survey is designed can actually bias the data obtained from the surveys. Also, the demographics of people who are surveyed can inherently bias the survey results.

There is no such thing as an unbiased survey. All surveys are essentially compromises in terms of:

1) What questions are asked.
2) How the questions are asked.
3) Who actually is surveyed.
4) The statistics used when the data is analyzed.

While I'm not knocking Consumer Reports, I'm glad that they are around, I've never seen an explanation of the demographics of the people they survey. I think that would be very interesting. To say that they just survey their subscribers means that they are essentially already biasing their survey sampling.

I think all surveys need to be taken with a grain of salt. People need to look at all data about vehicles from Consumer Reports, JD Power and others. I dont think you can count on just one source. (Forget the dealer though).