I found this kind of interesting.
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Aug. 16, 2011 12:13 p.m. bravenrace SuperDork
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Aug. 16, 2011 12:20 p.m. aircooled SuperDork
[insert product here] is one of the best on the market...
...that is to say, it is not the worst, so thus it is one of the best.
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Aug. 16, 2011 12:26 p.m. Xceler8x SuperDork
Lies, Damned lies, and Statistics.
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Aug. 16, 2011 2:00 p.m. alfadriver SuperDork
I'm not sure how I follow that being something new.
sales have always been reported vs. previous year (or previous month, if stated) of that company. And individual models are always relative to itself.
Toyota being down indicated that vs. last year, Toyota is having issues vs. itself.
Ford being up indicated that Ford is finding more sales vs. itself.
From a shareholder perspective, that's pretty important. Considering how much time is spent reporting the markets, the information that is produced must be important.
The only comparitive data that is ever produced by the companies is market share. And that only matters if you either want the most popular car or biggest underdog- if it matters.
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Aug. 16, 2011 2:55 p.m. GameboyRMH SuperDork
"Rated the best mid-sized 5-seat 4-cylinder economy sedan by [insert butt of gearhead jokes here]" is the sort of thing that always cracks me up.
I'm sure most cars are the best in some ultra-specific category.
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Aug. 16, 2011 2:57 p.m. DrBoost SuperDork
It's all in how the figures are presented. If Mike Rowe or others within the blue oval say that ford is doing better than Toyota, or selling more cars then it's debatable.
That article was interesting and just reinforced the "Figures never lie and liars never figure" or something like that. -
Aug. 16, 2011 3:03 p.m. alfadriver SuperDork
One also has to separate the ratings vs. sales figures- they are not the same, and the commercials I see flat out say "best selling car in X".
Again, I'm not sure how those numbers as stated are misleading, unless read wrong.
Boost- if Mike Rowe said that Toyota was rated higher than Ford, would you call that debateable? (or, which Rowe commercial says that they are selling better vs. saying rated better?- I don't recall that one- but then again, I personally don't pay attention to commercials.)
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Aug. 16, 2011 3:13 p.m. oldtin Dork
For a fee you can have JD Powers make up a category of some sort of satisfaction - with a good chance you'll be #1. I've also noticed that every dealer I've ever been to is the number 1 of their state, county city, zip code, area code or something.
Seems like a whole lot of spin
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Aug. 16, 2011 3:29 p.m. Cone_Junky HalfDork
Gotta love statistics...
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Aug. 16, 2011 3:35 p.m. stuart in mn SuperDork
Ford? Spin? Never happens. 
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Aug. 16, 2011 3:56 p.m. oldsaw SuperDork
Ford has to go after Toyota; if it chose Hyundai as the target, market shares would drop.
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Aug. 16, 2011 7:40 p.m. T.J. SuperDork
I'm not sure I get the point of the article. It says, "those who get bollixed up by percentages and headlines may find themselves in a non-appealing situation."
What does that mean exactly? Is it talking about car buying or stock buying? Is it saying that although Fusion sales are up and Camry sales are down the Camry is better because it sells more? Not really sure what the point here is. If Ford says sales are up x% and they are not making data up, then that's that. Sure there are lots of folks out there who do not like to think and somehow get the idea that Fusion outsells Camry, but there is no accounting for ignorance or stupidity. Those are just the folks the marketing people are trying to fool.
The most interesting thing to me was that the Sonata outsold the Fusion. I see a lot of Sonata's on the road recently, but that is surprising to me.
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Aug. 16, 2011 8:26 p.m. oldtin Dork
In reply to T.J.:
Oh Noes - you're at a huge risk - you pop for the ford because it's the fastest selling hooptie, only to find out you've been hoodwinked and your neighbor who just got the camry, well, it turns out they got the number one selling car with 22.8% more cupholders - of course Mrs. smith down the street will be blogging about your foolish purchase.
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Aug. 17, 2011 6:38 a.m. bravenrace SuperDork
stuart in mn wrote:
Ford? Spin? Never happens.
Actually, I personally wouldn't say the Merc was 6 times better than the Granada...Not to say the Granada was great or anything...
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Aug. 17, 2011 6:48 a.m. DrBoost SuperDork
alfadriver wrote:
Boost- if Mike Rowe said that Toyota was rated higher than Ford, would you call that debateable? (or, which Rowe commercial says that they are selling better vs. saying rated better?- I don't recall that one- but then again, I personally don't pay attention to commercials.)
I don't pay attention to commercials either. What I was trying to say is that if Rowe or someone else was talking about ratings you can debate that, who did the ratings, what were they rating and so on. If it's sales numbers, it's harder to debate.
Basically, I wasn't agreeing or disagreeing with anything, just kinda saying "numbers never lie, but people often do" sort of thing. -
Aug. 17, 2011 6:49 a.m. DrBoost SuperDork
bravenrace wrote:
stuart in mn wrote:
Ford? Spin? Never happens.
Actually, I personally wouldn't say the Merc was 6 times better than the Granada...Not to say the Granada was great or anything...
But you have to ask yourself, how many Grenadas are still on the road vs. the Merc?
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Aug. 17, 2011 7:16 a.m. alfadriver SuperDork
Like TJ and I have pointed out, this article is about sales numbers, not ratings.
Do you let sales numbers influence your purchases?
Here's an alternate- the Miata is the most common recommended car on this board. And one of the lightest selling cars under $30k. The fact that they sell less than 10% of camry sales does not seem to alter opinions.
But it does beg the question- why do we like to downgrade news? Why is it desireable to make companies like GM look bad? If Ford showed improvement, why is it important to make sure we all know that they are still under Toyota, who showed degradation. How about Ford is doing better, and Toyota is still doing great, even though their sales are down?
This fascination of downgrading American industry and manufacturing is troubling. Heck, even when you post about American appliances, people like to claim we don't make them anymore. That is an issue. Our facination with cheap stuff along with business fascination with massive profits have done wonders to working jobs.
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Aug. 17, 2011 7:51 a.m. foxtrapper SuperDork
The author is astonished to find out that depending on how you look at the numbers they look different? Really? That's some discovery worthy of writing an article over?
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Aug. 17, 2011 10:15 a.m. bravenrace SuperDork
I think we are making too much of this. The point, I "think", is that the average person may make incorrect conclusions based on numbers or percentages. IOW, the numbers may be correct, but to some may imply something that is incorrect.
If, like the article mentioned, one vehicle is up in sales and another down, "some" people (not us) may make the conclusion that the first vehicle is out-selling the second when it in fact is not.
And no, this is nothing new. But like most things these days, it seems to be getting more prevalent. Hell, if the politicians can get away with their spin, why not everyone else? -
Aug. 17, 2011 10:25 a.m. fasted58 Dork
What manufacturer hasn't used the numbers, percentages, awards etc. in promotion and advertising.. even out of context? No big deal.
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Aug. 17, 2011 11:03 a.m. Schmidlap HalfDork
I don't think we are making too much of this. The title of the article is "Lies, Damned Lies and Car Sales" and then it goes on to berate Ford for reporting the truth, that their sales numbers are up. The title of the article makes it seem like Ford is lieing about their sales numbers when they're not.
And unless I missed it in the article, there was no mention of any automaker's claims in their advertisements, just their reporting of actual cars sold.
From the headline, I was expecting an in depth analysis about how a car company that has cancelled a few car lines actually sold less total cars this year than last year but their individual brands were up so they could claim that Division A, B and C were up, but last year Division A, B, C, D and E sold more cars total. That would have better justified the 'lies' title. (I don't think this actually happened, that's just what I was expecting from the article.)
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Aug. 17, 2011 12:28 p.m. RossD SuperDork
That was a pretty useless article. So apparently the person who wrote that didn't previously know how percentages work? His next article will be based on the inner workings of addition and subtraction and how it relates to car sales and marketing.
