I remember one Honda that had a transmission recall, defective radio and a tendency for body trim to fall off (according to the little blurb) and was rated awesome.

The equivalent Ford was dinged because the OEM tires were noisy.

So do they like Tesla or dislike Tesla? Only a year ago or so they rated the Model S as the best car they had ever reviewed; then there were a few Autopilot failures and some troubles with the Model X -- now the honeymoon seems to be over.

It's not that I think CR does a wonderful job with cars -- or with any other product that I'm familiar with -- but I think that their biases are more complex than a simple "they like who they like".

Model S was a fairly new vehicle, so in year one they only did the first part - there weren't many Tesla owners who were also CR subscribers who also have had the car for at least a year to generate a reliable corpus of reader ratings.

Things changed in year two when reader surveys started trickling in, with Model S owners reporting higher than average amount of issues, which impacted the overall ratings.

CR's own driving tests still earned Model S a "CR Recommended" badge, it just no longer came with a spotless 100-point score they've previously assigned.

That allows you to simply +/- their ratings in a certain area, depending on how well their rating lines up with your personal experience. It's hard to do that with similar types of organizations, where it really comes down to the person who reviewed it, and sometimes even how they felt that day.