Car companies usually run for cover when attacked by Consumer Reports, the most powerful consumer magazine in North America.
Their strategy is to lie low until the shooting stops, and wait for the public to forget that they or their products were targeted by the magazine published by Consumers Union, a consumer advocacy group chartered in 1936. After all, they reason, there might come a time when Consumer Reports rates one of their cars or trucks a "Best Buy", which is worth its weight in gold. The companies understand that in the world of PR, they're David and Consumer Reports is Goliath. Why mess with a giant?
But that reasoning has apparently escaped Suzuki Motors, which sells barely 100,000 cars annually in the US, where it is among the smallest and weakest of the Davids. Yet it's the one giving the influential Goliath its biggest headache.
Last month the US Court of Appeals in California reaffirmed a June 2002 ruling that Suzuki had cause to seek a jury trial on its charge that Consumer Reports rigged rollover tests of its small Samurai SUV before giving it a retail death-dealing "Not Acceptable" rating.
Suzuki had sold nearly 120,000 Samurais by June 1988, when the magazine published its original story. After that, sales of the model plummeted 70 per cent. Suzuki protested.
Later in 1988, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in the US and agencies in Britain, New Zealand, and the Netherlands issued reports effectively rejecting Consumer Reports' testing procedures and seemingly exonerating the Samurai. "But Consumers Union wouldn't leave Suzuki alone," says George Ball, the attorney representing Suzuki. "We thought it was all over. But along comes Consumer Reports in 1996 with a rehash of the Samurai rollover charges."
Suzuki filed a suit against Consumer Reports in a federal district court in California, alleging that the magazine had rigged its tests. In May 2000, the petition was dismissed, the judge saying the company hadn't sufficiently demonstrated that the magazine acted maliciously in publishing its 1988 story. Suzuki appealed and won a verdict for a jury trial. Consumer Reports petitioned for a reconsideration of that verdict. Now the US Court of Appeals in California has ruled for Suzuki.
But, says Jim Guest, Consumers Union president, the issue is press freedom and whether a magazine has the right to make consumer recommendations to its readers. He says it will go to the Supreme Court to seek a stay of the order.
- The Washington Post