Consumer reports is funded by the Ford foundation. Interesting they didn’t mention that
Per Wikipedia: "Between 1955 and 1974, the foundation sold its Ford Motor Company holdings and now plays no role in the automobile company."
Bigger picture: Since CR has been doing at-scale quantitative ratings of cars for decades, it should be pretty easy to run some stats, and see if they have a meaningful pro-Ford bias.
Opinion: If I was running both Ford Motors and the Ford Foundation, I'd be telling CR that I wanted 100%-unvarnished-truth reviews and ratings of Ford Motors products from them. Because done-right data from CR would be a ~99%-independent check on what my underlings at Ford Motor were telling me. (And, yes, cheating in Ford's favor would be damn likely to turn into a disastrous scandal.)
Right, but you probably wouldn't want the bad stuff published.
But there are half a bazillion places in the modern world where bad news about Ford Motor could originate. I'd have to be either a pathetic man-child or a control-freak mental case to think that somehow preventing CR from publishing a bit of that would give a probable net positive outcome, longer-term, for Ford Motor Co.
No meaning you have good data to improve your company, that's the benefit to you. Publishing said data, particularly if you haven't improved on the data wouldn't benefit you.
>I'd have to be either a pathetic man-child or a control-freak mental case to think that somehow preventing CR from publishing a bit of that would give a probable net positive outcome, longer-term, for Ford Motor Co.
Or have shareholders.