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Critics aside, few signs of stress can be detected at the magazine's headquarters, a 180,000 sq. ft. complex built in 1991 at a cost of $40 million in Yonkers, New York, half an hour north of Manhattan. An eerie serenity and strange things abound here. There is, for example, a 30-ft. by 30-ft. by 30-ft. chamber, its beams sunk deep into Westchester County bedrock, that stands free of the rest of the building. The purpose of this noiseless, echoless room, immune to all outside vibrations short of the nuclear or the heavily seismic, is to test under absolutely pristine aural conditions the performance range of stereo speakers. "Nobody else could afford this room," says Alan Lefkow, CR's director of electronics testing. "Other magazines don't use them."
Elsewhere, Ruth Greenberg, a veteran CR assistant project leader on appliances, is grilling 40 microwave ovens on their ability to pop popcorn. She introduces a bag of Paul Newman's popcorn to a Whirlpool microwave oven. "First, I hit the Popcorn button," she says, "but then I will compare it to the bag's instructions to see if the popcorn feature works. I'll measure how much popcorn popped and how many kernels will be left over." Guided by its Popcorn button, the Whirlpool shuts off after 2 min. 20 sec. The yield: four cups of popcorn and, Greenberg estimates, 200 unpopped kernels. "I'll go back and count the kernels by hand."
Such meticulousness has obviously been designed to take the guesswork out of testing. But some critics charge that impressionistic, subjective judgments nevertheless find their way into some CR evaluations. In its January issue the magazine ran a chart listing its overall test results for eight mid-priced 1995 sedans. In second place in overall excellence, just behind the Toyota Camry, was the Dodge Intrepid. But in a separate story headlined WOES BESET CHRYSLER, the magazine said, "Through the first quarter of 1994, fully 24 percent of owners of 1994 Intrepids reported at least one problem they considered serious, an especially disturbing result for such new cars." As a result, CR announced, it was dropping the Intrepid from its list of recommended models.
Consumers who were confused (the second-best sedan is also a turkey?) could link elbows with the ranks of Chrysler executives who were aggrieved. Bob Moser, who bears the formidable title of director of customer problem identification and resolution, argues that the CR methods of evaluating the Intrepid compared fresh apples and a few outdated lemons. CR's citing of drivers' complaints about 1994 models, he says, "carries the assumption that the problems continued through the 1995 models." Not so, Moser insists: "We know where our cars are versus any time in the past, and in fact these 1995 models are the best vehicles we have ever manufactured." Counters CR director of automobile testing Robert Knoll: "Automobiles and auto companies don't change that rapidly. We get a good enough sample of a model to see if they follow a pattern. When we predict a pattern, it usually does develop."