Car Magazine is saying Consumer Reports is Wrong about GX460

great review and spot on...another attempt at hurting a great SUV, a relative of mine just purchased one and it's light-years ahead of the competition IMO.

CR was probably paid by the gov't for the bad press...as probably was the case behind the acceleration issues.

Idiot driver's shouldn't even be behind the wheel of anything other than a bicycle and someone should take legal action against CR for falsifying the test in trying to make the public believe that the product is the culprit. no, it's the idiot behind the wheel who is to blame!

Do other SUVs in this category behave the same way? If not then toyota has a problem, if yes then toyota is not at fault!

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Consumer Reports, despite a name that sounds "official" and serious, has complained about Lexus vehicles being too boring. That's the one reason why I never understand most auto critics.

All of the publishing media (car magazines, CR...) should be exact. They evaluation should base on facts (dimensions, speed, accelerations, angles, mass, pressures, voltages...)
The vehicles are complex systems. If some parameters are differ from the fatcory parameters - described and designed by engineers - , the vehicle could operate non proper way.
My simple questions:
- How many machine designed by this "CR" kind people?
- How long did they study in Universities in order to know deeply the vehicles?
study -> practice -> design/create -> evaluate -> experience -> criticize
If something missing from the knowledge chain, the publishing cannot be fair-minded.

I would imagine if they subjected all the suv's to this "special" they would probably all flip too.

Stupid mag. I never trusted them anyways.

The lexus failed in a "routine handling test". It was not a special test. Street vehicles need to be able to avoid hitting things without sliding off the road or hitting a curb and causing a flip.

The traction control didn't activate until the car was sideways! What more do you need to know?

IT IS DEFECTIVE AND UNSAFE. PERIOD. TOYOTA ADMITTED IT.

"Among the 95 SUVs in its current ratings, no other slid as far as the GX460."

IT WAS NOT A SPECIAL TEST.

You guys do know that Joe Limon only drives on Computer Games ?

That Clown tried to have a debate with me on the Inferiority of Front Wheel Driven vehicles over their Rear Driven Counterparts and after about 10-15 exchanges he then let it slip that his opinions were proved by the driving dynamics of the vehicles in his COMPUTER GAME.......I Kid You Not.

At that point i knew i was as much at fault for Arguing with him.

Just Leave the Armchair Warriors to their Opinions, those of us who actually cover 100s of Thousands of miles on Real Roads know the Truth.

I think the answer is more simple than that.

I DON'T GIVE A SH_T WHAT CONSUMER REPORTS TELLS ME.

Period.

Wasn't Consumer Reports also all over the Audi "unintended acceleration" fiasco?

Car Magazine, AutoCar and other respected magazines have all tested all new GX460 and Prado and i have yet to see one review where the vehicle has received less than 3.5 stars out of 5. Also no magazine complained about this issue because when you drive such tall heavy SUV, you automatically accept that extra care should be taken especially around corners.

I mean all these magazines people know how to drive different cars and what are their respective limits. Consumer Reports is just too demanding i guess, they want GX460 to take a corner at 100 kph without any drama. Also understand that Porsche Cayenne, X5, X6..etc are different cars altogether from GX460. They might easily take such turns but will loose badly to GX460 at offroading.

JUGNU

lol grandmas don't go offroading in their lexus's

WTF since when do grandma's drive full size suv's??

Joe, we get that you hate Toyota's
you can stop with the smart ass comments, there not funny, they don't even make sense.

Almost every military in the world has Land Cruiser / Lexus SUVs. From Europe, to Middle East, to Asia, to South America. And they keep up off road with the real military machines like Hummer etc. With great reliability. There are plenty of videos on youtube

If there was indeed no problem then what did Toyota fix on this suv as stated by the news and even an article here on Autospies?

They revised the active stability control software. If you look at the video of the SUV going around a corner at 90 MPH in a test with the original software, it appeared a little "loose," (body roll and twitch) especially as it completed the turn. After the software revision, the SUV's body appeared to be extremely stable.

If I owned one, I would surely appreciate this free software upgrade, so my SUV would be rock stable as I rocket around corners at 90 MPH. Mind you, I would not call this a problem without the upgrade. But that's just me.

If the same maneuver can be done safely in every other equivalent SUV, then what is wrong with this conclusion? Its perfectly valid for a buyer to want to know that this vehicle has this characteristic.

Do automakers typically issue a stop sale and then halt production of a vehicle when there's really nothing wrong it? I mean, seems to me, if there was nothing wrong it, the maker would have done their own testing and releaded their own video, and maybe even issued a public statement assuring owners and potential buyers that the vehicle was fine.

But instead, they admitted guilt when they halted production and issued a fix. Even if the fix was just software tweaking, a fix implies a malfunction that needed repair, does it not?

Sorry Car mag; nice try, but if CR was so wrong, toyota would have discredited them instead of facing yet another humiliating, crushing, embarrassing, tainting, but utterly hilarious blow.

tattedtwice saud "Do automakers typically issue a stop sale and then halt production of a vehicle when there's really nothing wrong it?"

Normally, no. But after all the mud that's be slung at Toyota, I *assume* they felt the public might believe bad news about Toyota, whether it was factual or not. So they addressed it promptly, even though Consumer Reports was wrong, rather than being perceived as yet another debacle, similar to the "unintended acceleration" thing.

Yea, ok, nice spin. No company, this idiotic one included, is dumb enough to issue a fix for something if there's nothing wrong in the first place. If CR was so wrong, they should have provided proof to the contrary.

I believe the only reason why Toyota is "fixing" their problem is because a national magazine has issued a "problem". If toyota denied it, they would've lost a lot of consumers who purchase their products. Instead, Toyota chose to "fix" the issue so it can go ahead and clear the air.

Keep this in perspective the majority of people that read this and other webs sights like this on line are auto enthusiats. Consumer Reports does not cater to auto enthusiasts they cater to Camry,Accord,Altima etc. type buyers who place reliability and value as the number 1 priority in a car purchase. CR tests all vehicles in a certain way that most if not all auto enthusiast magazines do not. Therefore the final opinion can end up being entirely different. If CR says there is a problem with a particular car then average Joe Q Public will take it to heart and not buy it. Being that Toyota already has all the negative press it could ever not want they really had no choice but to stop selling it and make changes to their stability software. Whatever Car has said(and I did not read the article)will have absolutely no impact on Joe Q Public(who would never read "car magazine" in the first place).Like it or not CR is part of the average buying publics perception of good or bad automobiles.All car makers who sell in the US know this. "Car Magazine"unfortunately is wasting their time pointing out CR's error.

It was always that ppl complained of stability control systems intervening early, now that a vehicle lets you slide the tail until it kicks in is a bad thing?? GX is a pretty serious off roader, I think Toyota was going with raw drive ability and didn't want to use an overactive system...