On 3/25/2009 09:24 N8N wrote:
Lots of ground clearance and suspension articulation (required for
rock crawling) make for a tippy vehicle, period. That's why they make
roll cages. If you don't want such a vehicle, don't buy it - and I
don't mean that in a snippy way - but CR had no business knocking a
primarily off-road vehicle for behaving like one. They CERTAINLY
didn't have any business forcing it to tip over so they could get a
story out of it. I'm surprised that Suzuki settled the lawsuit,
actually - I'd have tried my damndest to nail CR to the wall.

Now if CR had simply stated "Jeeps, Suzuki Samurais, etc. are designed
as off road vehicles and as such may be less safe than traditional
passenger cars in high speed on-road maneuvers" that would have been a
true statement, and one that needed to be made back in the early days
of the SUV craze. But CR *deliberately made* the Samurai tip over
when it didn't tip as they expected in the first run of their handling
test. That's inexcusable.

http://www.junkscience.com/consumer/...r_lat0923.html
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Suzuki...ion-a018179466


Sadly, most of what comes up on a web search *today* is articles
glossing over the issues and stating that the lawsuit was settled.
However, I remember the circumstances of the suit well, and it was as
I said - CR had initially set up a handling course with tight corners
and ran the vehicles through them at a certain speed. When none
tipped, they picked the Suzuki, and ran it through at a *higher* speed
and then when it went up on two wheels published an article deeming it
"unacceptable."


nate

I don't see anything in either of these articles that supports the claim
that CU's altered their tests to "force" a rollover or that it was even
different from the tests they used on other similar vehicles.

The maneuvers many have been stunt-like or unlikely to occur in normal
driving conditions, but if they are comparing apples to apples using the
same test on both, I don't see they did anything wrong.

It's been 20 years now and my memory is foggy, but I also seem to recall
there was a 60 Minutes (or maybe 20/20 or some other show like that)
that did a similar story and their findings supported that of CU - the
Samuari performed less satisfactorily than the other similar vehicles in
the same battery of tests.