Some people are just plain stupid. Now, if I were more politically correct, a modern sensitive male or simply had any feelings at all, I'd use some euphemism such as deluded or misguided or skewed. But, alas, much to the chagrin of a couple of ex-wives and many ex-girlfriends, I am none of those things, so I'll just stick with stupid.

The subject of this week's rant is Consumer Reports magazine's annual survey of the state of the automobile. Buried in among the valuable data that is part and parcel of CR's annual auto issue was its Most Satisfying Vehicles customer satisfaction survey.

It's a pretty simple survey. Consumer Reports asked 250,000 subscribers who had purchased new 2002 to 2004 vehicles if they would buy the vehicle they own again, considering its price, performance, comfort and reliability.

The presumption is, of course, that no recommendation can rate more highly than a satisfied customer who would purchase the exact same vehicle all over again. Makes sense to me.

What made much less sense was that the surprise winner was the 2004 Toyota Prius. Of the 1,640 respondents to the survey who owned the little gasoline/electric hybrid, 94% said they would do it all over again.

Now, I don't want to defecate (of course, I wanted to use another word here -- see the opening 'graph -- but the Editrix has a strict policy regarding four-lettered honesty) all over Toyota's recently redesigned "green" car. In fact, I'm pretty impressed with its technology, performance and general creature comforts. Compared with its predecessor, it's a huge step forward. And compared with the pathetic attempts at more environmentally friendly vehicles that the domestic manufacturers have put forward so far, Toyota is to be given kudos, a corporate standing O if you will.

But nothing, absolutely nothing will convince me that those 1,542 overjoyed Prius owners (Hey, Dave can do math --I'm just happy to finally get use of that engineering degree my mom paid so much for) are doing anything more than congratulating themselves for being more environmentally conscious than the rest of we emissions-spewing heathens. Do they care whether the Prius's performance is adequate, whether it handles well or what it will cost to repair its complex planetary gear set in eight years? I don't think so. What matters most to them is whether they get the requisite "Ooh, is that the new Toyota hybrid? You're so fabulous to be doing your part for the environment" at their fancy dinner parties.

Since the tremendous media attention that the Prius has garnered almost guarantees such fawning coos, the thing that mystifies me is why those other 98 (there's that engineering degree again) Prius owners didn't make it unanimous.

Consumer Reports' evaluators don't particularly like cars, they sure don't seem to like driving them and, were auto design up to them, we'd all be driving Toyota Avalons, governed for 110 kilometres an hour and completely devoid of any motoring pleasure.

The organization has, however, a huge number of loyal subscribers and its reliability statistics are most probably North America's best source of information. But asking the magazine's editors for their subjective opinions of cars is like asking chartered accountants to rate comedians. Somehow, numbers and pie charts don't quite capture the essence of why we laugh. Or drive.