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.