Consumer Reports is extremely biased. It's a well known fact. The products are often reviewed by writers who know little to nothing about the subject they're assigned to. A friend bought a PC system based solely on the advice of CR. Within a week it became painfully obvious that he paid over $600 more on a lesser system than what he could've gotten if he had shopped on his own. As with any established commerical body that reviews products (like car magazines) you have to take what they say with a grain of salt.
I've come to the conclusion that if you spend less than $50,000 on a car... you can't expect it to be perfect. Just about every car made has problems. Hondas have their own share of problems. They are, however, well engineered... which is why they raised the bar for all others in the 80s and 90s. However, having gone to the wrecking yard to look at my sister's Honda the day after her fatal accident took place in '93, I'd rather get in a wreck behind the wheel of an Audi.
To be fair... VW Audi group has made leaps in engineering, production, and quality since the troubled days of the late 80s and early 90s. The Audi A4 is one of the best cars built to date. On its debut it instantly became the standard for how a car is built and assembled. Under the skin the Passat is essentially identical to the A4. Much of the technology used in the A4 has trasnfered to the rest of the VW/Audi line. Comparing the new Mk4 Golf/GTI to the 98 Mk3 GTI I had... there's no comparison. It's like comparing a Mercedes to a Yugo. Much of the stigma surrounding Audi comes from misunderstanding and false impressions propagated by media (like CR). The sudden acceleration issue in the early 90s, for example, was nothing more than a simple matter of Americans not accustomed to having the gas pedal near the brake pedal... which is a setup the Europeans like and are used to because that configuration is perfect for heel-toe shifting. Audi kept the same configuration in cars with automatic transmissions in order to save production cost.
As for Honda's reputation... the beauty of advertising. Anyone in the ad business will tell you the same.
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