I've got almost every Consumer Reports buying guide issue from 1950-2000, and have copies of almost every magazine article they've done on TVs or radios from roughly 1940-1975. While I don't care much for the 'modern' CU, I find old issues of Consumer Reports oftentimes rather interesting, and sometimes helpful in identifying sets or finding rough dates of manufacture.
I disagree with Carmine's general point of view, though. Some of those examples are a bit out-of-context, such as the praise of "quick-warm-up." In fact, if you look again, you'll find that while they sorta liked it in the very early 70's, they did a quick 180-degree turn on that within about two years (as the "energy crisis" worsened), and even started praising manufactures that *stopped* using that feature. So, if you wanna complain about CU in that respect, complain about them not being *consistent*.
As for not mentioning Zenith's handwired circuit, I'm not sure which articles you've read, but many of CU's TV ratings contained notes like "printed circuit" or "wired circuit" to identify the type of construction. They also often made some vague evaluation of "ease of servicing" for TVs, though the criteria for that sometimes seemed a bit arbitrary.
Anyway, I think the "best" era for CU at least for 'technology'-type products (TV/radio/etc.) was probably about 1946-1960.
I'd agree that they really started to get weak in the 1980's and later.
There were a few funny bits, though, such as their glowing praise for the CBS color system in the early 50's (and their demands that the FCC should approve it over RCA's proposed 'compatible' system); again, CU did a flip-flop on that just a few years later... :-) Also, some of their general consumer-advocacy articles were a bit odd, such as their articles from the 40's about how nickel-cadmium automobile batteries should be on the market, but are being somehow blocked by the big lead-acid battery manufacturers.
I can't speak for their automobile ratings, since I'm not really a gearhead. However, my general feeling about any ratings article in CU is that you should always 'filter' it based on what *you* find important. If you prefer 2-door cars, then fine! Don't worry about the commentary, just read the evaluation. I often mentally change the order of items in CU articles based on what *I* happen to find important or unimportant.
Now, if you really want something to look at and shake your head, take a look at some older issues of CU's lower-rent counterpart,
Consumer's Resarch (previously
Consumer's Research Bulletin). Just as a quick example, when the first color TVs were introduced, at least CU bothered to actully *buy* one and test it. Consumer's Resarch did an article on one of those first NTSC color sets too, but instead of buying one, they simply headed over to a local tavern that had just gotten one of these sets, and wrote up their "evaluation" based on waching TV with the other bar patrons...