The truth about automotive reviews,...

[travajante]

Talk about thread resurrection.

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[Lucarno]

Avoid the Chevrolet brand ...

Can you give reasons why we should avoid the chevy brand sir? Im not a chevy fan, just curious...

[KjTorres2592]

Page Not Found | The Manila Times Online

[SIZE="4"]Telltale signs you’re reading a crappy car review[/SIZE]
[SIZE="2"]By Vernon B. Sarne[/SIZE]


SOME of my colleagues will probably hate me for this, but this piece is what happens when a motoring journalist gets exposed to too much Anthony Bourdain, the celebrity chef who earned notoriety by spilling the beans on the restaurant business. One chapter in his book Kitchen Confidential—“From our kitchen to your table”—explains why, for instance, you shouldn’t order fish on a Monday or why you should avoid hollandaise at all times. You can bet he lost a lot of friends in his industry after those revelations.

Now how do you know if I or my colleagues are feeding you crap in our test-drive articles? I’d like to offer some trade secrets, and not because I like making enemies but because I want the usually credulous public to be able to differentiate between a trustworthy car review and a lame one. You’ve heard it said more than once: Don’t believe everything you read. Here then are the five most common warning signs your favorite motoring writer is taking you for a ride.

1. Too many mentions of the carmaker’s executives. If the car review is peppered with chummy tributes to the auto company’s president or vice-president—especially the marketing vice-president—you can be sure the writer had lost his objectivity even before he could concoct a title. Don’t expect him to divulge that the vehicle’s ride is stone-hard after relating how he and the executive had ganged up on a bottle of scotch during a recent event. If it sounds like the writer and the company official are bosom buddies, that’s because they most probably are. Don’t count on this journalist to tell you what’s really wrong with the car. It’s not gonna happen. It’s like asking him to squeal on the groom when he’s actually the best man.

2. When the review is placed side by side with an advertisement from the same carmaker. Motoring editors, especially of newspapers, constantly deal with a lot of pressure from management to increase advertising revenue in their section. The motoring section, after all, was originally conceived as a money-making supplement. If you spot a car review strategically laid out next to a car company’s full-page ad, there’s a very good chance the review has been sanitized. Sure, there’s still the occasional grumbling—the token cons after the pros—but you’ll rarely get absolute openness from such a review, especially one that comes out in a monthly advertising supplement. The same is true with car magazines. It’s not a coincidence that a test review forms a spread with an ad from the same car brand. It’s almost always done to please the almighty advertiser.

3. A brochurelike litany of the car’s specs and features. If you’re not even halfway through a car review and it already feels like you’re reading the vehicle’s product literature, it’s because the author actually lifted whole phrases from a brochure. This is common practice among those who either have no real intimate knowledge of the car or are writing under the deadliest of deadlines. A good indication the writer copied significant bits from the brochure is an exact reprint of company-exclusive terminology, including capitalization of certain or all letters. If a writer keeps referring to a BMW X5 as a “Sports Activity Vehicle,” or says a Nissan Sentra has an “Electronic Concentrated Engine Control System,” you know he is merely propagating the brand’s corporate-speak. You might as well just get your car review from the company’s engineers themselves. I’d prefer gonzo journalism to armchair criticism any day of the week.

4. Inaccurate data or exaggerated information. Motoring journalists may differ in their assessment of the same car, but there are certain constants here. Like basic specs and figures. There’s no excuse for a wrong quotation of an engine’s horsepower or even the vehicle’s price, because these things are verifiable. If a writer can’t even give you the correct list of safety features—a colleague once declared that the Isuzu Crosswind has airbags—how can you trust him to give you a proper evaluation of the vehicle’s performance? Also, look out for some too-good-to-be-true storytelling. Some scribes in the business actually have a bright future in fiction writing. A newbie once boasted he had driven the car at 200kph on Pasay Road in Makati. How he did it became the subject of intensive research over at the Department of Public Works and Highways.

5. An abnormally swooning praise for or extremely damning indictment of the vehicle. “I do allow personal issues to cloud my judgment,” says the British motoring journalist Jeremy Clarkson. Filipino automotive writers are no different, trust me. In our beat, most journalists are associated too closely with certain carmakers while also being known to harbor grudges against other companies. If someone writes about Mitsubishi all the time, for instance, and these write-ups are exclusively positive, that’s because the guy is beholden to Mitsubishi. Or if the writer sounds like he had an orgasm just driving a pickup, he could truly be “good” friends with the assembler. By the same token, if a writer patently froths in the mouth trying to discredit not only the vehicle but more so the brand, chances are he merely has an ax to grind. It’s easy to monitor these things, especially if you subscribe to a newspaper or a car magazine regularly. Over time, it’s easy to tell who leans toward which car company and who’s in a cold war with it.

The bottom line is that you, the car buyer, should be able to know when a vehicle review is reliable or not. And that’s because motoring journalists won’t give you a refund once you get stuck with a lousy ride.

[SIZE="2"]The author is also the editor in chief of TopGear Philippines. You may e-mail
your comments or suggestions at vernon.sarne*summitmedia.com [/SIZE]

Thank you im planning to get one.

[StockEngine]

wrong thread

[StockEngine]

SavageGeese is retiring ☠

[ninjababez]

SavageGeese is retiring

ok pa naman ito gumawa ng vid / reviews

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[StockEngine]

this reviewer seems to like takata alot...

very interesting how he got 11ish km/l on the highway too...

[StockEngine]

https://www.autoindustriya.com/auto-...-engineer.html


the weight penalty has already been taken into account by the thais.. (CO2 must not exceed 201)

[eprnv]

Very informative post. Thanks!

[StockEngine]

Miggi is a good photographer, but he could've taken photos of the spec sheet. Does this end of life vehicle even have other features aside from the android auto and engine?

Could he have at least mentioned the missing rear view camera? I mean driving this 5meter boat requires some eyes on your back right. and what about the missing reversing sensors?


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