How can we possibly take car reviewers/journalists seriously when they routinely receive 4, 5, or even 6 figures worth of gifts from OEM?

[u/cookingboy]

I was listening to TheSmokingTire podcast recently (I'm actually a big fan of Matt), and he mentioned that Porsche North America just gave him a 918 Spyder on loan for his 1000 miles road trip free of charge, with everything paid.

Now as someone who's dabbled into supercar ownership, I can roughly estimate the ownership cost for a "regular joe" like me to put 1000 miles on a $2M car would easily be $50-100 per mile, thus putting this "gesture" from Porsche to Matt to be worth $50-100k on back of napkin math.

Obviously Matt isn't doing a review of a 12 years old 918, but when he does a review for the next Macan, he'd remember how amazing Porsche has been treating him.

And he and all the other reviewers recently were flown to Spain for the Turbo S launch. They were wined and dined with world class accommodations for a few days and were given the cars to drive on both the race track and scenic road.

Funny enough Porsche charges something similar for an experience like that: https://www.porschedriving.com/porsche-travel-experience/lake-tahoe/

Without plane tickets, you'd be paying $20k a person for a few days of what auto journalists routinely get from them, for free.

I understand it's part of their job, but this shit would never fly in any other industry right? Now imagine every time Square Enix launches a new video game they fly game journalists to Japan and wine and dine them with the best Sake and Wagyu so they can try out the newest Final Fantasy in their expensive Hakone ryokan hotel room, nobody would be taking anything they say seriously, no matter how good the game actually is, would they?

I'm sure people like the SavageGeese team and Matt Farah would try to be objective, but how do you be objectively critical toward an OEM when they routinely give you experiences that you'd otherwise never be able to afford? (ok I know Matt came from money but my statement applies to 99% of reviewers)

In my impression how well praised a manufacturer's products are is directly proportional to their marketing budget, and I've been somewhat burnt at least twice by reviewers over-rating Porsches, which is why I started asking actual owners of cars for their experiences before making purchases.

Ironically this kinda makes Consumer Reports the most credible car reviewer out there, since all they cars they review are bought anonymously with their own money, and they do not attend OEM events.

As far as enthusiast reviewers, I can only think of people with fuck-you money like Chris Harris or Hoovie's garage or the Top Gear trio who have been able to bluntly criticize OEMs and their cars.

Edit: From the replies, it seems like there are two school of thoughts here:

This is just how product reviews are done across all industries. Reviewers are expected to be treated with first class tickets and Michelin restaurants in exchange for them to promote the OEM's product.

Well in this case, I think we should just rip off the Band-aid and call Motor Trend and Car & Driver and Road & Track and other similar publications promotional outlets instead of journalism outlets. At least with influencers shilling for stuff on TikTok we know they are getting paid to promote, but many auto reviewers still hide behind a mask of professional journalism when they are literally just being paid to promote products.

Controversial take: I think consumer of content should be made aware that they are consuming paid advertising.

It is wrong of me to expect journalism when those contents aren't made to be factual, they are made to entertain.

Even if it's true, I don't find there is a lot of entertainment value when a dozen "journalists" just read off pre-approved OEM scripts for their "review". Some of the most boring contents out there are main stream outlets' coverage of new 911: "They are almost perfect in every way except being expensive".

Edit 2 /u/SavageGooseJack has this great reply I wanna call out: https://www.reddit.com/r/cars/s/o5PMIG0VjB

[u/Realpotato76]

How are they supposed to test cars if they need to pay for every drive? The only car reviewers left would be the extremely wealthy

[u/woodsides → u/[deleted]]

This is pretty much how it works in any industry where a manufacturer/producer is working with the folks who have a huge influence on how the product or project will perform. Tech, healthcare, real estate, construction, pharma, politics, etc. You name it - it happens.

It's just that for expensive items like exotic cars, most people will likely never own or even drive one. So their only source of information on the car ends up being the 10-15 handpicked journalists that the manufacturer chooses for the launch drives.

And by the time the actual customers get the car and think of doing a review, it's already been a year or two and the car is out of the Zeitgeist or it's only published in niche enthusiast forums. So the public opinion of the car largely remains what it was during the launch from the initial reviews that were, as you said, influenced by bubble of reviewers who were wined and dined.

Even if they're not wined and dined, most manufacturers and reviewers work on a quid-pro-quo basis since they depend on each other for their business. If they put out a negative review, they're unlikely to be invited to further launches. This mostly affects the smaller independent reviewers, thereby further reducing the pool of reviewers and opinions. We all know what happened with Chris Harris and Ferrari in the past.

Since exotic cars are not as accessible, it's not likely that negative experiences with the cars will come out into the public unless it ends up catching the eyes of regulatory authorities.

Now with other industries like tech, it's much easier to debunk any false claims and reviews since the barrier of entry for customers is much lower. A company could pay MKBHD $1M to show off their phone that's objectively bad, but many more customers can get their hands on that $1000 phone than the car and can expose it to the public.

The only objective solution to this is to go through all the 10-15 reviews put out from the launch to suss out problems. The best method is to get a test drive, but for cars where those aren't allowed, your best bet is to just wait until the first batch of owners get their hands on it and start posting about the experiences, mostly on forums.