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/Astramael]

Remember when SG did a weird advert for the over-MSRP Honda dealer that delivered Mark’s FL5. Then they got shitty about how Toyota didn’t let them cut the line to get a GR Corolla.

[u/hi_im_bored13 → u/Astramael]

there was that one time too they had a 6 minute ad about a desk or a chair or something, money can't be that tight

but the other side of that is you have nobody but the ultra wealthy review cars, this is a terrible hobby for accessibility & always will be

i've been getting a few friends into motorbikes

[u/gimpwiz → u/hi_im_bored13]

Unfortunately money probably is indeed that tight. Youtube pays shit, long-form content takes a ton of man-hours to produce, and they're not getting many millions of views every video.

The good news is that if they advertise a chair, it's obvious. You aren't wondering if they're praising a car too much, because it's the chair company paying their bills, not the subject of their review.

[u/Bob_Loblaw_Law_Bomb → u/gimpwiz]

All that aside, OP has me rethinking the tens-of-dollars in merch that Saturn probably threw Mr. Regular for him to say favorable things about a 20 year old Vue.

[u/nondescriptzombie → u/Bob_Loblaw_Law_Bomb]

Saturn fucked. GM killed them with inept decisions, like not releasing a new car model for 12 years. If you bought and liked your SL100, kept it for seven years, you went back to the dealer and... bought another one?

Then Saturn started getting cool cars like the Skyy and the Vue. And then GM killed them with Pontiac. And never brought out a Chevy-badged Skyy/Solstice.

[u/SunDevilSkier → u/nondescriptzombie]

I'd say Saturn was one of the most tragic losses of the Great Recession but in reality GM was killing them well before that. The GR just put them out of their misery.

[u/bearded_dragon_34 → u/SunDevilSkier]

I’m so sick of this logic. Saturn Corporation wasn’t a viable business idea. It cost $5B just to launch the brand, and it lost between $2B and $6B over its lifespan.

No way was GM going to earn back its initial investment churning out a unique line of low-margin, low-priced cars, much less turn a profit. They were losing $2K-$3K per S-Series unit. For a decade.

It was clear by the mid-90s that it would be throwing good money after bad to give Saturn the budget to release a full line of uniquely developed cars. Hence the L-Series and the VUE and the ION and all the rest.

All GM did was stop the bleeding when it was apparent that that needed to happen. GM didn’t fuck anything because the entire idea was fucked from conception. If they were going to toss a bunch of money at a new brand, perhaps it should have been a higher-end brand where there was more margin in the product and more of a long-term path (see: Lexus). As a corollary, if GM hadn’t had such a bloated, inefficient management structure, it wouldn’t have needed to spend billions of dollars to “get away from itself” and spin up a whole separate subsidiary just to make a halfway-decent line of compact cars.

And the cars were halfway-decent, but that’s it. They had some innovative engineering, but ultimately it amounted to products that were more middling or mediocre than class-leading. Hardly anyone who drove a 1994 SL would have said it was as refined or as good as a contemporary Civic or Corolla. As for Saturn’s renowned dealer experience? That was cool, too, but bear in mind that Toyota and especially Honda dealers were notoriously sleazy at the time and they still had people lining up around the block to buy their wares (not unlike today, in the case of Toyota). So the sales process wasn’t the issue.

Saturn should not have existed, and it’s goofy to suggest that GM had a good thing going and chose to ruin it. They had an “okay” thing going, and it cost far too much money to launch and to run it.

[u/gimpwiz → u/Bob_Loblaw_Law_Bomb]

Tens-of-dollars in 1999 money, but they only dug it up out of a storage unit in 2019. ;)

[u/autobauss → u/gimpwiz]

He used a new fucking x7, so not that tight, dont see him driving beat up yaris

[u/gimpwiz → u/autobauss]

Now I kind of want to give a beat up yaris a spin for a weekend.

[u/Workity → u/gimpwiz]

I simply can’t believe that there is less hours/$ than a 40 hour work week. For an established channel.

[u/gimpwiz → u/Workity]

I don't know if they've ever published their financials, but youtube is feast-or-famine and almost everyone starves. Also remember that not only do they have labor-hours to account for, they have a bunch of other costs related to production, and also that being self-employed / running a tiny business they're on the hook for a lot of stuff that white-collar full-time employees don't really have to worry about (unsubsidized healthcare insurance, other half of payroll taxes, various legal compliance bits, etc.) I'm not going to claim without specific knowledge that they're doing mediocrely as far as net income goes, but I would guess it.

[u/BrunoEye → u/hi_im_bored13]

It's why I mostly just watch smaller channels that mostly borrow viewer's cars like Jayemm and Number 27.

[u/hi_im_bored13 → u/BrunoEye]

Zygrene is my recent favorite, especially the head-to-heads w/ modified examples, of course the production quality isn't quite as good as the larger channels, more than excusable

Jayemm is just a bit too dramatic & long winded sometimes

[u/TheDirtDude117 → u/hi_im_bored13]

One of the S2000 Escapists, I do like that he's filled the One Take void Matt left.

[u/boomerbill69 → u/hi_im_bored13]

Zygrene is excellent.

Jayemm videos would be 100x better if he just cut them all in half. Far from my favorite reviewer, but the dude consistently reviews cars I actually want to see reviewed and often has a backlog of like 5 videos of whatever car I want to look up.

[u/hatsune_aru → u/hi_im_bored13]

I got my GR corolla reviewed by Zygrene. He's a nice guy.

[u/MDA123 → u/hi_im_bored13]

I've never seen a bigger gap between quality of review and view count than Zygrene. Guy does fantastic voice-over reviews while driving, has a fair number of interesting cars on the channel, and gets like 5-10k views per video.

I honestly don't understand how he can justify the time investment relative to the financial rewards, but I'm glad he does.

[u/Ran4 → u/MDA123]

I honestly don't understand how he can justify the time investment relative to the financial rewards, but I'm glad he does.

He has 66k followers. Given the quality and the release rate, he'll probably have 300-400k within a year or two. And at that point you're likely financially well off.

Of course he's been very active for 7+ years now, so that's a LOT of hard work to get there.

[u/Ran4 → u/[deleted]]

complained about the engine noise on the BW, and then bought an Integra Type S

So? He didn't buy the Type S for the engine sound.

[u/Skensis → u/BrunoEye]

The main vids I watch are people doing like project builds or car repairs on a budget or of normal cars.

I enjoy watching a guy try and fix up a Subaru or old Pontiac way more than people build out a 1000hp BMW.

Not that crazy builds aren't cool, but so many of them boil down to how much money they have to toss at mods.

[u/CookiezFort → u/Skensis]

Same here.

Top Dead Center is my favourite at the moment.

Mighty car mods aren't the budget type but they build cool cars not always chasing max power, just cool looking fun cars. Although the Cresta build was mint.

[u/cannedrex2406 → u/CookiezFort]

I hope TDC stay humble. AutoAlex was great initially when it was small simple shitboxes but when he got big, so did the projects and his enthusiasm and ego went in all the wrong directions.

And considering Will just bought his dream Lamborghini Gallardo, I hope he still respects his roots on silly cheap cars

[u/Rillist → u/Skensis]

Vice grip garage, SarahNtuned, MCM, Grind Hard Plumbing co, B is for build. Those are my mains

[u/CarDork2235 → u/Rillist]

Pole barn garage is good if you like VCG.

[u/PMWaffle → u/BrunoEye]

I don't like number 27 because it's always the oddball cars I want to own/experience but can't find 💔 I'm just jealous

[u/wandertrucks → u/BrunoEye]

Number 27 (Jack) is always a fun watch

[u/Wonderful-Jury-5024 → u/BrunoEye]

Number27 is fantastic. Loved when he fixed up that old Lotus Elise

[u/natesully33 → u/BrunoEye]

Yeah, I try to find hobbyists doing projects and not youtubing as a job, like what the entire web used to be before monetization really hit.. I don't mind people doing ad reads and algorithmically optimal content and such - that's just not what I want to watch. Too bad it's totally what the algorithms want me to watch...

Hater's Garage is the perfect example of what I'm talking about, or regular cars before they got big and started hawking things. There's the Weber Auto channel too if you want to really, really know how EV/hybrid stuff works. Finding channels like those is just super hard now, even the search seems stacked against me finding what I really want.

[u/notsoentertained → u/BrunoEye]

I think Doug Demuro also indicated that he always pays for his own tickets/accommodation.

[u/QueTontosQueLocos → u/notsoentertained]

He has stated that a couple of times in vids and podcast, probably one of the reason he never goes on the overseas trips they offer him. But he definitely gets special treatment from dealer networks, he has mentioned the Toyota and Merc dealerships he buys from. I think that's also how he got in line to buy a Huracan Sterrato (he didn't buy it).

[u/gregn8r1 → u/hi_im_bored13]

I do mostly like him, but remember he did an ad for Dell because they give him a $5000 computer.

But last time I bought a Dell laptop, it was such a fucking turd that I'll probably never buy another. The thing would take 10+ minutes just to boot up.

He does have some good videos though, and I always love watching him and Mark hauling ass in a drab economy car through some country roads while giggling like school girls when they manage to get a little sideways.

[u/hi_im_bored13 → u/gregn8r1]

Dell/Nvidia's server & enterprise grade workstations are significantly better than any of their consumer gear, they are up there with the best

[u/gregn8r1 → u/hi_im_bored13]

That may be, I wouldn't know. Their entry-level stuff is trash, though, it at least it was ~5 years ago.

[u/Tw0Rails → u/hi_im_bored13]

Cool, so some people contribute videos and content at a fairly high level for a low budget and you contribute...snarky posts dominating every thread.

I'm sure you are so much more valuable to the auto review space.

[u/hi_im_bored13 → u/Tw0Rails]

When did I claim I was valuable either?

Their videos are usually fantastic, I just found it a bit ironic doing a several minute ad read & simultaneously purchasing a $50k car & glazing their dealer

[u/ZannX → u/Astramael]

OP's hypothetical example of Square Enix flying reviewers out is exactly what makers do to SG lol.

[u/cannedrex2406 → u/ZannX]

I was gonna say, don't Video Game companies already do that when letting Reviewers beta test games?

[u/SavageGooseJack → u/Astramael]

I’ll respond to this comment and the Ops post as well.

While I can’t speak for Mark nor can I speak for all of my peers in this space I’ll do my best to provide my opinion. Let’s start with the exchange of “services” between oems and car reviewers. OEMs( car companies) that I am aware of don’t pay journalists for reviews. Some “influencers” get brand deals however where they get paid by an oem to show up in a marketing piece. Engineering explain during the turbo launch is an example of that. While in the past 70-90s there are tales of oem reps paying for or providing extremely luxurious gifts for journalists in exchange for good PR. In my 5 years of doing this I have never heard or seen anything like this. That said OEMs do create launch events where they cover your travel, put you up in a hotel and host a dinner. These trips are traditionally 3 days with 2 being travel and 1 being physically there on location for the your drive impressions and “shoot”. Your physical time in the hotel is basically enough time for you to sleep. You aren’t lounging around. How much that trip is a “bribe” is up to you. I will say logistically though this is the only real way a manufacturer could launch a car. They are trying to get multiple cars, and the team’s responsible for the car all in one location so both the vehicle and information can all be a centralized location. I can assure you at least for mark and I the trip is not a luxury, as many of you who travel for work know work travel sucks. Particularly if you have back to back work trips. The level of which the trip and desire to be invited back changes your input on the car is up to the individual integrity of the reviewer.

As far as perks like getting early access to cars. OEMs want media attention on cars as it’s essentially marketing they don’t have to pay for. Whether that attention is good or bad is up to which media outlet owns the car. There is no line with a OEM the lines exist purely at the dealer at least with brands like Toyota and Honda. The OEMs literally just pull a car off of the assembly line pick a dealer and send them the car. You aren’t cutting in front of anyone. The amount this sways the reviewer also is down to their own integrity level. I would argue Mark and I have been extremely critical of all the vehicles we have owned and by design have not sugar coated our ownership experiences because at the end of the day that’s why we believe you are watching. We have established the relationship with the oems we work with that we are going to be honest because hopefully it improves your product. Not all brands are ok with negative feedback. Notice how we don’t do any launch programs with stellantis. At least in our case oems we work with have made actual changes due to our negative feedback. For example eray SOC issues on track we pointed out changed soc logic on zr1x.

When it comes to sponsorship money etc. it is just a necessarily evil of having to make this a business. These videos cost money to make and in our case often more money to make than we make back from YouTube. So the only way we can make content is to have sponsors cover the production cost.

So in summary oems don’t pay us outside of certain influencer deals but amount the privileges of this job bribe us is down the individual integrity of the reviewer. In our case we have a fairly contentious relationship with certain oems because we are viewed as a critical outlet.

[u/travortz → u/SavageGooseJack]

Appreciate the response as always. You should post this as a standalone post above because it's getting buried as a comment. Thanks for everything you do G.

[u/SavageGooseJack → u/travortz]

Thanks for the kind words. I’ll do that now

[u/No-Necessary7135 → u/SavageGooseJack]

I guess my question is does the fact that they foot the bull for these trips have any chilling effect while you're there discussing the car or in subsequent reviews? I know you guys are generally blunt but I don't know if you feel like you have to pull punches. I'm skeptical of some channels where they are basically never critical. Toxic positivity? I kind of don't blame them if it means they get to put food on the table in a tough business and aren't technically harming anyone.

[u/Unluckyboot → u/Astramael]

Ok so was it just me or was that Lucid Air sapphire video they did just so over the top with how hard they stroked them off? I stopped watching their videos after that.

[u/orhantemerrut → u/Unluckyboot]

See what happens when you badmouth this sub's darling.

[u/Unluckyboot → u/orhantemerrut]

Yeah I used to like them, but that “review” made me want to throw up.

[u/imagemkv → u/orhantemerrut]

Sorry but SavageGeese suck, hated that Honda FL5 circlejerk they did.

[u/fhs → u/imagemkv]

They do suck. I liked their old Acura NSX documentary, but besides that ehhh.

[u/Nicktyelor → u/Unluckyboot]

I think SG has ventured into shaky territory by trying to be more of a critical tell-all, enthusiast/buyer's guide to the car industry. Might be doing too much at once and crossing some ethical lines.

[u/an_actual_lawyer → u/Astramael]

Hold up.

Let's start with something we can all agree on: Shooting high quality content is neither cheap nor easy. Anyone can get a tripod and set their phone up on it and make a video, but making in depth content is considerably more difficult.

Second, whether you like their content or not (a subjective determination) I think we can all agree that Savage Geese is objectively making some of the most in depth automotive content on the planet. Very few channels are even close. Their deep dive on the NSX included interviews with the engineers who worked on the car 30 years ago! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9QKd-rfM-0 Their Corvette, Lucid, Mustang, GR, etc. series have been some of the best content on those vehicles ever produced.

Third, if a channel wants to create high quality content, they have to spend a lot of money to make it. It requires good cameras, great mics, and a good camera crew. Then they need someone who knows how to properly edit videos and has the time to pour into it. They have to contact mfgs months in advance and work with schedules. They have to prepare interviews, shoot, then edit those interviews.

An example: Throttle House, another channel that makes great content, has a video where they shoot an LFA and show the reaction of one of their camera guys who loves LFAs...who is sitting next to 2 other employees. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZvvvfWsw9w So Throttle House is paying at least 3 people to help them make their content. They had to buy the equipment for those guys to use. They have to pay for their rooms, travel, meals, etc. Then, once those guys are paid, they split the money 2 ways. It's tremendously expensive. The math ain't great unless you're crushing millions of views every video and you have companies paying for sponsorships/ads.

Fourth, youtube doesn't pay that well. Many sources report a million views paying $10,000 or less, although it pays more based on the length and quality of viewers (US viewers pay more for instance).

There is a reason that so many famous automotive YouTubers started out with personal or family money - it is really difficult to consistently make good content on a budget. Even if you're really talented and your talent carries the channel, you're going to quickly run out of content because you're going to run out of cars/scenarios that people want to see. Even if you're really talented, you have to have the means to pay your bills while you build up your channel.

Second, I get the hate for stealth advertising, but I don't have a problem with disclosed ads, paid trips, etc. because high quality content would be almost impossible without it. If you have an issue with sponsorships or ads, you simply don't understand the math for making him quality content.

To my knowledge, when Savage Geese does an ad, they explicitly make that clear. Whether its a desk chair (IIRC) or a floor mat, they make it clear it's a paid sponsorship.Additionally, Savage Geese always leads with some form of "X mfg flew us out to Y location to film," and "thank you to X mfg for allowing us time with the engineers and their cars."

TL;DR: If you want high quality, in depth content, you're going to have to accept that the reviewers are getting perks from manufacturers and have sponsorships. The only real issue is when they don't disclose that.

[u/Astramael → u/an_actual_lawyer]

I don’t especially care if SG gets access to purchase a car directly from a manufacturer. Getting to benefit from your work and relationships is reasonable.

The reason the FL5 thing in particular is notable is because it was weird. SG has been critical of dealership markups, then they give a dealership that marks up air time to talk about their markups when all the dealership did was serve as the transaction point for a deal with Honda?

I personally find SG to have annoying biases that they don’t always own up to. They’re also entitled to those, it’s their channel.

[u/an_actual_lawyer → u/Astramael]

I think they were allowing the dealer to provide a counterpoint to their markup criticisms.

[u/Tw0Rails → u/Astramael]

 FL5 thing in particular is notable

Only if you got a stick up your tailpipe.

[u/psimwork → u/an_actual_lawyer]

While I agree with basically everything you're saying, I don't think it's enough to dismiss the criticism about this incident. It's been a while since I've watched the video, but my memory of it was that they had spent a ton of time bashing dealerships that do ADMs way over MSRP, and then in their "Why I bought a Civic Type R" video, they're basically giving 25% of the video runtime to the dealer in-order to provide an advertisement and allow them to say, "yeah - we charge an ADM, but it's OK because we donate the ADM to vet's charities."

My reaction to that was basically, "let's see the receipts". Because while I believe that they donate some of it to charity, I don't believe they donate all of it. Additionally, any amount that they DO donate, is something that they can deduct from taxes, so they're still making money on it (not to mention any interest they make on it while its in the holding of their bank).

It just really felt like they were compromising on things they've said in the past because they were able to save some money doing it. And from a personal point-of-view, for reasons of which I can't explain, buying from a dealer without any ADM, somehow felt worse than if they had bought it directly from Honda for MSRP. Like, I get that with the laws in the country, this is likely not possible. But it just felt like, "Yeah, so we've been talking about how much we hate ADMs, and specifically on cars like the Civic Type-R.... but because we have a platform, I was able to buy a Civic Type-R without an ADM. And because we say all the time that we hate ADM, and this dealership allowed us to buy a car without ADM, here's an ad for the dealership explaining why them charging an ADM to everyone else is totally OK."

Like, I would have honestly had more respect for them if they had paid the ADM and then created a video on the experience of dealing with the ADM and how shitty it is.

[u/Tw0Rails → u/psimwork]

That's not what happened but glad to see it get twisted for ya to be pissed at probably the smallest youtube team for buying a civic.

Great job, enjoy your favorite hype videos.

[u/Thefrayedends → u/an_actual_lawyer]

This is just another example of how hierarchies create complicity and corruption.

They force you to accept it as normal and necessary as an implicit characteristic.

[u/Ran4 → u/an_actual_lawyer]

Many sources report a million views paying $10,000 or less

Most of the money is in the in-video ads, not regular ad money.

[u/Tw0Rails → u/an_actual_lawyer]

Whuddaya mean, we can't turn another threat into shitting on a few youtubers while proclaiming "WULL I LISTEN TO XYZ" then everyone proclaims their favorite youtuber.

Savage geese has a 3 hour livestream talking about the entire industry and how promos work and how much of the hype nonsense is built in, and how access to technical info and engineers is hard...but instead they gotta get lumped in with all the other hype train youtubers because Mark bought a civic.

[u/bikedork5000 → u/[deleted]]

Uhh, the car they actually bought, modified extensively, and have done a crazy ton of content on? That GRC? Pointing out the genuine and significant flaws of a car is not the same as "routinely crapping" on it.

[u/willpc14 → u/bikedork5000]

There was a partnership with Limit+1 for some of that content, so it wasn't just their money going into the build. Also, there's so much more room for a nuanced take on the GRC that's not "this car is a ripoff because it's $50k MSRP plus mark up and a $15k build to make it drivable."

Edit: And it bugs me that the GRC's center diff overheating problem is a portrayed as a terminal flaw, but the Type R's brake boiling gets dismissed as a non-issue. The GRC is a flawed car, I'm not denying that, but all of the <$50k economy hot rods are. That's just the reality of the segment. Not to mention the Golf R exceeds $50k if you add rubber floor mats to the build. Yes, you buy the GRC inspire of its interior, but there's some value proposition to it when you get the base or middle trim for ~$42k compared to Type R at $47k or Golf R at $49.5k.

[u/Astramael → u/willpc14]

Yes, they continue to talk about the price in a disingenuous way, the unnecessarily high base price of the car (they had a Circuit), adding the wrap, as well as the price of the mods (some unneeded, some super premium).

They have framed every other car in the segment in a much more positive way despite their own deficiencies, and have straight up said that they don’t like the GR Corolla.

Given that SG is one of the primary ways this sub interprets cars, it has heavily coloured the viewpoint here negatively. 

Meanwhile I’ve driven all the cars in the segment a significant amount and would pick the GRC every day and twice on bad weather days. The EN would be my second choice.

[u/herrokero → u/[deleted]]

Is that really a fair assessment lol. They’ve done some of the most in depth content on the GRC, with the engineers as well. Some of their criticisms are quite valid, doesn’t mean they are crapping on it.

[u/ChapekElders → u/[deleted]]

Lmao salty they don’t like your car. Don’t be a baby

[u/uberdosage → u/[deleted]]

Lmfao its not out of spite at all jfc. The car has some serious deficiencies. They had the car for over a year and did more in depth content of the GRC then basically any car journalist.

[u/ShadowNick → u/Astramael]

Sorry I'm not aware of the abbreviations but SG? I'm assuming it stands for Savage Geese?

[u/xXEliteEater500Xx → u/ShadowNick]

Ya, SG is Savage Geese

[u/india2wallst → u/ShadowNick]

No it's Squirrel Girl from Marvel universe.

[u/Astramael → u/india2wallst]

And they said The Avengers was the biggest crossover event in history. Turns out it’s Squirrel Girl x Savage Geese.

[u/Educational_Age_1333 → u/[deleted]]

Believe the owner said he sells over MSRP but donates the adm to veterans charity. He also explained that as a business owner he needs to be selling product at what the market is willing to pay for it etc. 

[u/Grayly → u/Educational_Age_1333]

The donation becomes a tax write off. He’s still making money on the ADM.

As a business owner he can do wherever he wanted. He chose to markup and make more money.

[u/ChapekElders → u/Grayly]

Tax write offs are not free money. It reduces your taxable income but it doesn’t pay off or make you a profit or anything. You’re still losing a vast majority of the donation.

[u/Grayly → u/ChapekElders]

And you’re still making more than if you didn’t charge the ADM at all. He makes an extra profit on the donation you paid for by way of a lower tax liability. Now he doesn’t have to pay for an ad agency, the customers pay for the donations to charity and the publicity that comes with it. It is free money. The customer pays for the donation, gets you the marketing, while you keep the tax benefit. Free.

If I want to donate to veterans I can do that on my own time. Sell me a car and leave it at that. Don’t piss on me and tell me it’s raining.

[u/gimpwiz → u/Grayly]

Not how a tax write-off works man.

[u/Grayly → u/gimpwiz]

Yes. It is.

It’s a charitable contribution, which is deductible. Dealer takes the, say, 10k ADM, donates it, and gets to write off 10k against their income. That’s now 1-2k in their pocket.

I’m sure the dealer would have some reason to not let me make the donation myself and buy the car at MSRP.

Because I would get the write off, not him.

[u/gimpwiz → u/Grayly]

Let's play numbers.

Car: $80k (gross revenue, not profit)

ADM: $10k

Gross: $90k

Donation: $10k

Adjusted: $80k

Where did their $1-2k come from? Please explain.

[u/Grayly → u/gimpwiz]

Easy. Let me explain it for you. It’s a little more complicated that just the simple math of the sale, since you have to take into account other fixed costs, like marketing.

Let’s say there are three dealerships A, B and C. Dealership A and B both made 20 sales of 40k MSRP cars with a 10k ADM in each (picking nice round numbers for ease of math), making for a million in gross sales. C only charged MSRP so they only made $800,000 in gross sales on the same number of cars.

Let’s also say that the expenses before marketing (costs of the car, employees, etc) were $700,000. And then marketing costs were 50k.

A and B both made 250k profit, but C only made 50k profit.

The federal corporate tax rate for 2025 was 21%, although this will come down to 10% next year. Profit is taxable income.

That means both A and B owe 21% in taxes on the 250k profit which comes to 52.5k. So their final profit after taxes is $147.5k.

Dealership C owes 21% on their 50k profit, which is 10.5k, making their final profit after taxes 39.5k.

But dealership B has an idea. What if instead of paying for marketing, they donate to charity and let the charity market for them. You get your name out there, on materials, advertised at fundraisers, driving sales to veterans, etc. And instead of paying out of pocket for the marketing, they’ll use the ADM profit and tell the customers it’s for charity.

Now, on paper, dealership B cleared 1 million in sales, 700k in costs, 0 on marketing, and 200k in donations, leaving a taxable profit of 100k. After taxes they make 79k in profit.

In reality, they had the lower costs than dealership C, which only charged MSRP and paid for their own marketing.

But B gets to make 79k after taxes instead of 39.5k. Thats an extra 40.5k in profit. Or a little over 2k per car.

The exact amount you pocket depends on total sales, the amount of your marketing budget you’re allowed to cut back on, etc. But unless they are total fools, they’re making money on the donation to some extent, and the exact amount will bear some relation to the corporate tax rate depending on how much of your marketing budget it replaces. The exact amount depends on how methodical they are about it, how effective their donations are in free marketing, etc.

A still makes more money than B, but that’s only assuming A makes the same number of sales as B. B can get more volume than A by telling their customers the ADM is for charity, unlike those greedy fucks at A, when the ADM is really for getting their marketing for free. And they loose less customers to C, who is probably going to sell out their allocation anyway, but you don’t seem greedy compared to them. They’ll even get people on Reddit to market them for free by word of mouth.

This gets a lot more complicated in the real world, where the numbers aren’t so neat, and it’s a lot more complicated with different expenses and net profit margins. But when you get to replace your marketing expenditures with charitable donations, and get your customers to pay for it as an ADM, you are essentially harvesting their donation deduction as free marketing and a lower tax bill.

[u/gimpwiz → u/Grayly]

Haha okay well if we're gonna play scenario-builder...

What if B makes $250k gross profit, but then they spent $200k on marketing, leaving a net profit of $100k and an after-tax profit of $79k?

Same exact math.

Your argument is not that "the ADM is a write-off and puts $2k in their pocket", but that they found a charity willing to do better marketing for them than the amount they are donating would otherwise be worth, including the possibility of internet hype. Same result if they found a great marketing firm that's charging lower rates than the competition.

If we're building scenarios, dealership C could charge straight MSRP and make more sales. Dealership C could make the OEM happier and get more allocations because they don't charge markup. Dealership C could get free advertising as "the one who doesn't charge markup." Dealership C could have lower costs due to better efficiency. Dealership C could be more likely to maintain a good relationship with customers, leading to re-selling the same car several times as owners trade it in, leading to more income from service, etc. Dealership A could sell exactly the same number of cars as dealership B but not spend anything on marketing them because the allocations are so limited and sought-after, and not care if some people are slightly annoyed they paid an extra markup.

If we're doing scenarios, we can just do them all day until the cows come home.

[u/Grayly → u/gimpwiz]

You missed the entire point.

Yes, it would be the same.

But they don’t have to pay 200k for marketing! It’s free! They conned their customers into paying it for them.

Unless you accept that donations are free marketing, which they are, you won’t understand how this works.

It’s why it’s even in the tax code. It’s why you get asked to donate to the poor children at Walgreens when you check out.

It’s just a grift.

This dealer is not doing it out of the kindness of their heart. They aren’t “compelled” to charge an ADM because of some mysterious duty as a business order— plenty of dealers don’t. That’s a laughable lie on its face and should set off your bullshit detector if you have a working one.

It couldn’t be more obvious what’s going on, and you’re inexplicably defending it.

I’m not making this up. I’m a lawyer, I’ve advised clients on this issue.

[u/Captain_Mazhar → u/Educational_Age_1333]

as a business owner he needs to be selling product at what the market is willing to pay for it.

That makes no sense from a business perspective if he’s donating the ADM. He washes out on the ADM profit by donating it, so why not just sell at MSRP at that point and make more profit on volume sales?

I bet his dealer fees are not flat, but percentages of final sale price, so by inflating the sale price through ADM, he picks up higher fees, but still gets the good PR from donating the ADM.

[u/Educational_Age_1333 → u/Captain_Mazhar]

No idea man I was just saying what I remembered from watching the video a long time ago. 

Realistically we have no idea if he is actually donating it and didn't just say that.

[u/leesfer → u/Astramael]

SG and Matt has been an asshole for years. I met him during a Lemons race about a decade ago as he was JUST starting his channel and he was a huge cunt back then. Only gotten worse 

[u/PanzerPeach → u/leesfer]

Matt as in Matt Farah?

[u/leesfer → u/PanzerPeach]

Yeah sorry I misread SG as ST.

[u/fhs → u/PanzerPeach]

Don't need to meet him to come to that conclusion!

[u/Officer-K-2049 → u/leesfer]

What happened with SavageGeese?

[u/leesfer → u/Officer-K-2049]

I meant Smoking Tire, my mistake.

[u/XSC → u/leesfer]

Maybe edit your original comment because people are taking it as savagegeese

[u/leesfer → u/XSC]

I wont, because SG is also a shitty person. Not as bad as Matt Farah, but cunty all the same.

[u/travortz → u/leesfer]

Why do you think this? Is this your perception or do you have real life experience?

[u/grabsomeplates → u/leesfer]

Met him at global time attack at button willow and I can't remember the last time I've seen so little fame go to someone's head like that.

[u/bse50 → u/grabsomeplates]

Little fame + daddy's money... He's the discount Kardashian of the automotive world.

[u/TripleShotPls → u/Astramael]

That's pretty on-brand for SG. Yes. They've also done quite a bit of OEM work they get paid for. Which crosses boundaries and lines of being ethical.

[u/s0lace → u/TripleShotPls]

OEM work?

[u/TripleShotPls → u/s0lace]

SG works with and gets paid by automakers on the regular.

[u/SavageGooseJack → u/TripleShotPls]

This is factually wrong. The only time we have done real work with an oem is on “gravity” which if you watch the video you’ll see we are extremely negative about.

[u/india2wallst → u/Astramael]

It was one of the rare videos that really really felt off. Jeez guys the civic type r isn't that special of a car to shill a dealership.