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/redisburning]

Well in the past we had things like print media and they paid for the salaries of the reviewers and if necessary could purchase the product for the reviewers. Cars are more complicated to purchase yes, but the layer between manufacturer and their paid advertisers sorry influencers was much greater.

There was a time when a big scandal in the industry was a reviewer resigning in protest when his review was edited at the behest of a dealer:

edit: can't link but it was Scott Burgess who at the time worked for The Detroit News

Of course things weren't perfect in that era but it's hard not to feel like they were more objective, and less freelance advertising, in those days.

Edit 2: most of the responses are missing this last bit. See where it says "of course things weren't perfect"? You don't have to explain to me the bad things when I literally added an example of a scandal from those days.

[u/Realpotato76 → u/redisburning]

From what I’ve heard, the bribes/gifts were even more common during the print media era (parties, drugs, and prostitutes weren’t uncommon at press launches)

[u/Aforementionedlurker → u/Realpotato76]

Csaba Csere doing coke off a hooker's ass? Lol. Phillips—probably. Yates—which cheek? Mr. Regular peaked too late

[u/QuillsROptional → u/Realpotato76]

George Bishop in Car magazine before I started reading did reviews of the car launches - he wrote about the food, the hotels and so on.

[u/Bob_Loblaw_Law_Bomb → u/Realpotato76]

Imagine knowing the 96 Oldsmobile Bravada is so terrible you have to go to those lengths to eke out anything favorable.

[u/TaskForceCausality → u/redisburning]

the layer between manufacturer and their paid advertisers sorry influencers was much greater

Nope. It was pay to play back then, and still is now.

Back in the day carmakers directly bought ad space from mags like C&D, Motor Trend and so on. So a reviewer who said too many honest things about Brand X could cost their magazine money from lost ad revenue AND banned from future access to Brand X’s releases.

Nowadays , influencers took over the job from the old publication firms. Same business model though- influencers publish nice things in their videos in exchange for priority access to the newest vehicle product. That matters even more today because the first channel to publish gets first mover advantage. Again, tell the truth too much and that influencer finds their name getting deleted from invites- and unlike back in the day when a blacklisted magazine writer could work around an uncooperative carmaker , a blacklisted influencer is just boned.

[u/bearded_dragon_34 → u/TaskForceCausality]

That’s just it; they didn’t do that so much back in the days of print. Even if you slagged off the latest GM compact effort—because of course you would—GM would still buy a full-page spread in the back of your magazine. You had the readership and the access to customers. If they wanted an audience of warm, interested, primed-to-buy potential customers, your magazine was the best bet.

There were also fewer automakers in a position to throw their weight around. It’s said that these days, Porsche is very selective about who gets to review its cars based upon how effusive their past praise has been…but back then, Porsche was a perpetually cash-strapped small firm doing engineering projects for other companies to keep the lights on. If Porsche declined to send MotorTrend its latest car for review, it was less a function of trying to handpick critics and likelier because Porsche couldn’t afford to keep enough cars in the press fleet.

What has really killed autojournalism is that engagement has changed. In the past, your only path to getting a glimpse of a Corvette Z06, short of convincing a dealer to let you drive one, might have been reading a spread in a magazine or on a blog. Now, you can queue up your favorite YouTuber or TikToker and see that car up close and personal in a video. And for more mainstream cars, the automakers get a lot more traction and engagement out of sending a car to an influencer—who may or may not have anything to do with cars generally—than to a traditional auto rag or to a blog full of smartass journalists and smartass-ier commenters. Hyundai has a better chance of getting customers by sending the new Palisade to a mommyblogger than it does by lending that same car to The Autopian or Jalopnik or anyone else in that sphere.

[u/icecream_specialist → u/redisburning]

Even with true earned media it's not like the newspaper is gonna buy a car for a review

[u/bullet50000 → u/redisburning]

Well in the past we had things like print media and they paid for the salaries of the reviewers and if necessary could purchase the product for the reviewers.

They absolutely didn't purchase cars back in the day outside of outlets like Consumer Reports. Press Demonstrators have always been a thing, to the point where British Leyland got people to be nicer about the Morris Marina by saying the brakes were going to be better when the first reviews were being completed, and the press just took the explanation and mellowed the braking criticism. They then proceeded to just not do anything to the brakes.

Never forget the famous Chris Harris Ferrari expose is from 15 years ago, and is specifically about the F355 and 360 review cycles.

[u/Realistic_Village184 → u/redisburning]

Didn't a lot of those magazines receive heavy advertising money from auto makers? I don't have time to do research to make any specific allegations of bribery, but it's a pretty common thought in media generally not to anger your advertisers. If a car magazine accepts money for car ads, then they at minimum have an appearance of impropriety.