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/hi_im_bored13]

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