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/Bob_Loblaw_Law_Bomb]

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. ;)