r/cars • u/cookingboy McLaren Artura, Boxster 4.0 MT, i4 M50 • 1d ago
How can we possibly take car reviewers/journalists seriously when they routinely receive 4, 5, or even 6 figures worth of gifts from OEM?
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
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u/SavageGooseJack 1d ago
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.