No doubt, you already know this.
Blogs and the internet are better than print car magazines.
But, you needn’t take it from us.
You can take it from AutoSavant.
An entry today authored by Ian Grasso is not only fun to read, but has some very wise insights, as well.
Starting out with Automobile magazine’s predictable selection of the Audi R8 as it’s “Automobile of the Year, “ Grasso says that, “In a day when even GM has a blog, the major U.S. automotive magazines have been relegated to selling fantasies that no one can afford, testing in ways that no one drives, and giving awards that mean less and less.”
He goes on to chastise the print magazines for providing information that is guided more by its advertising needs than those of its readers. “A look through a recent issue of the Ann Arbor, MI-based Automobile Magazine is on par with browsing the Du Pont Registry - pages upon pages of halo vehicles described in tired puns, with minimum space devoted to cars that people actually drive... Case in point: directly after the write up of the Malibu as an “All Star” in Automobile, there was a two page pull out (read: expensive) advertisement for the car. Hmmm, what a coincidence…”
When it comes to “Automobile of the Year” types of awards, Grasso suggests it is all about money, in a negative way. As he says, were the Malibu to have been selected, it would have offended Toyota and others. Selecting a Toyota offends GM. But picking some esoteric car that no one but the superrich can buy, that offends no one that’s important to the magazine. That is, it doesn’t offend its advertisers.
But, Grasso’s crowning criticism of car magazines is that they’re irrelevant: “Furthermore, does any of the nonsense in these magazines even matter? No, because for the 99.99% of you in the market for a car other than the R8, you probably aren’t looking at the major auto magazines for information on your next car. You are going to Google and the dealership - finding out for yourself like a smart consumer. The major automotive monthlies have not only written themselves out of the legitimacy for car buyers, they have become fantasy magazines that do nothing more than catch your eye at the airport newsstand with brightly covered exotics on the cover.”
All worthy points.
But the article also has one other tidbit. Grasso points out that the writers in the car magazines tend to be tame in their criticisms of the cars they test and offers up an example, written by LA Times auto columnist Dan Neil, of something you’d never see in a car magazine. It’s Neil’s description of the Chrysler Sebring convertible and it’s just plain fun to read:
“Not just bad, but a veritable chalice of wretchedness, a rattling, thumping, lolling tragedy of a car, a summary indictment of Chrysler’s recent management and its self-eradicating product planning, all cast in plastic worthy of a Chinese water pistol. The Sebring drop top does something I thought impossible: It makes me long for the exquisite craftsmanship of the Pontiac flipping G6.”
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