“The entire environment is incestuous. They introduce new cars. They fly journalists in and put them up at really nice hotels and, you know, treat them to experiences that they would never possibly in a million years — they wouldn’t even be allowed in these hotels ordinarily. You know, and that’s not supposed to affect their judgment. But it is a compromised business, and it is also true that newspapers are under a great deal of revenue pressure on this score, and so yeah, a favorable editorial/advertorial content is often created to satisfy that need.”
— Dan Neil, ontheother.org
RE:SOURCES
- Neil, Dan; 2005. “Interview with Brooke Gladstone & Dan Neil: A Perfect Vehicle for Criticism.” Onthemedia.org, April 15. No link; quote from Wikipedia entry below.
- Wikipedia; 2024. “Dan Neil.” Page last edited Oct. 14.
Also see ‘How good were the top automotive journalists of the past?‘
I never, ever made a buying decision from an auto buff mag like MT, C&D or R&T alone. Consumer Reports had far more influence on my buying decision, but the input from C&D or R&T would help me with deciding what was more enjoyable to drive among the CR reccomended picks, such as when I bought a Nissan Sentra SE-R Spec V with the 2.5 four and six speed manual.
I typically think of Consumer Reports as regression to the mean.
My sense is that in recent years Consumer Reports has paid more attention to “enthusiast” considerations than during the postwar era, but I would agree that they seem to see their readership as more mainstream than, say Road & Track’s.
That said, the car-buff magazine industry has gone through significant changes as well in recent years. For example, today’s Car and Driver is arguably more mainstream in its new-car resources than during its golden years.
Consumer Reports’ strength is that it has taken major steps to avoid the incestuousness of the car-buff media, such as being published by a nonprofit organization, buying its test cars anonymously, and not allowing its test results to be used in automaker advertising.
I used to really like Consumer Guide as a kind of middle-ground step between CR and the enthusiast magazines. They were still principally concerned with mainstream car buyers for whom price, fuel economy, safety, and reliability were more pressing than maximum skidpad numbers, but unlike CR (at least as it was at that time), they were not actually allergic to cars being fun to drive.