I can't remember the last time I drove a press car. Since we added the News Blog, more than quadrupling our content at a single stroke (not literally), I've had precious little time to get my running machine fixed, never mind test drive a press car. Not that carmakers are falling all over themselves making them available. TTAC is still banned from Honda, BMW, all eight brands of GM and Subaru press cars. I'm sure there are a few more that have us on their shit list (my mother's expression). But again, I'm so damn busy tapping these keys on your behalf that I don't have the time to chase PR people for "free" cars. Of course, they're not free, even when they are. Journos who accept a press car are testing a carefully prepared, non-representational vehicle. We've mentioned this before, but it was brought home to me again when Chrysler PR called me– and Chrysler PR never calls me– to find out where Michael Karesh got the leaky Dodge Journey to review. Reading between the lines, someone high up at Chrysler was pissed that we got a hold of a duff press vehicle. Which is why TTAC will continue our [originally unintentional] policy of testing production vehicles rather than press cars. This further separates our reviews from every other media outlet save Consumer Reports. Just to let you know.
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Where did MK get the leaky Journey from?
Given the long but only slightly documented history of the press being given cars that are less than representative of real world production vehicles, I’m thrilled that TTAC doesn’t use press vehicles.
wear their bans as a badge of honour
thalter :
Where did MK get the leaky Journey from?
A Dodge dealer.
Did they rent it to him?
Chrysler is only interested in those faulty vehicles that happen to get in the hands of the press.
Interesting.
However unintentional this policy is, it really forms one of the pillars of this site. I can’t remember the last time I read a negative review in a mainstream website.
It’s like book or games reviews: if it gets a 7.0/10.0, you know it’s an utter piece of crap. If Edmunds (or others say): “It’s a pretty good car”, you know it’s horrible….
I remember why most of those companies banned TTAC (BMW being the most callously head-scratching), but not Honda.
SherbornSean good point. I bet you start getting some press cars access from Chrysler now.
RF – If press car reviews start showing up on the site you should make that clear in the title or first paragraph and maybe follow it up with a review you pick off a dealer lot when they become available. The fact that you review the cars real people buy is a huge plus for this site.
The latest Car & Driver dropped through my letterbox last night. In it Patrick Bedard can be found lamely lamenting the disparity between GM’s press fleet and the actual vehicles sold. Only he spends most of his column belatedly bemoaning that the GM X cars available to customers in the early 80s (80s, I ask you !) drove significantly less well than the primped pre-release press fleet he and his colleagues test drove earlier and then wrote glowing reviews for. Way to go, it only took 25 years to bring that disparity to our attention. I guess it’s safe to mention it now…
Bedard goes on to dance around the fact that the new Malibu was similarly hailed as a revelation before it was released to the public, only to then come third in a group test some weeks later.
It’s almost like nothing has changed.
“Clubfoot” was really, really reaching. Oye!
I think the NY Times also does not test press cars.
Robert Farago, my pal, I assume you’re aware that press cars pretty completely leave the control of the manufacturers when they are distributed to the press fleets? Because these fleets are not run, maintained or managed by the manufacturers but by large schleppers, as we call them, such as A&M, Specialty, Event Solutions, Prestige and Prietive.
Volvo or Porsche, say, may do their absolute best to provide a handbuilt car to the press fleet (which I doubt they bother to do anyway), but for the next 10,000 miles, until every ham-handed stroke has had his way with it, it’s under the control of the schlepper, who delivers it to my driveway and picks it up when I’m done with it, then details it, has routine maintenance at the nearest dealer and the like.
These are private companies with enormous warehouses of cars stacked six deep from a dozen or three manufacturers, and small staffs that utilize a regiment of retired schoolteachers or the like to do the actual driving back and forth to Wilkinson’s house or wherever. They are _not_ tuning supercars.
Manufacturer complicity in providing 500-hp GTOs, like back in the old Jim Wangers days, is wildly exaggerated. It may occasionally be true of pre-production cars that are hand-assembled for the use of the hard-core buff book writers three months before the cars are actually introduced, but what you and I think of as “press cars” are simply well-maintained, cleaned-and-vacuumed production cars that admittedly are delivered to their drivers without leaking exhaust gaskets, dragging brakes, one-eye headlights and the like. After all, would you expect any manufacturer to say, “Well, the climate control took a dump, but it’s only fair that we deliver it that way…”
Any attempt to make more of it than that is akin to the old crap about how we writers all bend over and take it like a Greek just because somebody bought us dinner. Please.
One of the reasons my subscriptions to C&D, MT and a few others have long since lapsed is because I got sick of reviewers never being able to bring themselves to say something negative about a car. Sure, you can read between the lines and try to crack their code, but why should anyone interested in cars have to put up with that? They are clearly afraid of offending the advertisers.
It brings a smile to my face to remember some British car magazines I somehow got hold of in the 70s and 80s. Their praise meant something because when they didn’t like a car they used phrases like “cheap and nasty” and “do you really need a new car this badly?” and showed pictures of mismatched trim and wires hanging down. These were mainstream publications at the time.
TTAC, keep telling it like it is!
I’m with SW. Unless things are handled differently in Canada. The press cars are often in similar condition to dealer loaner vehicles as they make the rounds from one journalist to another. It’s surprising (or not) that the reviews never mention the loose trim, scuffs and rattles in their publications.
I think the point is that, at the very least, the manufacturers make sure that press vehicles are up to spec mechanically as much as possible before they are released. But some believe that vehicles such as the BMW 335i were chipped for the press beyond what the average 335i buyer could expect from their vehicles. I’m not saying it happened, despite all I read at the time about the new 335i’s hp ratings being “conservative”. I’m just saying.
Bravo. Please, keep it up. This is why I read the reviews here and just look at the pretty pictures elsewhere.
I have to say, even if the cars are not hand built, I doubt any manufacturer pulls a random sample of cars for the press fleet. At the very least, I expect they give the car the once over and make sure they pull the best of the bunch. Is anyone doing that with the car that I am driving home? I think it becomes a big deal with cars that have highly variable build quality. Then again, when BMW can win a magazine comparo even after the car breaks down during the test…
jmhm2003, the NYTimes mos’ def uses press cars. A number of my friends, including Ted West and Larry Ulrich, drive and write about them, and they’ll often be the very same car I had the week before.
Another thing about these supposed trick “press cars” is that there are a dozen or more press fleets in the country, in every major city–Miami, LA, Detroit, Dallas, Chicago, New York, etc. etc. they’re all over the place, and it really wouldn’t be worth the manufacturers’ time to tweak them all and keep them tweaked.
Sanman111 :
I have to say, even if the cars are not hand built, I doubt any manufacturer pulls a random sample of cars for the press fleet. At the very least, I expect they give the car the once over and make sure they pull the best of the bunch. Is anyone doing that with the car that I am driving home?
I see your point, but on the other hand, even Honda builds some lemons. If a writer gets a randomly built car and it turns out to be the one lemon in 1000, then that car will get a bad review.
It makes sense that a review is done on the best car available. Hand made or somehow optimized beyond the capability of every car off the line is wrong, but making sure the car works in every aspect is acceptable in my view.
And I think they are supposed to give your car a once over before handing it to you. Something called “dealer prep” which they are quite happy to charge for.
Cavendel,
I can agree to a point with your argument. From a performance only standpoint, it really does not matter if they do this. On the other hand, if the focus of the review is intended for the average car buyer (as opposed to the enthusiast), I believe that the chance of getting a lemon as well as the associated dealer service is a large part of the automotive ownership process that also needs to be accounted for. The fact that I rarely hear about press cars having such issues suggests that for some reason this part of ownership is being neglected.This is why I prefer reading long-term reviews. Now, if you want to get into the issue of press cars being tested with every performance option available rather than what the average buyer can find on a dealer lot, I see that as a related as well.
Correct me if I am wrong, but don’t most of the rags use dealer purchased cars for their long-term reviews? I’m pretty sure Edmunds does.
The buff books don’t buy their cars.
My experience with press cars is that the local delivery guy/company takes special care and attention to make sure that the press car is 100% mechanically sound and clean as a whistle.
I also know for a fact that cars are specially selected for the fleet.
It’s also true that the slightest mechanical or physical defect is immediately corrected, before the car is handed off to another journalist.
The idea that press cars are driven especially hard by journos is something of a myth. While that may apply to sports cars (which, again, are kept in top-notch condition), the majority of mainstream press cars I’ve driven were cream puffs, despite high miles.
At the end of the day, the fact that Chrysler was besides itself with worry that a press car suffered from quality issues tells you that they care a great deal about the condition of cars loaned to journalists.
That said, why wouldn’t they?