[vasudeva]

Both the Sep 07 issues of Overdrive and Autocar carry TD/first impressions of VW Passat. No problems except that both were driven in Germany or some other equally rich country, most likely with all expenses paid by VW. Not just VW, it seems a habit for our auto journos to test all new cars in some wealthy European country (members can verify) and come out with mostly glowing reports, no doubt a consequence of fatter wallets, more advertising, and not least of all from a glowing complexion (away from the Mumbai grime). With such a background, would you buy a used car from these journos.

[mysteryairship]

You are right. I too have noticed this trend. In the past few months the journos have been to Sweden to test drive Skoda's and Volvo's,to South Africa to test drive the Verna, the new Fiat 500 in Italy etc. This affects their credibility.

[sivadas]

Can some one tell me what is the meaning of "HSPL plus" sticker (very small one near the Autocar logo on the cover) on top of every Autocar magazine?

[drifter]

Journos have to go there because the cars are not yet available in India. Their reviews are just for your reference, it is up to the people to decide what they really want.

Drifter

[vasudeva]

Originally Posted by drifter

Journos have to go there because the cars are not yet available in India. Their reviews are just for your reference, it is up to the people to decide what they really want.

Drifter

Of course they can go. But ethics in general and journalist ethics in particular should require them to disclose whether there was some gratification, and who paid for all the expenses.

[Hussain]

Originally Posted by vasudeva

Of course they can go. But ethics in general and journalist ethics in particular should require them to disclose whether there was some gratification, and who paid for all the expenses.

Ho ho and here is my 2 paise in agreement with vasudeva. Is that not a blatant example of conflict of interest?That I am paying for all your expenses : flight, tcikets, hotel, food yada yada : and then ask you to review my product?Now how deliciously unbiased would that be?How difficult would it be for such wellfunded automagazines to simply pay their own way for a roundtrip to Europe and keep money out of the picture? Or,as vasudeva has posted,simply be straight forward and put in a statement that our fancy trip was sponsored by the company. My sister-in-law works directly in a so-called "reputed" car magazine so I may know the workings sufficiently well.

Be a little patient. A post from this thread has prompted me to conduct some research and expose a glaringly obvious fact on the indian automotive magazines.Shall we save that for a separate thread coming up soon?

[Mayavi]

Originally Posted by Hussain

Ho ho and here is my 2 paise in agreement with vasudeva. Is that not a blatant example of conflict of interest?That I am paying for all your expenses : flight, tcikets, hotel, food yada yada : and then ask you to review my product?Now how deliciously unbiased would that be?

Every major car magazine in the world gets invited to review new launches. They are usually all expense paid trips because the companies want to see their car reviewed in a major magazine. It doesn't necessarily mean that the review would be biased in favour of the car. There is no obligation on part of the journalist to give a biased report just because the company is funding the trip. Almost all reviews I read (on Edmunds for example) they specify that the journalist was participating in a company sponsored event.

Top Gear and Edmunds do get vehicles for a week or so to review and this is all at the company/dealers expense. Unfortunately Indian magazines are not as reputed or big in circulation to command manufacturers respect. So they need to give glowing reviews so as to earn a second invite. I am okay with it as long as they mention that they are being paid.

[vasudeva]

As far as I know, ConsumerReports advertises itself as the only magazine/organisation that buys and services every car it tests. Another is Kelly Blue Book. That is why their ratings (alongwith JD Power) are valued not only by the potential buyers but also by automakers themselves. Another organisation called IIHS is funded by insurance companies and provides crash test and safety ratings used by US insurance industry. So it can lose its reputation and funding if it gives glowing reports. Unlike India, conflict of interest standards are theoretically much higher in developed countries, and of course there are scandals, but generally US mags such as MotorTrend and Car and Driver maintain far higher standards of integrity and independence than our auto journalists.

The thing is all mags in the business get invites. Ethics and integrity is an organisational value, and that is why while all get invites, only the opinion of some is relied upon by readers.

The best way for anyone to see how low our auto mags go is to just read through 1-2 years of their previous issues at one time. I did it (from my office lib.) when I was researching for my new car, and again it is unfortunate that I had not heard of this forum at the time.

[rohan_fonseca]

It is very difficult to find an unbiased mag anywhere. Have been a regular subscriber to both autocar and overdrive regurlarly(less so recently). Somehow i always find cars reviewed abroad to have rave reviews. But we need to take into consideration that once they come here we have to take into consideration state of detune due to climatic conditions, fuel, etc. Thats why we have 'Teambhp'

[thefreak]

All we can do is to hope that the journalist is ethical and stays unbiased. And does it matter where they go? Yessir it does. The road conditions can be hugely different. The models in India and other countries are differently tuned. But then the Indian models on Indian roads would be tested in a few weeks/months after the foriegn test drives so I guess it is okay...

After all these are the perks of the trade! ((Someone please offer me such a job!!))

[bigron]

autocar india is definately the best motoring magzine available in india as far as i am concerned. and the worst in overdrive and as the name suggests highly over rated.

[thefreak]

A slight deviation -

This months Autocar India has an awesome article on super fast cars. It is a must read for all auto enthusiasts. Gets the adrenalin pumping. Veyron, R8, Aston, Superleggera and Porsche. I wish they had also included an Enzo though (can we ever be satisfied?)

[skyline gtr r34]

well , aci is the best mag ,i havnt bought a single overdrive issue in my life, they are arrogant ,photography is terrible. But the aci aniversery issue is dissapointing as there is only one supercar article and nearly half of the pages are ads .

[skyline gtr r34]

now that CAR & TG are here hopefully we would see EVO or CAR & DRIVER too

[mysteryairship]

Auto Bild magazine will be coming to India shortly.

agencyfaqs! > news & features > ‘India Today’ to drive ‘Auto Bild’ to India