[5u3zEr0]

I subscribe to Autocar only. Top Gear and Car I buy depending on their content and its not regular. Overdrive and BSM I havent bought in a long time as they just dont interest me.

Reading Autocar makes me feel at home. Top Gear is just for the international beauties, I get to ogle.

[mahadev_kc]

I like Autocar mag. It contains up-to-date information and not biased, but I do feel they were not including FIAT petra in any of their comparison tests for fiesta 1.4, aveo 1.4, aveo 1.6 etc in recent versions.. FIAT petra being a very good vehicle, they should cover it and publish its goods/bads for the greater knowledge of public.

One more thing I observed is that autocar mag will be in market more than 5 days before the starting of the month. Is this a marketing strategy to just sell more copies than its competitors?

Cheers,
Gudda

[yeis]

My choice Auto Car India. However I chose Overdrive and Car India too in anticipation that maybe they will improve someday.

My Views:

AutoCar India: The best mag in India. The only one you can rely upon.

Overdrive: Liars. Liars. Liars. They want them to be there in every TV ad saying, 14 kmpl* (Source: Overdrive...)

Car India: Adil Jal Darukhanawala left the Overdrive and joined the Car India by body only. His soul is still there at Overdrive. Read the car statistics at the back pages of Car India, its copied from Overdrive.

Top Gear: They are more into International than Indian. Initial issues were good but now even vendors are avoiding the mag. Paper quality is superb.

BS Motoring: I don't like the mag, that's it. No comments abt the contents.

Indian Auto: No idea. Haven't seen one.

[skiddyrow]

Well my cousin used to write for BS Motoring so there lies my loyalty! I like their no nonsense style of writing and independant and unbiased views

[GTO]

Learn a new thing everyday, eh? Well this is what I learnt today "TOP GEAR SUCKS"

Just went through the July 2006 issue, and looks like most of their readers write-ins are self written praises! And would someone please teach those jerks that their copy of the UK style humour is nothing short of plain torture. Doesnt help it that more than half the crap is a cut copy paste job from their british counterpart.

Even my late grandmothers could do a better job at reviewing the Civic than their "Scoop" drive from Thailand. And they compare an Audi A4 diesel with a C200K Petrol. Last I checked, the C220 was yet on sale. Why compare a petrol variant of one car with its competitors diesel? Not one section is worth a read, not even the normally life saving news section.

To top it off, they have a gmail address for contact. Lesson learnt. Save the 60 bucks. It can save a lot of mental agony.

GTO

[autopsyche]

Will agree to that on all accounts GTO. They just dont have a good writing backup in India. CAR in comparison is making much more efforts to hit it off with the Indian public. Autocar still rules the roost, id put overdrive, car and bs motoring as a tie for second place, top gear gets the bottom spot.

[hondadude]

I have been reading Overdrive and AutoCar for last five years and while Autocar has maintained its quality, OverDrive didn't. However since Adit left a few months back, I find OverDrive much better that it used to be.

One thing that I have noticed consistently is that all these auto journalists give extremely positive reviews to almost all new cars and then a year down the line, point out the negative points; most of which they could point out when the car was launched itself. It is what I call blinded by the thrill of driving a new car syndrome. Someday these guys will get over it and we will have better reviews.

I personally like TopGear. They mostly focus on non Indian cars (which is a sorta bummer) but I prefer that to Cars India. So my ranking would be AutoCar followed by OverDrive and TopGear.

[condor]

Originally Posted by GTO

... and adopting "PS" instead of "BHP".

Point was mentioned in an early post on this thread, but still - pls correct me if I am wrong on this - remember reading somewhere that 1 BHP = 1.07 PS.
Hence the usage of PS instead of BHP by Indian manufacturers to make it sound like the car delivers more power than it actually does.

Originally Posted by hondadude

..auto journalists give extremely positive reviews to almost all new cars ..

. I used to subscribe to photography magazines, but an independent, pro's articles mentioned that the magazines rely on advertisements a lot. Hence the reviews in the mags are often very positive abt the products .. wonder if there is something like this happening here too. The reviews in the auto mags do mention that the manufacturers give cars to the mag's for testing and reviews ..

[goldie_malhotra]

Originally Posted by GTO

Learn a new thing everyday, eh? Well this is what I learnt today "TOP GEAR SUCKS"
Even my late grandmothers could do a better job at reviewing the Civic than their "Scoop" drive from Thailand.

Totally agree with you on that - I picked up the TG july edition, just to get some more juice on the new Civic, and it *sucked* to hell. Seemed like a dumb copy-paste job to me.

And the novelty of getting some nice write-ups on exotic cars is starting to wear off and turn into frustration, as you realise none of these are available in india.

Can I please withdraw my vote now ??

[.anshuman]

Originally Posted by GTO

Learn a new thing everyday, eh? Well this is what I learnt today "TOP GEAR SUCKS"

Just went through the July 2006 issue, and looks like most of their readers write-ins are self written praises! And would someone please teach those jerks that their copy of the UK style humour is nothing short of plain torture. Doesnt help it that more than half the crap is a cut copy paste job from their british counterpart.

Even my late grandmothers could do a better job at reviewing the Civic than their "Scoop" drive from Thailand. And they compare an Audi A4 diesel with a C200K Petrol. Last I checked, the C220 was yet on sale. Why compare a petrol variant of one car with its competitors diesel? Not one section is worth a read, not even the normally life saving news section.

To top it off, they have a gmail address for contact. Lesson learnt. Save the 60 bucks. It can save a lot of mental agony.

GTO

absolutely agree to you gto about this,the only thing good about TOPGEAR is the copy pasted stuff from UK version apart from that the writeups feel like they are from someone who was in jail for last 20years and now when he is out he is so stunned to see the new cars instead of amby's and fiat's,same thing goes about the tests and first drives they feel more from newbies rather than autojournalists.

[yeis]

Originally Posted by condor

Point was mentioned in an early post on this thread, but still - pls correct me if I am wrong on this - remember reading somewhere that 1 BHP = 1.07 PS.

Correction: 1 bhp (BrakeHorsePower) = 1.01387 ps (PferdeStärke). So a 100 bhp car can be called a 101 ps car!

As mentioned by GTO, OD's one objective is to enlarge the figure bu putting different unit. Another reason, I think is, its for fashion sake or it is look-I-am-different syndrome! Since every other magazine was using bhp, Adil thought lets use more confusing and fundoo-like term PS!

But today, everybody seems to use ps instead of bhp, doesn't matter 99% of them don't know the meaning or full form of ps.

[condor]

yeis, thanks for that.
I dont know if the mag does the change/conversion, but I do notice that many manufacturers use PS instead of BHP.

[1100D]

My vote goes to ACI, they have very consistent reports which can be actually felt. Like BS Motoring too for their passion regards anything automotive.

If one lets me vote for the Automag that I would not want to recommend (infact I buy it, only to see to what extent it can be biased to some manufacturers) to anyone, that must be Overdrive.

[Sam Kapasi]

Autocar it is, for sure

[yeis]

Originally Posted by condor

yeis, thanks for that.
I dont know if the mag does the change/conversion, but I do notice that many manufacturers use PS instead of BHP.

That's what I was saying, PS is more common today! However I personally like bhp or hp! Since there is very subtle difference in PS and BHP, all use them interchangeably. Many often I see figures same while units different! People even use Kgm and Nm interchangeably sometimes.