In 1962, Road & Track tested “the ultimate town car, with instant acceleration…all-weather traction, phenomenal passenger capacity, and an unmatched degree of customer loyalty.” But with 750 horsepower, the critic was underwhelmed by a top speed of only 9.5 mph. That the vehicle tested was a San Francisco cable car was a joke, of course. Thus began R&T’s annual April 1st Mock Reviews. Click for more
Since one condition of the government’s proposed save of Chrysler is a shotgun wedding to Fiat, it seemed a good moment to take a look at Fiat’s most popular car (and the one most easily brought stateside). The Fiat 500 is a teeny, impossibly cute econocar; a sexy competitor to the MINI Cooper and Toyota Yaris. Naturally we were curious how the 500 stacks up, review-wise. Click for more
A quick heads-up about another easy way to find reviews and scores from MotorMouths: use Twitter! Just reply to @motormouths with “find” and the name of the car you’re interested in, like “find Honda Fit.” Our Twitter-bot will send you the score for that car, plus a link to its reviews. Handy! (And if Twitter jargon is still a little confusing, you can learn about @replies here.)
Here’s a teachable moment. One of our review sources, TheTruthAboutCars.com, just weighed in on the Maserati Granturismo S. The review, by site founder Robert Farago, was typically voicey and idiosyncratic. Farago liked much about the car, yet also hated aspects of it. His final grades by category were a 4 out of 5 stars for performance, ride, interior, fit and finish, and Click for more
If you’re the attentive type, you may have noticed that we added Autoblog.com to our list of review sources. As always, we did so after tracking their critics for several months, to gain insight into the scoring nuances of said critics. Thus far? Autoblog is doling out an average score of 83.5 to the vehicles they review.
By the way, Autoblog’s good fortune comes at the unfortunate expense of the now departed MotiveMag.com, which will soon depart MotorMouths as well.
Sometimes, just to wile the hours, we dig up old reviews of iconic cars. Such as this one, embedded in a 1964 Time magazine profile of one “Lido Anthony Iacocca, general manager of Ford’s Ford Division”:
As his firstborn, Iacocca has produced far more than just another new car. With its long hood and short rear deck, Click for more
If there’s an AP or Reuters for car reviews, it’s probably NewCarTestDrive. Their reviews are syndicated across hundreds of sites, including the New York Times, NADA Guides, CarZen.com, and Autobytel.com. Though formulaic at times, their reviews are usually concise, clear, with an occasional dollop of attitude. They aren’t the toughest critics, however: over the past four months, staff reviews from the site have awarded an average score of 79.61 to vehicles. Click for more
Few writers can overwrite more than automotive writers. They’re a pretty purple lot. And often what’s lost in such turgidity is any useful, um, car criticism. Witness, for instance, a graf plucked from the collected works of one Brock Yates, of Car & Driver:
“Before the mission was completed, the hapless followers of [Car and Driver staffer] Sherman faced bouts of turista, numerous encounters with the Mexican federales, a high-speed Click for more
The Chrysler Sebring convertible isn’t beloved by critics. In fact, it’s one of the worst-reviewed cars in America. But it can claim a couple of honors here on MotorMouths. Out of some ten thousand reviews, it earned the single-lowest score awarded by a critic. And it shows the largest spread — 34 points! — between its high score (admittedly not very high) and that cellar score, which came courtesy of Dan Neil. Enjoy the carnage after the jump.
We read thousands of car reviews each month, and it’s always interesting to chart the various obsessions held by particular critics. Offered as evidence, word clouds compiled of several recent reviews from MotherProof.com’s Sherrice Gilsbach, and the more gearish Scott Burgess, of the Detroit News. (See below.)
Our Tough Critics Report spotlights the hardest-grading critics, based on the average score they award in reviews. The meanies:
Who’s an old softy? Road & Track, which awards an average score of 86.16. [Pic Via.]
Here’s a little meta-review experiment. We ran all the recent published reviews of the Hyundai Genesis through a word cloud generator, to see if critics happened to grab for a particular adjective when writing about the car. And yep, they did.
As you can see, critics think the Genesis is a very good value.
Our friends at the always entertaining Jalopnik.com have just published an excellent guide to that obscure bit of vehicular ephemera known as the VIN. Since here on MotorMouths we ask users to verify ownership of a car with their VIN before rating reviews from places like, um, Jalopnik, we’re compelled to pass it along. Enjoy!
MotorMouths makes it easy for you to find reviews and critics’ scores for every new car, so that you can buy the right one. And this is our blog. If you’re still aflutter with curiosity, check our About Page. PLUS: Try our Twitterbot to get scores & reviews via Twitter!