A few weeks ago the Honda Insight got an uncharacteristic hiding, courtesy of the curmudgeonly Jeremy Clarkson. Now it seems that Toyota’s signature hybrid is getting a turn in a critic’s doghouse. The Truth About Cars’ Jay Shoemaker rants just a bit on the 2010 Prius:
Joe Weisenfelder does not believe in sugarcoating. Sorry, Smart ForTwo.
Jeremy Clarkson, England’s best-known car critic (his rants and raves appear in the Times of London and on TV’s TopGear) is an unrepentant “petrolhead” who believes global warming is bunk and that hybrids are “designed solely to milk the guilt genes of the smug and the foolish.”
Kelsey Mays, curmudgeonly critic of Cars.com, roundhouses Mitsubishi’s Outlander.
Halfway through this review, I realized I was convincing myself — one paragraph at a time — that I actually don’t like the Mitsubishi Outlander, so I had to reverse course.
Luckily for Mitsubishi, May’s score of 70 for the little SUV is about 10 points below the average scores it’s been, well, scoring.
When is a rave equal parts rant? When the critic — The Wall Street Journal‘s Jeff Sabatini, in this case — loves how a car handles but hates handling the car.
Where to start? How about the steering wheel, your most important point of contact with the ZR1? It’s a big, ugly, rubbery piece of junk…
The offender is the Corvette ZR-1, which is actually pretty beloved by critics.
The BMW X3 got a bit of a smackdown this week from Edmunds.com:
Each Thursday I post my deal of the week, a vehicle that represents a great value for the consumer…. Today, though, I want to make note of a vehicle that is just the opposite.
Buck up little X3. The rest of the motoring press still likes you.