Quote:
Originally Posted by FogCityM3
Once upon a time, BMW's were winning about 75%+ of every comparo on both objective and subjective measures in major Euro and US testing publications.
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tldr version: testing publications? lol
Once upon a time 100% of car magazines were based on a Print only business model with very substantial subscription lists and advertising revenues that can only be dreamed of today. The relationships between the auto makers and these magazines were very tight as the auto makers were dependent to them for market reach. Press events and car shows made little impact compared to the penetration of the magazines.
Auto makers actually listened to the larger magazines and sometimes made changes in their lineups based on that feedback, a good review sold cars.
The magazines shared their subscriber demographics with the auto makers who understood that those demographics were only a portion of their customers actually buying cars. But the market reach was still something that the auto makers couldn't achieve for the same price.
Enter the internet. Auto makers could potentially reach everyone (connected that is) for a fraction of the price. The magazines, at least the ones that survived, soon understood that digital ad revenues evolved to be somewhere between 10 to 16 times cheaper than print advertising and the business model changed to page views at any cost. The number of page views is directly tied to advertising inventory, and any type of controversy increases page views which allows them to sell more digital ads.
That anyone still listens to the crap written today from those magazines is surprising, there are any number of new startups that actually give objective information, or at least specifically identify subjective views. Many of the newer information outlets actually acknowledge that the rest of the world (those that don't buy car magazines) exist. The allegory of a king (or ultimate driving machine) worked well without the immediacy and bi-directional nature of the internet; to say the king is dead presupposes that the king actually existed.
There's a good bit of other changes today also, more stringent regulation and a weaker economy to name a few that have significant impact on the industry.
So to the quoted poster, if you had said that you didn't like something and said why, I'd listen. Perhaps not agree, but I'd listen. But comments based on 0-60 times that are so absurd and done in a way to make people run up page views or contrived rating systems that don't make a lot of sense, no. Why do so many people let others speak for them?
Two last comments: First, yes, I am in the publishing business (thankfully not the auto segment), you're looking through rose colored glasses.
Second, why are the majority of negative comments in this forum from 3 series drivers?