Some folk think that working for a car website is one long round of business class flights, luxury hotels and designer goody bags. A five-star lifestyle spoiled only by the occasional requirement to drive someone else's car and scribble a few words about the experience.
Frankly, that's a pretty fair description of the average car scribe's lifestyle of a few years ago. But no longer. Since the advent of t'internet, motoring journalism has shifted up through the gears, changing from a leisurely rolling buffet into a cartoonlike fight-in-a-dustcloud between professional hardworking hacks all battling to be first online with the news.
Aston's V12 Vantage S first under the microscope
But being first to file is no good on its own. Quality is essential too. We like to think that PH provides an ideal mix of speed and sense. A considered and accurate view on the latest cars, events and ideas, promptly delivered.
Naturally, every other motoring organ thinks it's offering a similar service. On a forum-based website, the honest brokers are often you, the readers. You form your own views based not only on what you read but also, increasingly, on your own experience.
So we thought it would be fun to bash together a weekly cake out of what we're all writing about the new Thunderblast 5000 or other pressing issue of the day - us here, you there, the rest of the motoring press everywhere - using whatever tasty morsels we can pick up as our ingredients. The result should be an easily digestible confection reflecting the state of the nation. A 'review of the reviews', if you like, with extra currants.
Some of what you read (or write) here will be good. Some will be bad. Some may drift in the grey zone between side-creasing and certifiable. We won't spare ourselves if we've said something daft, nor will we shirk at exposing others who are paid to entertain and inform you. You will be the final bakeoff judge, a kind of powerfully-built Mary Berry without the wrinkles. You may not always like the taste of our cakes, but we'll make you'll always have something to chew on if you can't be bothered to bake your own. And of course you are at liberty to add your own chocolate sprinkles at the end, if you haven't already.
Here's our first jam-laden Victoria sponge: the Aston Martin V12 Vantage S, as tested the other week by Dan 'Flourfingers' Trent.