What is happening at EVO magazine?

[simonrockman]

GT 86 Vs Mx5 Vs Fiat 124 Abarth

Spoiler alert


So they compared the three cars and it was clear cut. The GT-86 was an easy winner over the other two. The new MX-5 significantly better than the Fiat. Yet they all got four stars.

The star scoring system is broken, even the worst of the worst gets three stars, only the very top get five so everything else is crammed between four an four and a half. They should look at the worst thing they ever reviewed and give that zero then work up to four and a half and five.

The other contrast is between last month - 70 years of Lotus and this month - 70 years of Porsche. For 70 years of Lotus they rock up a club event and interview a few people, There isn't a single Lotus car driven

For Porsche there are pages and pages of driving 911s, articles on the 992, driving a 919. It's all good stuff but the disparity isn't right for an enthusiasts magazine.

Edited by simonrockman on Monday 17th December 17:42

[itcaptainslow]

simonrockman said:

GT 86 Vs Mx5 Vs Fiat 124 Abarth

Spoiler alert


So they compared the three cars and it was clear cut. The GT-86 was an easy winner over the other two. The new MX-5 significantly better than the Fiat. Yet they all got four stars.

The star scoring system is broken, even the worst of the worst gets three stars, only the very top get five so everything else is crammed between four an four and a half. They should look at the worst thing they ever reviewed and give that zero then work up to four and a half and five.

The other contrast is between last month - 70 years of Lotus and this month - 70 years of Porsche. For 70 years of Lotus they rock up a club event and interview a few people, There isn't a sing Lotus car driven

For Porsche there are pages and pages of driving 911s, articles on the 992, driving a 919. It's all good stuff but the disparity isn't right for an enthusiasts magazine.

Glad I’m not the only person who noticed that. I’m biased being a Lotus guy but a couple of pages versus half the mag for Porsche isn’t really fair.

[hepy]

Bubba Zanetti said:

Issue 256 is now back to the original size and gloss paper format. It is a Porsche heavy issue which some won't like.

21 December the eCOTY edition hits the shelves. Hopefully this return to the format of old rather than the disaster that happened last year.

Porsche heavy? As always

[coppice]

Just a possible reason for Porsche's ubiquity -might it be they make the best cars , and have done for years? Ferrari and Lamborghini are too upmarket , Astons come and go but are arguably more about being seen in , BMW , Merc and Audi don't really do sports car per se very much and it's marginal to the core product, Lotus are niche and Yank stuff is a bit blue collar. Doesn't leave much really does it ?

And Porsche make the only car in its configuration, and have managed , over the decades to win Le Mans, Monte Carlo rally , British saloon car championship and more races than (I suspect )any other sports car marque . In other news they produce the fastest racing car ever made , , their 1974 turbo was the one which really caught on first and their TAG engine won 3 F1 championships on the trot .

I don't own a 911 but think I do understand why they , and Porsche might be so popular...

[anonymous-user]

EVO aren't in some mad anti Lotus conspiracy. They just know a magazine full of Lotuses won't sell as many copies as one full of Porsches. Sad to hear of you're a Lotus fan, but there aren't as many of you as there are Porsche ones.

[havoc]

Sadly, I think Janesmith has the correct answer on the Lotus vs Porsche imbalance...how to sell magazines...

...which reflects badly on the evo editorial team. Whither independence, when they put marketing before even-handedness?

coppice said:

Just a possible reason for Porsche's ubiquity -might it be they make the best cars , and have done for years? Ferrari and Lamborghini are too upmarket , Astons come and go but are arguably more about being seen in , BMW , Merc and Audi don't really do sports car per se very much and it's marginal to the core product, Lotus are niche and Yank stuff is a bit blue collar. Doesn't leave much really does it ?
...
I don't own a 911 but think I do understand why they , and Porsche might be so popular...

I'd say Porsche are now too upmarket too - even an entry-level 911 is now closer to 100k than 50k, and that's before options. How many people can afford to put down effectively £100k on a new motor?

...and the Boxster/Cayman are now hamstrung by a 4-pot blown motor with as much character as Theresa May on mogodon.


Evo are a magazine which is all about handling. Things like engine sound, throttle-response, kick-in-the-back acceleration and stuff like traction and braking are all secondary (while mundanities like driving position and control weights come in a lowly third, although that's still higher than most other car mags, to be fair)
...to them it's 90% how a car handles and how much feeback you get. Porsche have for >>20 years excelled in these areas and so are evo favourites for that reason too...sadly this means they still give the 718 class wins even with that bloody engine.

[squareflops]

andrewparker said:

Likewise, I cancelled my subscription since issue 1 but I can see myself starting it back up again.

I had a subscription a few years back now. Cancelled but not specifically because I thought the quality had dropped. After reading the last few pages here I've signed back up, looking forward to receiving the next issue.

[Harris_I]

simonrockman said:

The star scoring system is broken, even the worst of the worst gets three stars, only the very top get five so everything else is crammed between four an four and a half. They should look at the worst thing they ever reviewed and give that zero then work up to four and a half and five.

They should give cars a general rating (ie fit for purpose) and an Evo rating which is more focused on the visceral experience. I remember them giving some gigantic Rolls Royce model a 4.5 star rating and wondered in what universe that was an "Evo" car.

Modern cars feel uniformly bland to me, and as long as they're vaguely competent they all get 4 stars. It's one reason why I've stopped reading car magazines and also prefer older cars. It's not really Evo's fault I guess.

[Bubba Zanetti]

Half way through issue 256 - thinking to myself this issue could have been written by the German Association of the Automotive Industry.

I've owned German cars and I like German cars but it's starting to annoy.

[GiveItSomeWellie]

simonrockman said:

GT 86 Vs Mx5 Vs Fiat 124 Abarth

Spoiler alert

So they compared the three cars and it was clear cut. The GT-86 was an easy winner over the other two. The new MX-5 significantly better than the Fiat. Yet they all got four stars.

I noticed this too.

I also found the 124 and the MX5 were being compared to their lowered powered versions, but no mention of the differences between non-PP and PP GT86.

[itcaptainslow]

janesmith1950 said:

EVO aren't in some mad anti Lotus conspiracy. They just know a magazine full of Lotuses won't sell as many copies as one full of Porsches. Sad to hear of you're a Lotus fan, but there aren't as many of you as there are Porsche ones.

It's not so much a conspiracy, it's just pants journalism. If they were anti-Lotus then they'd give awful write ups to Lotus products, which in general they don't-in fact Hethel vehicles are well loved by Evo. It would just be nice if other manufacturers got as much airtime as those based in Stuttgart.

[coppice]

All star systems are devices employed to create some contrived hierarchy . Surely nobody , anywhere, ever takes them seriously ? If you are reading about toasters in Which that's fine , but we buy car magazines primarily because we like reading about cars . If you want facts and figures then Autocar (et al) will give you detailed acceleration and braking data but we form our own conclusions on what we like best by reading decent journalism about the overall feel of a car . I don't want a 3000 word article (if you can find one in the sea of bite size factoids ) compressed down into some random number of stars - does anybody , really ?

[s m]

coppice said:

All star systems are devices employed to create some contrived hierarchy . Surely nobody , anywhere, ever takes them seriously ? If you are reading about toasters in Which that's fine , but we buy car magazines primarily because we like reading about cars . If you want facts and figures then Autocar (et al) will give you detailed acceleration and braking data but we form our own conclusions on what we like best by reading decent journalism about the overall feel of a car . I don't want a 3000 word article (if you can find one in the sea of bite size factoids ) compressed down into some random number of stars - does anybody , really ?

Very true coppice

No one tends to put much stock in journos’ opinions when they’ve driven the car themselves

[greenarrow]

itcaptainslow said:

janesmith1950 said:

EVO aren't in some mad anti Lotus conspiracy. They just know a magazine full of Lotuses won't sell as many copies as one full of Porsches. Sad to hear of you're a Lotus fan, but there aren't as many of you as there are Porsche ones.

It's not so much a conspiracy, it's just pants journalism. If they were anti-Lotus then they'd give awful write ups to Lotus products, which in general they don't-in fact Hethel vehicles are well loved by Evo. It would just be nice if other manufacturers got as much airtime as those based in Stuttgart.

I've just been back through both issues and its pretty disgraceful really. There were a mere 7 pages devoted to Lotus for their anniversary feature and 36 pages devoted to Porsche in this month's issue. I get it that Porsche sell more cars that Lotus, but EVO, you are a British Magazine and Lotus are our Porsche so you really should have made more effort. Why didn't you drive a variation of Elises and maybe put the Exige, Evora and Elise round the track like you did the 911s?

I do think EVO is back on form these days, but they are and always will be Porsche biased. Take the group test this summer involving the Alpine A110. Rather than pit it against the base Cayman, which with a few extras is the same price as an Alpine, they brought along a Cayman S with about £20K worth of options, including big wheels, the PASM package, the lot and surprise surprise it was faster on track and road and won the test. They even admitted that the result might have been different with a lower spec Cayman.

The other thing that drives me mad is how they change their mind about a car. When it came out, they hated the GT86 and put it up against a variety of cars to make the point that it was under-powered. Now, they believe it offers motoring nirvana and its winning tests against the MX-5. Similarly they've had a downer on the MK4 MX-5 since it came out. I expect in a few years they will do a U-Turn on that car too.

I don't hold out much hope of the Alpine winning ECOTY tbh. Not with an RS Porsche in the line-up.

[coppice]

s m said:

Very true coppice

No one tends to put much stock in journos’ opinions when they’ve driven the car themselves

Actually I often do so - if they drive as well as , for example , a Meaden , Harris or (Roger) Bell , all of whom are journalists who can not only write well but win races. They have also driven infinitely more cars than I have - but I do get a little tight lipped when some callow youth deploys his full armament of tired cliches about yet another overpowered AMG or Audi and then prattles on for 500 words about its sat nav and phone connectvity .

[anonymous-user]

You should only trust a journalist's opinion on a car if he's so old he thinks Bluetooth was a pirate.

[coppice]

Err..Blue what?

[anonymous-user]

That's the spirit.

[anonymous-user]

Too many kraut cars in Evo.
End of.

[havoc]

Raygun said:

Too many German cars on the market.
End of.

FIxed that for you.

The UK, sadly, has developed an obsession with German = reliable + robust + premium.

Sadly, most of that isn't true. Even though the cars are priced as if it is (google 'conspicuous consumption' / Veblen goods)

Yes, there's a better-engineered 'thunk' when you close the doors, and they've nailed the Perceived Quality ratings with other stuff like soft-touch plastics and knurled knobs. But that's just a cultural thing which the Japs and the French (for example) aren't fussed about, and don't focus on...to their cost in the current image-obsessed market.

Where the Germans are no longer better is:-
- Part/component quality and reliability. Haven't been since probably the 1980s vs the Japanese, and I'd argue the Koreans have also overtaken them.
- Powertrain reliability. This is a lottery everywhere now, but typically the likes of Toyota and Honda are still top of the tree. (FK8 clutches excepted ).
- Ride/handling. Not sure, Porsche and old BMW M excepted, they ever have been. The French have and still do lead the charge here, with occasional bursts of brilliance from Japan.
- Rust-proofing. Most cars are pretty good now.