ADAC Car of the year Fraud 2013
Discussion
flatso said:
Despicable! Most of the german motoring press looks like it has been bribed off, mostly by VW. The most obscene is "AutoBild" where every comparison test is won by VW, regardless if the competitors have beter performance, looks, price etc. Its a joke!
Just like Auto Express. VAG = 5 starswhat a surprise
flatso said:
Despicable! Most of the german motoring press looks like it has been bribed off, mostly by VW. The most obscene is "AutoBild" where every comparison test is won by VW, regardless if the competitors have beter performance, looks, price etc. Its a joke!
they always have a category of 'style' or 'feeling' where VW gets 5 stars and wins the overall comparison"It is a nightmare reminiscent of 2005 when ADAC was forced to admit fixing a test on the Romanian-built budget car the Dacia when it put out a press release saying the car’s wheels were dodgy. "
Surely you'd be suing if you were Dacia? Imagine the bad press from a story like that - could affect sales etc.
Surely you'd be suing if you were Dacia? Imagine the bad press from a story like that - could affect sales etc.
I'm not impressed but bribery in the form of free cars/extra advertising to journalists/magazines in return for favourable reviews has been going on since the beginning of time and so this doesn't surprise me. However sometimes I don't think these surveys mean much anyway or are even useful.
I remember in a magazine car owners survey I looked at the numbers were a tiny percentage of the actual cars out there and not even categorised properly. I don't know how large a sample size you'd need for a survey to be accurate enough to be useful but some of the reported sample sizes were less than a hundred for a whole MODEL!
There's often a 'problem' engine for a manufacturer that isn't as reliable as it should be and has problems/recalls but every other engine is fine. These surveys never seem to reflect that they just say:
Ford scored 96%
Vauxhall scored 92%
Or
Fiesta scored
97.5%
Corsa scored:
98.6%
How does that help anyone?!
Best thing is to talk to mechanics, Taxi drivers, forums/clubs and friends/family who have had the same car you're looking at for many years. You may not get everything you want to know but you will at least get something useful.
Also a car/manufacturer may have problems that reflect badly upon it's 'score' but it still drives ok and the problem is cheap to fix. On the other hand a car may be fine until just out of warranty and then leave you stranded by the side of the road with a big bill. It's all a bit complicated.
I remember in a magazine car owners survey I looked at the numbers were a tiny percentage of the actual cars out there and not even categorised properly. I don't know how large a sample size you'd need for a survey to be accurate enough to be useful but some of the reported sample sizes were less than a hundred for a whole MODEL!
There's often a 'problem' engine for a manufacturer that isn't as reliable as it should be and has problems/recalls but every other engine is fine. These surveys never seem to reflect that they just say:
Ford scored 96%
Vauxhall scored 92%
Or
Fiesta scored
97.5%
Corsa scored:
98.6%
How does that help anyone?!
Best thing is to talk to mechanics, Taxi drivers, forums/clubs and friends/family who have had the same car you're looking at for many years. You may not get everything you want to know but you will at least get something useful.
Also a car/manufacturer may have problems that reflect badly upon it's 'score' but it still drives ok and the problem is cheap to fix. On the other hand a car may be fine until just out of warranty and then leave you stranded by the side of the road with a big bill. It's all a bit complicated.
This is not new.
I'm sure this happens all the time, and not just in Germany.
A friend was asked to set some fastest lap times in a group of performance cars for a UK magazine. When the magazine published the times, they looked nothing like the test results. The reason given...
"our readers would never be interested in Car H, so we wrongly claimed it is one of slowest cars, even if it was quickest on the day."
"We need to keep the readers happy."
Autobild were behind the tyre test I've often quoted where (German) Continental Tyres were tested by Continental Technicians on a car supplied from the factory with Continental tyres against four far-eastern products that cost half the price of the control Continental tyre. The graphs in the published report were all shortened (hidden origin) to visually exaggerate the in fact very small differences in performance between the tyres, and where one far-eastern tyre actually outperformed the Continental (in aquaplaning resistance) the test reported it as a 'tie'.
It was basically a sponsored propaganda piece, but Continental still use it in their literature.
It was basically a sponsored propaganda piece, but Continental still use it in their literature.
Kawasicki said:
A friend was asked to set some fastest lap times in a group of performance cars for a UK magazine. When the magazine published the times, they looked nothing like the test results. The reason given...
"our readers would never be interested in Car H, so we wrongly claimed it is one of slowest cars, even if it was quickest on the day."
That doesn't really surprise me, but I'd be interested to learn which cars if you know? "our readers would never be interested in Car H, so we wrongly claimed it is one of slowest cars, even if it was quickest on the day."
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