On Writing Auto and Motorsport Reviews
Nov 25 '00
I thought God might be busy keeping himself amused with our presidential election, but it seems the Big Guy has enough humor to go around. Last week Epinions tapped me to become an Auto and Motorsports advisor, just as I was putting the final polish on this-an editorial on writing A&M reviews. As the church lady used to say, "Well, isn't that special?"
I don't know any more about writing a car or motorcycle review than I did before the wizard dropped the advisor hat on me. If you are looking for advise on how to write professional reviews, the best advise I have is to read the professionals who work for the magazines and see how they do it. And, as I once wrote, Epinions doesn't pay you enough to lose sleep over what anyone thinks of your writing.
But I've been in some offsite discussions about the reviews in this category, and the people I've talked to have raised points that need to be covered. Most of the frequent contributors to the A&M category, and all of the advisors, write about cars or motorcycles they don't own. (Myself included.) The people I've talked with have questions about the ethics of doing "test drive reviews" on a site intended for owners to write about their ownership experiences.
That's a valid point, there is nothing to replace ownership experience when writing a review. I think if you'd look at the numbers most of the reviews in the A&M category are written by owners. But because the advisors don't fall into that group their work sticks out. To make a bad situation worse, by being made advisors they are rewarded for doing work that might be considered abuse in another category.
You're going to have to take my word for this, but this passage was not changed by one word after I became an advisor: If the advisor selection criteria was limited to owners writing about their vehicles how many advisors would have more than one or two reviews in the category? Would it be fair to judge the best writers in the category based on two pieces of work?
The writers of good owner reviews should be on the advisor list, but so should the good enthusiast writers who test drive many different models and report their findings. Not because it would be a fairer way to divide the advisor pie but because both kinds of reviews serve a needed purpose. When a car has high quality reviews of both types, it gives the prospective buyer a package of information that can't be found anyplace else.
In that ideal situation, someone interested in buying a SUV comes to Epinions and starts reading the reviews of the Explorer, Blazer and 4Runner, for example. In each category she can read a review by an enthusiast reviewer who has driven all three and can note that the Explorer has a better stereo while the Blazer's cupholders are hard to reach, and the Toyota has the most truck-like qualities of the three. These kinds of comparison based reviews can help her narrow her field of candidates to a couple of choices, and then she can use the owner reviews to see how they hold up in the real world.
It is the same process car buyers have used for decades, reading the magazines and then talking to friends and coworkers who own one. Epinions is the first place I know of to put it all together. They allow would-be motor journalists like yr.obt.svt. to try our hands at the kind of stuff we've read for years in the magazines, and they allow owners to share their experiences.
But for that ideal situation to happen there have to be high-quality reviews from both groups of writers. I'm not trying to tell you how to write, but there are some things you should keep in mind if you want to write a review that will help the buyer.
At the top of that list is keeping the buyer in mind when writing your review. It seems so simple, but applying it takes work. Both kinds of review writers have to make personal observations, and then try to take themselves out of the picture.
The enthusiast reviewer needs to ask if a point he noticed (good or bad) has anything to do with how he fits the vehicle and his prior experience. For example, even if he is 6'3" and doesn't have a problem getting into any of the SUV's I mentioned above, he should make a mental note that the door clearance on the 4Runner is notably higher than the other two because his reader might be a foot shorter. And if he is used to driving a low slung sports car, that is going to effect how he feels sitting upright and high off the ground when driving the SUV.
The owner-reviewer has to ask if the problems or best qualities of his vehicle are a partial reflection of how he uses it? If your Explorer has a horrible dash rattle, do you live at the end of a two-mile dirt road? Or is it still as tight as a drum after 30,000 miles partly because it has never even been over a curb at the mall? Has the transmission held up inspite of the heavy towing you do several times a year? Has the service writer at the dealer mentioned that a lot of your model has been in for the same problem you are having?
Your personal experiences only matter if you are buying the car for your reader based on what you want, or if you are trying to sell them the car you own. It's okay to include what you think is the best and worst of the cars qualities-I don't think I'd want to read a review that didn't have some of that-but the overall theme should be focused on what the reader wants to know.
That might sound like a recipe for long reviews with a lot of details. It is. I don't like reviews that are needlessly long more than anyone else. But if you are asking someone to make a huge investment based in part on what you have to say, I think you need to make a pretty strong case. Good enthusiast reviewers don't tend to have a problem with this, they've read enough magazine reviews to see how it's done. But if you are an owner who doesn't keep a pile of Car and Driver's in the bathroom, don't forget the little things when writing your review. Is the trunk easy to load? Have you ever had to use the spare tire? How many times has it been in the shop? And use your testing team (also called your family) to get the skinny on their accommodations. Stuff like this might seem minor after you've gotten used to being in the same car for months or years, but it is priceless information for a prospective buyer.
When I find one of these reviews it can leave me grinning for hours. But I don't expect that level of detail from an owner review. If you paid for it, you have earned the place to write what is important to you. (If you care, any owner review that covers the basic likes and dislikes, problems and good points, is worth a Recommended rating in my book.)
But if you are going to write reviews on cars you don't own, as a hobby at Epinions, that changes. This might not be fair, but I don't cut any ratings slack on these kinds of reviews. The pay at Epinions might be a joke but you are asking your work to stand alongside professional reviews like in the magazines, and I think they should be judged accordingly.
You have to have your facts down cold. A factual error tells me you either didn't drive the car or couldn't be bothered to take accurate notes. In either case it is a NR review. Put a few of those together and it is a ticket to the Web of Distrust because you have proven that your writing cannot be trusted.
You also need to be able to get past the initial impression of a car or motorcycle to find the qualities that lay underneath and how it compares to other machines in its class. Getting that in one test drive, while taking notes on all the detail things that do make it different, takes practice. Of the cars and motorcycles I've written about on Epinons, I only felt comfortable about writing about the Ford F-150 Lightning after one test drive, mostly because I had a lot of experience with the previous model and there isn't another hotrodded pickup on the market to compare it to. My bike reviews come from working on them on weekends and it takes a couple of separate rides to get what I need to write an Epinion. There are a few I haven't reviewed yet because I don't have enough time on them to form a full opinion.
If you are in the same spot after a test drive, don't write the review. These enthusiast reviews are helpful to the buyers if they are done right. But done badly they are as worthless as any other review written about a product without having an understanding of it. Try to remember: If you haven't paid for this car or motorcycle you have to earn a reason to write a review of it. You have to bring information to the table that makes reading it worth the readers time.
The only reason I can give you for making this effort is because you want to write well and help the people who read your reviews make an informed decision. Money? Before getting the advisor hat I was a most popular (most read) reviewer in the A&M category and my earnings at Epinions have worked out to a $1.25 a day since I started nine months ago. Status? Getting the advisor hat after doing 65 HR reviews was a pleasant surprise. But since nearly all of my A&M reviews were already at the top of the list I don't expect to see a big increase in hits from it.
I only keep doing this because I like to write, and because sometimes it pays off in ways I didn't even dream of. Two people have written to tell me they decided to buy bikes based in large part on my reviews. That and the friends I've made here are what keep me coming back and pushing harder.
Whatever your motives are, I hope you keep trying to push the bar higher when writing Auto and Motorsport reviews.
-Brian Igo
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