Frank Bacon
Detroit, MI
Male, Late 20s
I get to test drive and critique new cars. They are sometimes delivered to my home, or the manufacturers fly me out to opulent hotels in swanky locales with unlimited quantities of food and booze. Ask me anything.
Great question. Honestly, no real qualification. And it shows. Many people should not be doing this job. They really are not qualified. Car and Driver used to (and still does?) have engineers and race car drivers on staff. A lot of the guys in the field now are bloggers who like cars, and the manufacturers give them cars, so they write reviews. And they are usually bad.
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I'm riding solo
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It depends on the person and the company. There is one exotic car maker that is notorious for blacklisting anyone who says anything bad about their cars. There are some "journalists" who will say that any car is good so they can keep getting swag/free trips to review junkets/free cars to evaluate, there are some journalists who know fuck all about cars and are complete bullshit artists. And yet they are held up as authorities. Car companies like these people. They are useful idiots, as Stalin put it. But there are people such as myself who are simply respectful and professional when dealing with praise and criticism. Car companies generally don't punish you for writing something bad, unless it's a total hatchet job that's unfounded - you get some wannabe Clarkson types doing this stuff. The more common route is the guy who is practically felating a certain car or car company gets to go drive some cool car in an exotic location before anyone else. I gave the Chevy Camaro a poor review when it came out, and GM called my boss to complain. He told them that he "stood by my review", which really means "go fuck yourself". At the time, there was very little negative press, everyone was loving the car. Now, people can't hate on it enough.
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What's more interesting is what I have yet to experience. Here's an example http://www.motortrend.com/features/performance/1104_middle_east_cadillac_challenge/
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I wouldn't say completely unbiased but they're pretty good.
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I drive an older BMW. I could probably get something decent like employee pricing but honestly I've never wanted to "call in a favor". If there was, say, a demo that I knew was going to be for sale that I liked, I might try and arrange something via the dealer they offload their demos on.
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Best Car: Tough one. The Shelby Mustang GT500. Worst Car: Funny enough, the Camaro. GM didn't like that one.
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