BjoernB:
If you see Salomondrin's YouTube video's you know in "real life" who's Daddy against all those staged Reviews....no matter what magazine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0lbJy61DcA
I wonder who is her daddy... I like Salomondrin's videos but I wouldn't really take him too seriously.
Bjoern, most reviews are done by car journalists who often drive home in a VW Gold or BMW 3/5 series. What do you expect from them? Many have personal preferences, many of them judge a car by how they get treated by the brand and their press department and others feel good about a product when they are invited to a very special event and have a great time there in a nice hotel and during a nice test-drive in a warm climate or whatever.
I've seen rave reviews of basically all sports cars on the market but how is that possible? I mean they need to have some downsides, don't they?
Nobody is interested in honest reviews, this is a fact. Manufacturers don't want to hear what is wrong with their cars, owners who spent a lot of money don't want to listen to that either and diehard fans, who probably never drove these cars even once in their life before, don't want to listen to criticism either. Everything needs to be great and peachy, otherwise car journalists get problems...with the manufacturers, with the owners and the fans.
Performance comparisons? Well... Sometimes, weird stuff happens. Take the Audi R8 and that tested Huracan: Both had a weird power loss, both had issues with tires and the Huracan with that ABS. Do you really think Audi or Lamborghini are that careless? This is VW Group we're talking about here, Porsche has clearly the leadership in the sportscar segment. These cars are sold to people who want such a car, not people who read Sport Auto or look at track times. This would be Porsche. Porsche needs to be good on the track, otherwise it gets embarrassing for them. Lamborghini? Well, who cares? Same goes to Audi. McLaren needs to beat the other manufacturers by something, otherwise they are done because they are a small company and barely have dealerships.
In the end, it all comes to what people experience with cars themselves and how they experience the performance.
Some of the private YouTube videos actually show the true performance of the cars, in a way or another. Reviews with factory cars are not exactly accurate, especially turbo charged cars will always perform pretty well.
Take that 570S reviewed by AutoBILD Sportscars: Even they suspected that it had much more power than advertised but according to them, a dyno test was not possible (but they don't really give details). This doesn't mean of course that 570S won't get the same (higher) power with their cars, which would be OK to me if all customer cars perform as good as this one.
Then, take launch control for my R8: I tried launch control once but was surprised how lame it is. I didn't have the feeling that it makes the car faster than starting from standstill without launch control. To test this "theory", I did a 0-120 kph run compared to a BMW S 1000 RR. My friend tested his bike from 0-100 kph in 3.2 seconds (he is pretty good at starting off from standstill without producing a wheelie ). We tried three times and three times, I was around half a car length in front of him from the start. He didn't come closer a bit. So my R8 certainly does under 3.2 seconds from standstill from 0-100 kph without launch control. My Performance Box is currently with a friend, so I couldn't use it but that BMW S 1000 RR always delivers quite a steady performance and it was quite warm (27°C) and dry on that day.
Real world performance is something I really appreciate but you won't find it in car magazines. Sometimes the test reviews are contradictory, sometimes the posted times are not right and sometimes the car journalists (reviewers) come to completely different conclusions. I saw a review where the Turbo S was on first place and another one it was on third place. Same cars reviewed.
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RC (Germany) - Rennteam Editor Porsche 991 Carrera 4 GTS Cabriolet, Porsche Macan Turbo, Audi R8 V10 Plus (2017), Mini JCW (2015), Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT (2014)