Car review websites

joe40

Hi folks. There seems to be large array of websites offering reviews of cars including videos. But which are the most accurate in your opinion. I realise some sites may depend on advertising from motor companies so may not be totally impartial.
I know many are Uk based but still plenty of similarities to ireland. Thanks, would be interested to hear opinions

DaveyDave

Personally I wouldn't bother with car review websites too much, so many of them are just brochures for the car. The amount of website's I've seen saying "the car gets X mpg combined" feck sake did the reviewer drive the car or not? So many just list off numbers and specs that you get on the sales brochure and ****e on about what features the car has and not whether they're any good quality or practical. They're not even reviews they're just rewriting the bloody sales pitch.

Some websites are also a complete copy and paste of another review.

Best thing to do is browse a few websites to learn more about the car and features, possibly get a better look at the car from any videos they put out, then Google for some car forums to get opinions from owners of the cars.

Quite frustrating when you're looking up a car and so many articles just say what the manufacturer combined fuel economy is, I ordered a 1.0 Golf which is a new engine and nobody seems to have driven the bloody thing!

I enjoy the YouTube videos carwow put out. A little cheesy but quite in depth. I'd look for videos that are 8-10mins+ with lots of views. It can be difficult though as different markets get wildly different specs.

Unless of course I read your post wrong, and you're just looking for reviews in general to read to pass the time, then sorry

Mintoe

joe40 wrote: »

Hi folks. There seems to be large array of websites offering reviews of cars including videos. But which are the most accurate in your opinion. I realise some sites may depend on advertising from motor companies so may not be totally impartial.
I know many are Uk based but still plenty of similarities to ireland. Thanks, would be interested to hear opinions

Parkers.co.uk tend to be fairly unbiased I've always found

Lantus

My approach to reviews is not to focus on one source.

You have the major sites for text based reviews like what car and car buyer. Top gear etc.

Then you have you tube videos which are a nice supplement to that like car wow or Bob flavin.

I want to get a sense of consistency across the sources and not the bias of a single reviewer.

Just Google car make and model review.

Get ready for the ubiquitous banging on the dash and some guff about plastic hardness, softness in nearly all cases!

I've been driving for 20+ years and I have never driven a car whilst rubbing the top of the dash. It's odd but they all seem to do it without thinking.

corks finest

DaveyDave wrote: »

Personally I wouldn't bother with car review websites too much, so many of them are just brochures for the car. The amount of website's I've seen saying "the car gets X mpg combined" feck sake did the reviewer drive the car or not? So many just list off numbers and specs that you get on the sales brochure and ****e on about what features the car has and not whether they're any good quality or practical. They're not even reviews they're just rewriting the bloody sales pitch.

Some websites are also a complete copy and paste of another review.

Best thing to do is browse a few websites to learn more about the car and features, possibly get a better look at the car from any videos they put out, then Google for some car forums to get opinions from owners of the cars.

Quite frustrating when you're looking up a car and so many articles just say what the manufacturer combined fuel economy is, I ordered a 1.0 Golf which is a new engine and nobody seems to have driven the bloody thing!

I enjoy the YouTube videos carwow put out. A little cheesy but quite in depth. I'd look for videos that are 8-10mins+ with lots of views. It can be difficult though as different markets get wildly different specs.

Unless of course I read your post wrong, and you're just looking for reviews in general to read to pass the time, then sorry

Honest John

_Brian

Honest John is good.

Now, you could be easily put off by some of the reported problems but you need to remember these are a handful of complaints out of millions of units produced.

They have an actual mpg record which I found accurate.

dil999

Lantus wrote: »

I've been driving for 20+ years and I have never driven a car whilst rubbing the top of the dash.

Maybe people do other things in their car apart from driving.:)

Wildcard7

DaveyDave wrote: »

Quite frustrating when you're looking up a car and so many articles just say what the manufacturer combined fuel economy is, I ordered a 1.0 Golf which is a new engine and nobody seems to have driven the bloody thing!

Unless the review website goes through the same course with the same driver in the same conditions, any figure they put out there would be less than worthless. By now we all know that the figures manufacturers put out are "optimistic", but at least they are standardized. Those figures don't tell you what the fuel consumption of your car will be, but they allow you to compare two cars. Add 10-20%, and assuming you have a somewhat average mix of motorway/city/back roads, that's a pretty accurate figure.

Or check https://www.spritmonitor.de/en/ for real life figures.

Here are figures for a Golf 1.0 TSI: https://www.spritmonitor.de/en/overview/50-Volkswagen/452-Golf.html?fueltype=2&exactmodel=1.0%20tsi&powerunit=2

As for reviews: Professional reviews are really only an appetizer, they show you some things that might bug you (road noise, less than handy glove box, non movable rear seats, ...) or that you might like. Details you probably won't discover on a test drive. Ultimately you need to take a test drive, but a review might prepare you with a bit of knowledge of what to look out for.

I'm personally more interested in long term (> 1 year) reviews of actual drivers to gauge how solid a car is. Then again, that's a luxury you only have if you buy second hand or a model that's been on the market for a while.

maidhc

Honest John is good, but to fair in an era of general reliability and homogeneity reading car reviews are akin to reading reviews in Which? About washing machines. They will also all say toyotas are "boring", fords have "good handling", bmws are "great to drive" and Mercedes are more "comfort orientated". I think I have actually read the same review 100 times over 30 years.

DaveyDave

Wildcard7 wrote: »

Unless the review website goes through the same course with the same driver in the same conditions, any figure they put out there would be less than worthless. By now we all know that the figures manufacturers put out are "optimistic", but at least they are standardized. Those figures don't tell you what the fuel consumption of your car will be, but they allow you to compare two cars. Add 10-20%, and assuming you have a somewhat average mix of motorway/city/back roads, that's a pretty accurate figure.

Or check https://www.spritmonitor.de/en/ for real life figures.

Here are figures for a Golf 1.0 TSI: https://www.spritmonitor.de/en/overview/50-Volkswagen/452-Golf.html?fueltype=2&exactmodel=1.0%20tsi&powerunit=2

As for reviews: Professional reviews are really only an appetizer, they show you some things that might bug you (road noise, less than handy glove box, non movable rear seats, ...) or that you might like. Details you probably won't discover on a test drive. Ultimately you need to take a test drive, but a review might prepare you with a bit of knowledge of what to look out for.

I'm personally more interested in long term (> 1 year) reviews of actual drivers to gauge how solid a car is. Then again, that's a luxury you only have if you buy second hand or a model that's been on the market for a while.

I know the results will vary greatly between reviewers but I'd like their opinion of economy. Did they find it uses more fuel than expected? Did it do well for the small engine/big car? The figures are already useless from manufacturers, so there's no harm in sharing theirs. If they drive cars for a living they can of course say which cars are good and bad.

biko

I look at a mix of things but really like youtube videos, both by What Car? and Carbuyer
Then there is http://www.carsurvey.org/ and http://www.reliabilityindex.com/reliability etc

Note that people with problem cars are more likely to go online to review than people driving for 10 years without any issues.