One of the biggest perks of my chosen profession is that people give me cars to drive, and I get to tell you, dear readers, all about them. Sometimes, automakers even fly me to fancy places to drive these cars. I was remarking to my daughter yesterday that if I wanted to drive as many cars as I do without being an automotive journalist, I’d either have to get a well-paying job I’d hate or become a valet.
The unavoidable paradox of being a critic, especially of consumer products, is that the more reviews you write, the harder it gets to write them. As you become more knowledgeable of your subject area, the more challenging it is, at least for me personally, to write in a way that differentiates one review from another.
Inevitably, this creates a risk of laziness, which, for writers, means falling into the trap of leaning too hard on cliché. It happens. In the older days of auto journalism, when there was still good money in magazines, the amount of output required of the average reviewer was lower than it is now, and it still happened.
I say this not to be critical of the profession in general or to pick on anyone in particular. Lauryn is only human, so don’t think I haven’t been through the same predicament. If you go through my corpus of reviews, you’ll probably find an example of each of these somewhere (or, like, multiple in one article).
Consider this a peek behind the curtain into the mind of the average car reviewer.
“The shifter falls at hand…”
Translation: This one drives Jason crazy, because it really doesn’t mean much. Where else should the shifter fall? Should it fall at the knees? This means the reviewer had nothing to say about the shifter, but probably gets paid by the word and had to say something.
“…understeers at the limit”
Translation: This is a FWD or AWD car. Or it’s a BMW i3 with not enough tire up front.
“It falls apart at 10/10ths…”
Translation: The reviewer has been flown around the world to the greatest race tracks and had literal Le Mans 24-hour winners give them driving instruction and, in all that time, they’ve somehow never learned to drive. They do not understand what trail-braking is, and only do it inadvertently and haphazardly. A car’s limits are so approachable to them because when they get to a turn, they’re either smashing the gas too hard or the brakes too late.
“It makes all the right sounds.”
Translation: It has a functioning motor. Probably not an NA V6.
“Torque is instantaneous…”
Translation: This is an electric car.
“The car’s designers neatly bisected the DLO with a thin b-pillar”
Translation: The reviewer has been to many press conferences, and while they’re mostly only paying attention to the bank app on their phone to make sure they don’t get accidentally billed for all that room service, they do glom onto one term and use it in every review because it makes them sound knowledgeable. Why should you trust this person to give an accurate and honest car review? Because they know the weird terminology that you don’t. See also: Heckblende.
“Butt-dyno”
Translation: Someone told the reviewer the actual stats, but looking up numbers is for nerds. How they feel about the power is more important than the actual, quantifiable number.
“The car’s bulbous rear…”
Translation: The reviewer knows we’re not supposed to compare cars to Sophia Loren anymore, both because it’s maybe sexist to only compare cars to beautiful actresses and because Gen Z doesn’t know who Sophia Loren is.
“Horsepower”
Translation: When a reviewer refers to the experience the kick of horsepower, they usually mean torque.
“Torque”
Translation: Also torque.
“… fine …”
Translation: How do you refer to a car that’s not so bad that it makes you angry, nor so good that it draws comparisons to your favorite song, plane, flower, drink, or actress? You just call it fine.
“Piano black”
Translation: At some point, reviewers realized that no one likes piano black interiors. The taste of the average car reviewer is probably not the same as the taste of the average consumer, so now that reviewers have realized this is something that they’ll win points for complaining about, they’ll take any remotely shiny piece of plastic or metal, call it piano black, and say it’s the worst thing to happen since the Spanish Inquistion, the Bubonic Plague, and According to Jim combined.
“Like a [Insert Power Tool] in a washing machine…”
Translation: A reviewer many years ago (Peter Egan? Sam Mitani?) compared the exhaust note of a car to a chainsaw in a washing machine, and reviewers have all tried some variation on this. It means the car is loud.
“Handles like it’s on rails…”
Translation: The reviewer was still hungover. Also, the reviewer, if American, has never been on a train.
“Handles like a go-kart”
Translation: On rails, but the car is small.
“Rides like a cloud…”
Translation: The pre-production staff for the vehicle launch drove every road within a 300-mile radius of the hotel and selected a route that has no bumps, no dips, and nary a crack in the pavement.
“Some Interior Plastics Are Hard”
Translation: Especially if this is an inexpensive vehicle or a truck or an off-road SUV, this usually means: I really need to add something else to my “cons” list, so this should work.
These are just a few of my favorites. If you’ve got more, add them below, and I’m happy to translate for you.
Top graphic images: Honda; depositphotos.com
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