We're Number Three!
TTAC is the third most critical reviewers of automobiles, according to Motor Mouths, an ambitious project which seeks to aggregate and rate car reviews. With an average review score of 75.52, TTAC is the least forgiving non-print outlet that MM rates. Only Consumer Reports (70) and the Wall Street Journal (73.5) boast a more carmudgeonly average score of vehicles they review, with Automobile.com and the NY Times rounding out the top five. Of course, standardizing reviews is a tricky undertaking, making comparisons a bit of an apples-oranges exercise. Still, MM goes there, even comparing reviewers with owner feedback to create an index of “reviewer credibility.” Sadly, TTAC reviewers don’t rate in the top three “most credible,” but since MM has only been around to gather owner feedback since February, we’ll give it some time. Not that we’d necessarily expect to replace the LA Times’ Pulitzer Prize-winning Dan Neil at the top of that list.
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@MotorMouths.com : Interesting concept, it sounds like you've thought this through pretty well. Good luck, you might've found your niche. On a separate note, I don't think it's fair to compare Consumer Reports to ... well anything really. I've never been comortable with the way they review cars. They're very good at objective info, like reviewing an appliance. But in my opinion, when reviewing cars a lot of the important information is subjective. That's where TTAC really shines: understanding who a car is designed for, and what that says about the company that made it. Although if you feel a car IS an appliance, I'm sure CR is very helpful to you. But it isn't to me.
Aeroelastic: Since CR.org is behind a pay wall (and thus not very useful to our users), the only reviews of theirs that we include are those from their blog, which tend to be a little more conversational and, well, TTAC-like than the somewhat more antiseptic official breakdowns they do in the magazine. That said, I do find their blog interesting, from a meta-perspective.
This site is pretty cool. Even though I think distilling reviews into numerals from a mysterious/subjective weighted formula is pretty lame. I'm torn. But who knew I was 0.2 points more credible than Jonny Lieberman? Seriously??? I'm glad this information is available on the Interweb!
I'm in to this Motormouths thing - a review aggregator takes care of most of the work of digging up car reviews. It's going up in my favorites tab, that's for sure. Really, it's a great niche and I hope they don't stray too far from the concept, because it's easy to use & understand.