Nissan Hires Champion Car Reviewer
Some say reviewing cars is an unglamorous dead-end job, and the only benefits are free gas and canapés. That impression is up for review on hearing that Nissan hired the senior auto reviewer for Consumer Reports magazine.
David Champion, senior director of Consumer Reports Auto Test Center, quits his job to work at Nissan’s vehicle testing center in Arizona as the executive adviser on vehicle quality, Bloomberg reports. The fact that Champion has prior experience as a Nissan engineer from 1994 to 1997 should dash premature hopes of car reviewing bloggers for an executive career on the dark side.
Bertel Schmitt comes back to journalism after taking a 35 year break in advertising and marketing. He ran and owned advertising agencies in Duesseldorf, Germany, and New York City. Volkswagen A.G. was Bertel's most important corporate account. Schmitt's advertising and marketing career touched many corners of the industry with a special focus on automotive products and services. Since 2004, he lives in Japan and China with his wife <a href="http://www.tomokoandbertel.com"> Tomoko </a>. Bertel Schmitt is a founding board member of the <a href="http://www.offshoresuperseries.com"> Offshore Super Series </a>, an American offshore powerboat racing organization. He is co-owner of the racing team Typhoon.
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How will he continue to smear Suzuki in this new role? Will he try 45 times to get a car to roll then, when finally successful, proclaim it as unsafe? Inquiring minds want to know.
Was it Dave Coleman who ended up working at Mazda? That was another journalist who landed a job with a carmaker.
Nissan doesn't need to hire an "expert" to diagnose its problems---you've read it in the comments above. 1. Bottom-tier interior quality (see any used 2004-2009 generation 350Z roadster or Altima or 2007-2009 Infiniti G Sedan). 2. Given the corners cut on things that you can see you have a naggling feeling that Nissan cut corners everywhere you can't see too. My experiences being a passenger in/test driving the 2004-2008 Nissan/Infiniti products have soured me to Nissan---even if they've improved their products, I don't want to bother giving them a second chance.
This seemed almost like a backhanded compliment for domestic small cars. Kind of like "well, they're finally somewhat appealing, but we'll see if they really last." Oddly, he brings up the competition as being the Civic, which is considered to be underdeveloped and universally hated. And he brings up the Mazda 3. I like the 3 a lot, but it's not regarded as being a reliable car like Corolla or Civic vanilla mobiles.