Two stars/5.
7,495 - 10,395 Pounds
-The sales blurb reckons the Rio can 'seduce you with its fancy features such as driver's seat height adjustment, and power steering.' It's got inflatable tires too, and windows.
BAD!"
"NISSAN GT-R
FIVE STARS.
59,400 - 60,700 Pounds
- Godzilla just got more god-like. Big, deft, devastatingly fast and a bargain compared with similarly powered vehicles ( -Ferrari- F430, Space Shuttle). We put it against a (Porsche) 911 Turbo, and it won.
GOOD!"
"FERRARI 612 SCAGLIETTI
Three stars.
212, 618 Pounds
-Climb in blindfolded. Remove mask, and thrash the life out of it. Superb. Climb out and stare at it and.... Oh dear. Fine, if expensive GT with genuinely usable rear seats.
UGLY!"
-CAR UK, May 2010. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.
Nope, I have no intention of demoting KIA and Ferrari, nor promoting Nissan. Not at all. Then, why on earth these three quotes? Well, they are just a sample of the beauty of car magazines. A healthy dose of the talent those people engaged in automotive journalism possess. When it comes to this sort of downright, harsh criticism, there is no better place than CAR's GBU (Good, Bad and Ugly). The segment, found at the last part of the mag, tests almost all the cars sold in the UK, and wraps up the stats in a nutshell, with some punchy mini - verdicts.
Ferrari 612 Scaglietti. Comment on the looks.
Don't frown. I know, many non - enthusiasts won't find these interesting, let alone appealing or humorous. But, for car nuts, there can be fewer things more entertaining than reading a car magazine (there can be, such as driving a Porsche/ Lambo/ Ferrari, or a NISSAN GT-R). Why the italics? Well, I'm referring to the tangible magazines made of paper, not the ones that appear on your PC, laptop, tablet or smartphone screen.
The only truly useful stall at the Colombo International Book Fair for me is the Vijitha Yapa Associates' bookstall. On almost all of my CIBF visits, I'd actually spend at least half a day there, frantically skimming through all the cut-price old car mags (not that old, may be one or two years, or three at most). Their price when new can be easily termed as unacceptably high, so buying them sometime later is easily a bargain. You may not get the latest info, but for that you have the internet. Nothing can come close to the effect of a well written piece on a car. It makes you feel the car, without may be even seeing it in flesh. How on earth do I have a reverence for the Porsche 911 GT3, or the Lambo Murcielago, or even the Audi Ur Quattro, a car which stopped production back in 1991, the year I was born? How did I become a theoretical expert in Evos? How did I start to respect Audi as a brand brimming with build quality? With plenty of thanks to the authors, and contributors of Autocar and CAR, and occasionally some other magazine. And those writers definitely had a lot of influence on my English usage.
Technology is overtaking humanity at a rapid pace. Smartphone era is ushering a brand new age, and internet has drastically reduced the actual need for printed media. But hardly anything can replace the feel of an actual book, or a magazine. May be that's why the newspaper has survived the test of its age. Forget the 'net ,theoretically the television should have made the 'paper' obsolete almost decades back. But the newspaper still soldiers on without any fear of being obsolete. For me, my car - magazine era started way before the internet became a part of my life. They were the only sources of knowledge I could afford, on automobiles, beyond what I had already known. That's why, even after a net search on car news has become daily routine, sitting down to read a car mag feels so unique, so special. The moment you fold it back, you've refreshed a lot, and are driving quite a few cars by heart. Something the virtual - mags, or news sites can never achieve.
NEVER.
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