I've often wondered about the honesty of some well-respected reviews. I'm a bit worried that some of the authors might have a vested interest in what they're writing. I remember years ago being in one of the first Citroen AX series cars to hit Europe; my friend had bought it on the strength of a review in a top British newspaper. It was, without argument, one of the worst vehicles I'd ever been in. Noisy, uncomfortable, eccentric as only the French know how, and giving you a really unsafe feeling. But it had had excellent positive reviews. Likewise the Nissan Micra, a totally useless car for anyone who's not an oriental midget whose other family members have all cleared off.
These days, in Europe, NO SUV gets a really sound, fair, positive report. If the car can't re-freeze Antarctica, resurrect every whale that the Japanese have managed to kill, pump ozone out through its exhaust to plaster-in the hole in the atmosphere, insulate your five-bedroomed house, produce a tofu-based lunch for a family of six and be re-cycled into a three hundred foot-high windmill then no reviewer is really interested in its performance as a car.
The world market-leader in the SUV range is almost certainly the Land Rover Discovery3, but everywhere it's dismissed as a "gas-guzzler".
Well, so are half of the "people carriers"*, such as Chrysler Voyager and the like, but because these have such a family-friendly image no one raises a squeak. It's crazy.
Rocal
* I've always thought this was a weird expression, "people carrier". Surely it's just the definition of a "motor car".
