Quote:
Originally Posted by AnalogMan
I posted this story both here and on the 86 thread. It's interesting to see the different reactions. There were many more comments on the 86 thread (13 so far) than here, almost all of them pretty critical and derisive of the Daily Tourismo writer. Here there was @ spcmafia's gracious and light-hearted post.
Yes, the Daily Tourismo write-up isn't going to win a Pulitzer prize; yes, there were inconsistencies in the article; yes, the author didn't make many particularly deep new observations; and yes, it took him 7 years to 'discover' the BRZ/86.
However, what I thought was nice about the article was that the writer really just gets it about the BRZ/86. Daily Tourismo is a site primarily about old cars. They post found classified ads and articles about classic and inexpensive sports cars - yet the author wrote about this new car. He gets it that the BRZ/86 is a new old car. It's a new car that captures the soul and spirit of the classic sports cars of the 1960's/1970's. In a world increasingly moving to floppy paddle-shifted everything, anodyne turbo engines, and (gasp!) soulless electric cars, it's a marvel that the BRZ/86 exists at all, and he gets it. Plus it's (relatively) cheap, just like the sports cars of the 60's were in their time.
I think it's also great that 7 years after the car comes out, there's someone writing a review of it. All the other traditional car magazines/blogs/etc. have long since moved on to the newest shiny thing, but Daily Tourismo's writer is giving some attention to a 7 year old model, because he understands how special it is.
Kudos to him. |
I think you will find that part of the issue is that some of us have read hundreds and hundreds of such articles and they have lost any impact at all. In this particular case his message is lost through the very limited info he gives. Existing owners are going to say “we know” and possible new owners are going to say “meh sounds boring”.
Sure he “gets it” but he does a very poor job of passing it on. If he had said something more like you did his message may have been more clear to those that don’t know the car and he may have sparked some interest. As written it is just a list of data with some brief asides thrown in. Since you know you are reading things into the content that others without experience with the car just would not catch.
Edit: read the comments. You did a better job of presenting the car than he did. Also notice that the other people commenting mostly said they like the idea of the car but would not likely buy one. The fact that it is discontinued is not made clear so a least one guy was going to wait.
My point is that the author didn’t put enough homework into the status of the car and the whole “ people should buy these but I am not” really shows up in the comments.