OPINION: Motoring journalists have no real sway on car buyers

Naturally, I'm duty bound to say that there is value in listening to car journalists' opinions. Contrary to what corners of the internet will tell you, manufacturers don't pay us off (not the non-influencers, anyway), and we all have a genuine interest in helping car buyers choose the right car. 

That said, Joe Blogs in need of a reliable way to get from A to B has different priorities to a motoring journalist who spends their time talking about understeer, oversteer and exactly how well a 1.4-litre Volkswagen Golf handles on ‘the limit'. 

To prove the two camps don't always meet, take the original Audi TT.

Any motoring journalist worth their salt would have told you the TT looked like it had been prised from Audi's stand at Earls Court; it really was a concept car for the road. But the same journalist would also have told you that the TT was a Volkswagen Golf (and not a very good one) dressed in a posh frock. Frankly, a Porsche Boxster would run rings around it. Everywhere. 

Did you listen? Of course you didn't. 

For many, that the humble Golf underpinned the TT was a good thing, because a Mk4 Volkswagen Golf-based coupé is quite a lot cheaper to maintain than a mid-engined, six-cylinder Porsche. The TT looked stunning but cost little more to run than a hatchback, making it an overwhelming sales success. 

It's also the case that some people care about aspects of a car a conventional review doesn't cover. My previous life as a motoring agony aunt gave me plenty of examples of this. People who could only get comfortable behind the wheel of particular car brands, folk who would refuse to buy a car because it had engine start-stop or not even contemplate a car with an electric handbrake.

Growing up, my late father wouldn't buy a car until the dog we had at the time was presented with the boot and showed a willingness to jump in it; if the dog wouldn't get in, the sale was off. As such, I'll forever remember Paddy the Mongrel as the dog that cost ‘me’ a turbocharged Subaru Forester. 

The old Honda Civic Type R is the reverse of the Audi TT: car journalists love it; the car-buying public does not. 

No other hot hatch handled 320PS (235kW) — power once thought beyond the ability of a front-wheel-drive — with the breezy indifference of the Honda. Its body control was immense, its brakes powerful, and its rifle-bolt gearshift to die for. By some margin, it was the best hot hatch of the time.

But it wasn't the best seller, not by a long stretch, because its body — peppered with spoilers and air vents — made you look like an oik, and no protestations of handling purity would make the non-enthusiast car-buying public see differently. 

The MK7 Golf GTI, meanwhile, was often declared 'dull' by the experts because it was softer-edged, more livable and didn't look like a child had styled it. You can guess where this is going: VW couldn't shift them quickly enough. 

But the Toyota GT86 represents the gap between what car journalists and regular carbuyers want better than anything else. 

The GT86, the journalists said, was the perfect tonic to the modern performance car, a machine focussed on how it made you feel, not how quickly you went. It didn't have much power because it didn't need it; its four-cylinder boxer wheezed out more than enough to overawe the economy-rubber shod back wheels. 

Who would care that a modern turbodiesel made the Toyota feel grindingly slow and that it had a cabin composed mainly of the kind of plastics you'd find inside a chocolate box?

Actually, everyone did. 

The GT86 flopped harder than a Jaguar Land Rover marketing campaign. Go to a well-known classified site now, and you'll find that the ubiquitous Audi TT outnumbers the brilliant little Toyota by around 7-1. 

But proof of the meaninglessness of motoring journalism comes from my own car-buying habits. Having worked my way through all the car journalist clichés — the Toyota MR2, GT86, Mazda MX-5 and Porsche Boxster — when it came to buying my first family car, did I buy the car I would have told you to, the BMW 5 Series Touring? I did not. 

I wanted a car that would be safe, solid and — with the most precious people in my life travelling in it — one that absolutely would not encourage me to drive quickly, which is why you will find a Volvo in the space that should contain a BMW Touring.