Reviews
Every site and outlet has its own method for reviews, and RoadsNorth is no different in that regard. Here’s where you’ll find our guide to the way we review things and what the verdicts mean.
How We Review
In essence, we’re writing for the consumer and not to show how clever we are with words, or to try to sell you anything.
That means digging into what’s on offer, pulling out what’s relevant and of interest, and expressing it as plainly as possible while still hopefully being engaging and fun. Sometimes the nature of these things requires a little bit of tech waffle, but we’ll do our best to explain it on the way through.
Depending on what’s being reviewed — and there’s more on that below — we’ll divide up the review into appropriate segments to deliver the relevant information and opinion. At the end of each review we’ll provide three alternatives (where possible) appropriate to the scores below.
Scoring
It’s normal to find scored reviews — usually out of five, ten, or as a percentage, and sometimes expressed as stars — but we don’t use a traditional method like this. We find that, due to there being so few actually bad cars now, the full range is rarely used; to misquote Syndrome, when everything is 7/10 or better, nothing is.
Often these scores don’t really take account of the type of vehicle being reviewed either, and where they do it can be confusing to see things like a three-row SUV rated at the same practicality as a two-seat convertible.
Instead we use an ABC system. Quite simply, we assign a letter based on how likely we are to recommend the thing to someone in the market for that kind of thing.
- A – We’d recommend this product
- B – You should consider this product
- C – We wouldn’t recommend this product
This is also supplemented by a +/- modifier which allows for a little fine-tuning. Something rated with a + has more to recommend it than alternatives, while something rated with a – has less, with just the raw letter score between the two.
While that generates an effective nine-point score, you shouldn’t substitute the letters with a score out of nine.
Car Reviews
You’ll hopefully find plenty of these here, where we get hands-on with a vehicle to evaluate its various capabilities, and they take one of four forms:
Quick Drive Review
This is the shortest possible and least comprehensive experience. Sometimes manufacturers may bring several cars to an event – or several manufacturers may bring their cars – and we get a very brief taster that may not even last 30-60 minutes. These are enough to get very quick overall impressions, but won’t necessarily reflect a day-to-day experience with the car.
First Drive Review
These comprise tests from events where new vehicles are the focus, and may cover longer, multi-hour drives over one or two days. Again, it’s not comparable to an ownership experience, but these drives tend to cover a lot of time at the wheel on mixed road types and are more likely to reveal flaws and foibles.
Road Test Review
We’ll create these reviews based on what are known as “short-term” test cars. These are provided by a press office for the purposes of evaluation and usually for the span of a week. Driven on familiar roads over a test route and/or for longer trips (sometimes to events of the above two types!), these reviews more broadly reflect how the vehicle is to live with on a day-to-day basis.
Long-Term Review
Similar to short-term test cars, long-term vehicles are provided by press offices for a period of around six months. These reviews are usually divided up into monthly updates, providing a look into how the vehicle is as a general ownership prospect and how opinion of it may change over time. Although it’ll be a while before we include a long-term review — it’s a new site after all — these will be the only reviews where the car isn’t scored, until the final entry.
Product Reviews
These will vary, depending on the type of product under review, and we’ll be constantly evaluating how we perform them. As we’ll be covering just about anything car related — from toys and games to parts and car-care products — what’s appropriate for one product type may not be appropriate to others.
Destination Reviews
This is another category that will evolve over time, as we include more and different types of destination. Examples could include motoring themed museums and venues, race tracks, and hotels in the RoadsNorth region.