Writing Car Test Drive Reviews Is Difficult

Lately, I’ve been thinking, “Writing car test drive reviews is actually pretty tough.” Since this Porsche blog is entirely written privately by an individual, it’s naturally subjective, which I think is also its charm, but still, it’s quite challenging in many ways.

So, why is writing test drive reviews so difficult? I’d like to summarize a few reasons here.

1 Your Evaluation Changes Based on the Car You Usually Drive

Your evaluation of a test-driven car varies completely depending on what car you usually drive. Often, you use your everyday car as a baseline and compare or analyze the test car against it.

For example, we once had a Volkswagen Golf 7 at home. It had a wonderfully flat and comfortable ride, so I praised it highly, thinking, “If I drove this for a while, it might even start to feel like a Porsche.”

さよならゴルフ7、そしてありがとう – 約3年間所有しての総評

However, after test driving a Cayenne at the dealer and being impressed by its smoothness and superb driving performance, I got back into the Golf and suddenly felt that the ride, which I had always thought was “wonderful,” was actually rough and unpleasant.

My husband even said, “Hey, is something loose on the Golf or something?” because he couldn’t feel that smoothness in the ride. But after a while, as we started to forget the Cayenne’s ride, the Golf once again felt truly excellent.

At that moment, I thought, “Human perception is really like that — not very reliable at all (-_-).”

So, even if you say simply, “I’m reviewing a Porsche test drive,” the evaluation will be completely different depending on whether the person usually drives a Mercedes-Benz or a BMW. Also, within Porsche owners themselves, a Boxster owner’s evaluation of a Cayman will be very different from a 911 owner’s evaluation of the same Cayman.

Thinking about this, I realize that this Porsche blog’s key point is that it’s “Porsche lovers who are Porsche owners evaluating other cars.” That perspective is very important.

2 Evaluations Vary According to Personal Preferences

Everyone has likes and dislikes. Some people “love Porsche’s design,” while others “dislike Porsche’s design.” Some “love Ferrari’s driving,” while others “dislike Ferrari’s driving.”

This is more about personal taste than right or wrong.

By the way, my husband loves Porsche, but his younger brother prefers Ferrari or Lamborghini over Porsche, so while they often have lively car discussions, there are also parts where they just can’t see eye to eye (laughs).

When my husband and I test drive cars, we don’t focus much on interior luxury or extensive safety features; instead, we often look at whether the car drives well.

Also, we like a flat and firm ride, so we enjoy the ride quality of Porsche and Golf, but conversely, we’re not fond of the soft ride that’s generally popular with most people.

These kinds of preferences also make it difficult to express things clearly.

3 There Are People Who Love This Car

Sometimes when we drive a domestic loaner car, we’re surprised by its performance in a different way and think, “Honestly, this just won’t do…” (Not that all domestic cars are bad). But when we look it up online, we find there are definitely people who love that car, so I think, “Maybe I should soften my words when writing a test drive review…” and sometimes end up not writing the article at all.

On the flip side, if I do post a review on the blog, it means “the car was pretty good enough to write about” (laughs).

These are some of the difficulties in writing test drive reviews. When I talked about this with my husband, he said:

Our blog is basically written by people who love Porsche—or rather, people who love driving itself more than the car—so we pretty much ignore things like how much cargo space there is or how roomy the interior is, making our reviews quite biased, lol.
In the end, I think it depends on “what the person is looking for?” For someone seeking a comfortable ride, even the most amazing sports car will seem terrible, and conversely, someone wanting a sharp sports car won’t like any luxurious, spacious minivan.
Also, the car you drove just before is pretty important and can completely change your evaluation. For example, in our case, “after driving the GT3, the Panamera feels amazing,” but “after driving the Boxster, the 964 feels… hmm…” However, if you drive the Panamera before the 964, you think “Oh, that’s nice!” I don’t know why, but it seems the combination changes your evaluation.
Right now, I’m secretly experimenting with using smartphone vibration and noise sensor apps to quantify various values and add them to reviews. That way, it’ll be more objective. Well, I’m not sure how it’ll turn out, but I’m trying different apps now.

Vibration and noise sensor apps…!? I don’t really get it, but it seems my husband is thinking about all kinds of things, lol.

Car Blog Rankings

Thanks to everyone, the number of readers of this blog has been increasing a lot recently, and the other day, when I checked the “weekly page view ranking in the car blog category on Blog Village,” we were actually number one.

Apparently, some people involved in the car industry and even dealers read this blog… Thank you all so much.

While I’m very happy that more people are reading this Porsche blog, at the same time, I’ve become much more conscious about choosing my words carefully when writing.

Even though I want to “go deeper and get to the heart of things” in each article, I often hold back and only express about 70% of what I want to say after considering various factors.

Because of this, sometimes I feel like “what we really want to convey isn’t being fully communicated,” so lately I’ve been thinking about creating a closed space where we can share more openly.