7 Things Auto Journalists Annoyingly Complain About (But Shouldn't)

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Some journos just never realized that not every car should be judged by how similar it is to Koenigsegg. Nobody who buys a Toyota Avalon is looking for the handling prowess of a Nissan GT-R. In fact, said buyers are specifically looking for comfort, which, yes, will come along with a certain degree of body roll. A critic should judge a car based on what it is meant to be and by how much it costs.

When I was screaming down the pit straight of Big Willow in a Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG Black Series at 165 mph, or at the limits of traction in the Omega, I was at no point bored or unengaged, despite the fact that the SLS Black only comes with a *gasp!* automatic transmission. Old automatic transmissions were annoying as hell because they were never in the right gear, which gave the complete control of a manual a huge advantage. Now you can have control of the shifting in a paddle-shifted automatic, and there are a ton of track-side advantages.

Yes, a manual is indeed fun, I'm not saying that they're not, but exploring the limits of a car's capabilities is fun as long as you have a good transmission.

We all know that RWD is the most fun, followed by AWD, and that is followed distantly by FWD. There's a very good reason that front-driven cars exist, however, and it's that they're cheap. The FWD layout is a big part of what makes a cheap car cheap, so stop complaining that the Ford Focus doesn't have power going to the rear wheels. 

That said, please do continue complaining about expensive front drivers. What the hell is Lincoln doing?

Diesel engines are great, and they need evangelizing journalists in the USA, because most Americans view diesel as an awful, smelly, dirty, inefficient thing for tractors and '70s Oldsmobiles. That said, gas engines are far more efficient than they ever have been, with a number of subcompacts getting 40mpg EPA ratings, and gas is still affordable, if not inexpensive, in America. Gas prices in the states are about half of what they are in Europe, and we have additional taxes on diesel engines. Diesels are great, but they're not a God-send.

Also, we tend to get the best diesel options, like VW's torquey and reasonably powerful 2.0L TDI, and unlike all of the pathetic little 80hp I3s from the EU.

Hybrids used to just be straight up awful to drive, but we think that the McLaren P1 and Porsche 918 have definitively proved that they can be absolutely amazing.

Yes, people complain about traction. It's not because they're against handling, but they're so pro-oversteer that they forget that oversteer, while preferable to understeer, is still a failure of handling. Take the original Audi TT, for example. Critics raved about how much fun all the oversteer was and how "great" the handling was, but when consumers got the cars they died because the OG TT had crap handling until it was recalled. You need traction. 

Yeah, we have genuinely met people who will complain about being flown to Spain to drive a supercar and stay in one of the world's finest hotels. They complain about how long the drive is to the hotel, they complain about the fact that they have to wake up at 6 a.m. to go to the track, they complain about how the menu of premium steak is set and they don't get to choose, and they complain about any other little minute thing they can think of. It's absolutely ludicrous. We're of the opinion that anybody who has grown bored of cool cars should find a new career and make way for one of the hundreds of aspiring writers.