Check out the thread called Bottom Gear in this general discussion part of the forum and you'll see I posted this:-
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Hy there.
I've just written a nice little letter to the editor of Top Gear magazine. I hope you like it.
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Hya folks.
Since I had a few hours to kill on a train I decided to pick the November edition of your mag since I usually quite enjoy your programme. I have to admit though that I'm completely baffled by the way you score your reviews.
I was looking at the review of the Golf 4Motion and decided to check it against a similar car, so I picked out the MG ZR 160. So how did it fare? Well, quite frankly, I'm totally bamboozled by the comparisons. Lets try a few.
Price wise, the Golf comes out tops since at about £19,000 its about four grand more than the MG, but that oughta work in the MG's favour, no?
Ok, lets try 0 to 60 then. Nope again there matey. The Golf does it in 9.2 seconds whereas the MG does it in 7.4. The maximum speeds are very close I admit, but the MG still comes out on top with a healthy 131 mph against the Golfs 129 mph. This is done funnily enough despite it having a smaller engine inside it. This is probably why the MG has a higher MPG rating, 37.6 against 33.5, than the German machine.
Somehow, your review manages to defy all logic, even womans logic as my girlfriend was equally as unimpressed as I was, by giving the Golf a healthy 12 out of 20, whereas the MG has a paultry 6 out of 20. The car must look absolutely stunning then to get such a massively higher score, but no, It looks very very average, whereas the ZR is a superb looking car from all angles. Don't just take my word for it, ask the people who I have never met before in my life who have come up to me and said that my car, admittedly only a 105 but with the same looks at a 160, is gorgeous.
There is the old argument that the ZR is only a Rover 25 really and that its mutton dressed as lamb, but the Golf has been out for a whole lot longer than even the 25 (my mother was selling them way back in the 1970's), so isn't the Golf more like fossil dressed as lamb by comparison?
Maybe though, I'm just interpreting the scores wrongly. Perhaps the lower the score then the higher your rating, sort of in the same way that A4 paper is larger than A5, which would mean that a hell of a lot of the cars with big marks really are quite shite and the ones with the lower scores are the ones to watch out for. Either that or your reviews are garbage.
Ewan
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I hope that helps you a bit. There were a few other comments that followed it from various people too.
Cheers. Ewan.
