Hey, Jalopnik referenced our community

In an article on convertible crossovers of the '90s, they mentioned the Land Rover Freelander. They also referenced one of the threads where the GRM community savaged the Land Rover Freelander 

"Today, you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone besides myself defending the Freelander. There are plenty of hilarious threads hating on it though–“Best served on fire, with a gin and tonic as you watch it burn,” somebody said on the Grassroots Motorsports forum."

Of course, Jalopnik defended the Freelander, because Jalopnik. And surprisingly this article wasn't written by Jason Torchinsky

Where's the article?

MadScientistMatt said:

Where's the article?

Hahahaha, whoops

https://jalopnik.com/compact-convertible-suvs-of-the-90s-a-retrospective-1832607351

Well, they had to reference one place that has knowledge. 

bobzilla said:

Well, they had to reference one place that has knowledge. 

Truth.  They really should rename that terrible site "Buzzfeed for cars"

are they (and many other similar sites) still stealing ideas and content from Reddit?

Next they'll be mining the GRM forum for ideas to write their "articles"

Probably already happening! We should post a Jalop-bate article on here.

All joking aside, I’m glad they’re out there, some of them write stuff that is better than a lot of stuff written about cars. It’s all about click bait now. people have to put food on the table after all. None of us are getting paid to write about the stuff we like to read about. I was able to write professionally about cars for 4 months before the company nixed the whole writing department. If it clicks, it survives, or if you can put a ton of silly ads on it. 

I'll admit, I actually enjoy Jalopnik. Some of their stuff is really pretty funny (for example, any of the Fancy Kristen articles). And they do write some stuff that is actually pretty informative, like last month they had a deep dive into what happened to the stillborn Mazda luxury brand Amati.

Haven't we all decided that the Freelander is the only car we can't find a justifiable excuse to own? Like literally the only one. I mean were talking about Mopar M-bodies positively other day. 

In reply to Daylan C :

Yes. The great Swank Force One dubbed it the "Anti-Miata", in that Freelander is never the Answer. Man, I miss SFO

Daylan C said:

Haven't we all decided that the Freelander is the only car we can't find a justifiable excuse to own? Like literally the only one. I mean were talking about Mopar M-bodies positively other day. 

No, we did find one good use for it: Monster Truck Crushing

They should be happy for us to mention them.

NickD said:

In reply to Daylan C :

Yes. The great Swank Force One dubbed it the "Anti-Miata", in that Freelander is never the Answer. Man, I miss SFO

I miss Ben too. I wonder what happened to him?

bobzilla said:

NickD said:

In reply to Daylan C :

Yes. The great Swank Force One dubbed it the "Anti-Miata", in that Freelander is never the Answer. Man, I miss SFO

I miss Ben too. I wonder what happened to him?

"Needed a break from the internet" was what people who know him said

In reply to NickD :

yeah that is what he said to me long ago.... he's local. Or was. But I haven't heard from him in forever. two phones back I lost a lot of numbers and his was one of them. 

So I have a friend who willingly bought a two-door Freelander. Its name is Liam the Landy and was 100% fine at Being An Car until the transmission shat the bed. Now he's looking at buying a parts Freelander to have in the side yard for not only the transmission but any other things that fail and are hard to find.

Also, I like Jalopnik. They have some amusing pieces, some bizarre in-depth work that I really appreciate, and I think their review format is easy to consume and generally has decent coverage. If you want stodgy news, it's over at Autoblog or CNet Autos or US News or whatever other news publications you prefer to consume. Jalopnik is wacky on purpose.

The most irritating part of Jalopnik is that several writers fancy themselves more adept at correctly utilizing English vocabulary than their demonstrated skills suggest they are. Sadly, they seem to want to demonstrate this imagined proficiency all too often. It's quite annoying but, given that I see no evidence of anyone performing the task of actually editing content before it's published, also not surprising.

I actually enjoyed that article quite a bit! It's normal for car writers to snoop around forums looking for ideas. I give them a pass if, unlike a lot of written word on the internet, their writing isn't semi-painful to read. English mastery is worth paying for. 

Off to research Freelanders...