I got some new neighbors a few months back, which meant I had to walk over and give them the talk. No, not about the birds and the bees, but about press cars.
Here’s the gist of my speech: When a car company loves a target market, it parks loaner cars in random journalists’ driveways f…
Ah, the Miami market! That explains the weird collection of luxo-SUVs that GRM gets. I've always wondered.
FYI, our first NC development car was an ex-press fleet car. We got it with 3500 miles on the clock and it had bald rear tires. On a 150 rwhp Miata :)
My family has always had the suspicion that Miata 338 was also a press car, as the original owner was Mazda and it was a very, very early car. Miata 348 was the long term test car for R&T.
Another press fleet story! I was present for a TV shoot of Proving Grounds, which was a pretty fun track-based test of various performance cars shot at Chuckwalla. BMW had provided an M2 Competition and Hyundai a Veloster N. The guys burned the rear tires off the M2 in pretty short order doing big lairy drifts on corner exit. Called BMW, they said "sure, take it to the dealership in Vegas and they'll hook you up". That's a 7 hour round trip.
Eventually, after looking through the race garages, we took the front tires off the Mustang that was also there, mounted them on the BMW wheels and finished the shoot. Mustang went home with bald front tires and the BMW went home with a totally different brand of tires front and rear.
Meanwhile, Hyundai dropped of 2-3 sets of spare rubber with the Veloster. They knew what was going to happen :) I was there with the V8 ND Miata and I also had a spare set in the truck.
Hah, I've heard so many horror stories. Many I can't repeat, but here's one of my favorites from a friend at a major OEM:
[OEM's Phone Rings]
"Hey, we're in the desert jumping press trucks, and yours just blew all of its airbags. You're out of the story unless you can get us a replacement truck in six hours. Oh, and same specs and same color since we've already shot half the photos. Also, you're going to need to send a tow truck for the truck we destroyed."
My buddy happened to have the keys to an identical press truck in his hand... because he was on his way to deliver it to a major celebrity for a major event. He canceled on the celebrity, turned around, and had the truck delivered to the middle of the desert before the deadline. The story ran, and they remained a part of it.
Such is the life of a press car.
Another related question I get a lot is about ringers. Whether manufacturers are supplying us with specially-prepped vehicles to outperform their own capabilities in dynammic tests.
First, I'll say that after years of knowing a lot of the folks at manufacturer media departments, this has absolutely happened in the past. Maybe not full cheater cars, but it wouldn't surprise me to find out that a little more camber or boost had been cranked into a test car, or that simply a particularly good exxample was chose from a fleet for delivery to a specific outlet.
That said, I don't think this is happening in our case at all. We're far enough away from the LA/Detroit hubs of the manufacturers and the consumer magazines that we're not getting any special treatment aside from rigorous dealer-based maintenance.
The was one brand that was suspected of supplying test cars with stickier than usual tires, and while our particular example did have excellent grip, i think there's enough variation between tire production runs and track conditions and atmospheric conditions to explain this, at least in the case of our tester.
Actually these days the manufacturers are so protective of thier IP and likely so worried about potential liability issues that on those occasions that we've asked their media departments if we could throw a track alignment on something then return it to OEM before we give it back they've basically said "hahahaha F no."
Why are you asking before doing an alignment? ;) It's the first thing any enthusiast should do with a new car, even if it's only to a low tolerance factory one. We picked up 1-2 seconds on our new ND just by doing a string alignment in the pits the second day we owned it.
Tom Suddard said:Hah, I've heard so many horror stories. Many I can't repeat....
I'm down for as many of these stories as you can reveal. Keep em coming.
Thanks for the inside info.
Re: cheater cars/tires. More than one outlet remarked about the possibility when VW released the MK8 GTI.
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