Ok first off I put this here because I know many of us rely on the various magazines to make up part of our buying decisions, and for the first time buyer they may have a really large influence on their decisions thru any one of a number or "shoot outs", tests and other advertizing.

The idea of this thread is to allow us the atv community to have a place to share our thoughts on, and report to each other what we think to be total BS (straight up lies) intentionally confusing, misleading or otherwise not 100% accurate info reported by the magazines we all enjoy reading.

Doesnt matter if its the usual "goof up" error of listing the wrong amount of gears, reverse or ride height and clearence or something more sinister like over glorifying an older model worked up by one of their bigger advertizers in a review that is a better add for the advertizer than the one they pay for directly.

Maybe it could be something like was done by atv sport a few years ago as a favor to one of their picture and story contributors when they allowed the owner of another atv site to write up his own 4 page review of his site that was never checked for any accuracy, and was far from being completely truthfull (ok much total BS), but was printed anyhow.

Or maybe you prefer to discuss how it seems that the writter or editor seem to obviously prefer one brand over another by writing their reviews in such a way that misleads the reader. Writting things such as "it offered a firm landing" in a review of the product of a large paying advertizer is very much to their best interest than actually saying what firm means ("hard landings" lol).

A recent test earlier this year of the 450 class models was really interesting to me. It had so many confusing statements I lost count. Just as I was starting to think that this one magazine was totally not in favor of american made and owned atv companies due to their playing down that models good points, and playing up its bad ones I realized that it was the only model in the test that did not have any paid advertizing.

I know of so many more it could take weeks to record them all, but I see people complaining about this all the time, and figured what would be better than a thread to discuss all the mess ups, lies and intentionaly misleading of reader so that all of us could benefit from knowing what was to be believed or not when making a buying decision.

 

440ex026, I will offer my opinion because I AM that new guy that reads the magazines as well.....

As my signature states, I am a 31 yr old rookie who has always riden friends atv's but has never own my own and will be buying at the end of this yr...I bought a new Sea Doo in '96 and have been "toyless" since '98.

I have subscribed to ATVrider and ATVaction for a year now, reading them both cover to cover. I have watched countless ATVtelevision shows and I am on this forum almost daily.....all in an effort to make the best, informed decision I can on my first ATV of my own.....well that and it is fun as well!

I agree with your post......to a certain extent. First of all, just to acknowledge that you really only make one point, not that it is a bad one, but it is one....the relationship of the magazine against it's buyer's of the mag's (us) and against their other source of revenue....the advertisers. Please remember that BOTH bring in revenue and all though we don't know what really goes on in the background...they have every incentive in the world to support both....not just the advertisers, because w/o us their would be no advertisers.

I agree with you that there has to be at least some "walking of a fine line" by them when it comes to the advertisers....for me to disagree with you here would be absolutely ridiculous. It would be like me telling my wife that she is the most beautiful woman in the world and that just because I am married I don't find any other women attractive......ridiculous, right...the magazines, w/o a doubt watch what they say and how they say it! I think that most of us (like you) understand that most of that is JUST BUSINESS and any smart person can see through most of it and make our own decisions based off many factors not just one article.....I KNOW I AM.

The part I disagree with.....I can tell you about countless articles that feature just about every make and model and have various manufacturers winning the shoot-out's. As hard as it would be to walk that fine line, I for one, think they do a pretty good job! Polaris was the ATV of the year, in one of the 2 I read, for '05. (ATVrider, I think) with Suzuki's King Quad as the runner up. I have seen the Kawasaki's BF750 win, Honda's 450r win, and huge feature articles on Bom's new 800 and Yamaha's new bikes......what more do you want? They have a tough job as well and anyone that would spend $7,000 from reading one article isn't all that smart, in my humble opinion, and that are at risk at all kinds of bad decisions throughout their life. You could say the same thing for commercials on TV and people who buy from their, newspaper articles vs their advertisers.......etc

I am that rookie and like I said, I have seen them feature just about every single maker of ATV's and in shoot-out's, I have seen the same. I would never base a decision on one source and for the position they are in (which is a business), I think they do a pretty good job overall.

 

Stocks, very well said! I am a magazine junky. I buy em all, and agree with your observations. SHootout results are not much more than opinions based on a few short days riding experiences. As such they are likely to not match up perfectly to any one individuals' experiences. What I have found though, is that reading a variety of mags gives you a more rounded and accurate look at these machines.

 

My only real gripes with the major magazines is with their editing (or lack of). Every issue of DW and ATVAction always contains basic mistakes. It's usually simple stuff - mistakes in specs, info in the article saying one thing and yet having that information in one of their side-bar boxes say the opposite - things like that. While most of the time someone with ATV experience can figure out what they really were trying to say, it's the fact that it is so easy to find that bothers me. The fact that they can't take the time to proofread their own articles makes me sometimes doubt the accuracy of their 'facts' that I cannot confirm.

Jaybee

 

I hear to jaybeecon. I have to admit my biggest gripe is the simple grammatical errors, mostly from DW and 4WA. I often find myself thinking they must be hella good riders as thsy sure can't write literately. Maybe I could be editor. I'd at least spring for a spell checker!

 

I read all the magazines, and I read all the relevent posts that I come across, and I don't believe any of it!

 

reconranger, I'm not picking on you and I think you have helped me out with my initial question this summer when I came on here BUT if you don't believe ANY of what the magazine's say then why would you read ALL of them....or even one for that matter?

 

I think that may be a little on the extreme side, but I can relate to it none the less.

Stocks, that was very well said, and I dont disagree with your thinking one bit, but I do think you missed one or two of the ideas (did I only have one point lol) and that was not just their actual opinion of their tests or shoot outs isnt what I question, but also how they totally misrepresent their own findings.

I wasnt realy using brands or names etc as to not tick anyone off and turn this into a pissin match from hell, but I guess to better explain my points I will have to elaborate more. If anyone doesnt agree with my opinion on whatever model or brand of part etc thats great and I take no insult, but please try not to turn this into a total mess and remember I dont work for the magazines and only read them like you do.

My first reference was to a multi page review/write up in atv sport about another atv website that was written by the people of the site, and just published in the mag without proofing any of the info. I dont want to rehash my issues with these people in the past, but at that time I was a member of that site and was present at the ride ( I was in the magazine also) where they supposedly had their intitial run and test of the sites "project" quad. There were goof ups, and editing issues as usual and plenty of unusual and unbelievable statements as you would maybe expect in a glorified add disguised as a review, but they also threw in a ton of things that were absolutely not true, and many just never happened.

I just think its wrong when a major magazine alows this to happen, and although it printed that this supposed super duper best in world 400ex performed well in its initial test etc all I can remember is that it didnt run and I helped push it into the trailer.

Are you better able to see what I meant about how when it suits them they will publish pretty much anything, and if what we read is inacurate or totally false does not mean damn to them as long as it looks good in the published product etc.

Now lets look at a recent test (I honestly cant remember if it was DW or ATVS) of the ATK, Pred TL, 450R, and YFZ450. Overall I think it was pretty good test even though it was done on the left coast which has terrain typical to a small portion of the country (desert sand etc) which may not show similar results of many if not most of their readers (an altogether different issue). If you read this you will see that they "cover" for most of the shortcomings of the models except for the ATK. In their evaluation of the predator they address some of the issues that caused them to rank it lower in the various tests, same for the honda, ATK and even the YFZ but they also made statements like how the 450R was successful in race trim, or that the Pred may be well suited for certain riders and how some of the problems witnessed could be overcome etc.

Now on the ATK all they had to say was for one reason the thought the cross country crowd had liked it, but otherwise only added negative things like its not being as "finished" or "refined" as the others. I dont own this model and am not defending it, but I have rode them and know them well enough to know that the fit and finish is similar to most of the others (excluding maybe the honda, but then I could be called biased lol), and oddly I also agree with their statements on its typical performance on the MX track, but whats really strange is that though they claimed to have liked it and it performed close to their number one track pic and even had more top end etc they placed it last. Only indication I could find was it being hard to start after stalling when hot.

To close the deal on making the only non advertizer brand look bad they claim that its expensive even though it has various different features not seen in the others (al frame, EFI etc etc).

I know that was one diffilcult test with how all the machines are advancing, but can you see how just a few words make such a large difference in what the reader retains?

Another was a write up on a new raptor 350 (the remake of the warrior) that was modded out with several thousands of dollars in mods, suspension and engine work. The machine itself was actualy sweet and I would have loved to have my old warrior set up like that, but the parts that made it senseless was how they tried to relate the story to allowing this model to keep up with the 400cc class (z400, kfx400, 400ex etc) with these mods, what they missed telling us was unless you have one of these surgically attached to your **** you could save thousands (its only $800 less new than the others) by buying one of the other models and still have better overall performance. I wont even get into putting $500-1000 into the others as there would be even less comparison.

Again can you see where its misleading? Must we accept this only because they wanted to do a "glorified" add for DRI who did the work on the atv?

I only wanted to point out a couple things that I have noticed, and really was just trying to use this as a place to share info on various misleading info that could potentially effect or sway anyones opinion in making a decision etc, and these are just a small few of very many that I have seen, but you guys can add what you know so that the next guy can have better info than was available before.

 

Good points.

I was recently looking over an older review of 250 sport machines (250ex and z250) for a friend who was considering one for his kid, and it was odd that they listed ground clearence being around 4" for one and 9" for the other since they are more similar than not.

I figured they just used whatever was on the mfg's website, but still in they way it was published it was totally useless info at best and potentially confusing as well.

 

ok, im going to come back later and read all those uber long posts but i just wanted to subscribe to this thread. good idea[img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-wink.gif[/img] got the link from the other thread...