Ferrari Responds To Chris

Ferrari "sort of responds"...

 

Ha. Ferrari is right though.

They'll just blacklist him and Jalopnik and move on.

 

Stefano Lai, of Ferrari: "I just spoke to Luca, and I think that Chris has done more harm to himself than Ferrari."
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Chris said "i will have to ask Ferrari if I coukd take my kids to school every day" that was funny.

 

I think it may have put Jalopnik on the map...

You need to remember what the GTO vs GTO test did for Car and Drivel... People woke up and took notice of it. Also, these sites get paid on hits and for sure Jalopnik is going to rack up a lot of hits based on this. More hits = more revenue and it can snowball once people become comfortable with your site...

Chris is going to be personna nongrata at Ferrari, but he won't hurt for this either in the long run.

 

I think Jalopnik is using this to promote itself now.

 

lol... Duh.

This is the same company, Gawker Media, that owns Gizmodo (broke the iPhone 4 leak), Deadspin (broke the Bret Farve penis texting story), etc.... it's what they do.

 

But it is clear from the piece if you read it that Jalopnik are just quoting the Daily Telegraph

 

It's certainly a love-hate relationship between manufacturers and journalists. I could tell you stories that would make your head spin -- of course, not just about the crazy antics and statements by manufacturers in protecting their version of their own perceived reality, but also by my fellow journalists that seemingly help to defend their addiction to access to these test-drive trips, events, new cars each week...

The manufacturers have very large marketing/PR/ad budgets, but they certainly do not want to be using it to demarket an outside negative message. That's why when a journalist goes on a rant, they hit back hard by kneecapping the journalist, or alternately by pretending the story simply doesn't exist. (The latter is a fav of the Big Three and Toyota.)

As long as journalists jump like hungry dogs for a press event and write how great a product is...and those reviews translate to waiting lists for buyers the manufacturer has no reason to change behavior. So it starts with the journalists...blame us, not the manufacturer -- because we're letting enthusiasts down more for our part in this, rather than the manufacturer reps who are just doing their best to control the outcome of testing and reviews. They're doing their jobs, but many of us aren't doing ours.

Or you can just be like me and the last time I published a road test on a new F-car, I did it in a customer's day-old 599. Oh, by the way, my 0-60 test beat the major mags' tests and Ferrari estimates by 3/10ths, and there were two people in the car at the time .

 

While there are some journos who will sell their souls for a week-end junket I've found that if you read long enough and carefully enough their subtext becomes apparent.
Its not that difficult to read between the lines most times.

 

I gotta say... I could not think of a worse way for Ferrari to respond. Pitiful.

 

Yes. I know. Enzo would have given Harris the Italian version of "the bird".

 

Clarkson has *****ed about this as well before correct? Good job for Chris Harris standing up against Ferrari's tactics. Maybe Ferrari will be more careful now about it's "car preparations".

 

Ferrari probably should have ignored it. They aren't going to win any kind of a fight over some online guy taking a shot at them. They'd be better off covering their tracks in future to force the Chris Harris's to take a poke at the other guy's doing the same thing.

 

Jalopnik is "journalistic excellence" in the same way that OJ was just an overzealous lover. They've had suspect car reviews in the past, and I can't help but wonder if this lashing out at Ferrari is because of something as trivial as not being able to access a demo or press car.

 

Local automotive writer Scott Burgess resigned last week after The Detroit News altered his somewhat negative review of the Chrysler 200.This was from Autoblog after the incident.


The Detroit News apologizes
by Dan Roth (RSS feed) on Mar 19th, 2011 at 12:25PM

"I owe our readers an explanation and an apology for the lapse that raised questions about our credibility" writes Detroit News publisher Jonathan Wolman today in a response to the blowback caused by the paper's decision to weaken a review of the Chrysler 200 in response to advertiser demands. The decision to edit the online version of the review, which had already appeared in its original form in print, caused longtime auto reviewer Scott Burgess to resign rather than sacrifice his integrity. Burgess discussed the matter this week during a live appearance on Autoline After Hours and in a reader Q&A session at Jalopnik, which broke the story on Wednesday.

Wolman argues that Burgess was asked to "soften a few passages," but that "there was no effort to change Scott's verdict or his reasoning."

Why bother, then? The excuse that "our intent was to improve the piece by making these passages less grating" is an exceptionally thin attempt to cover the paper's backside. Nobody found it "grating" as the paper went to press, but suddenly, web readers are going to start bleeding from their eye sockets when Burgess rightly points out that while the Chrysler 200 is an improvement over the Sebring, that's all it is? This affair hasn't just "raised questions" about the paper's integrity; rather, it's all but ensured that The Detroit News will be viewed skeptically by many people going forward.

For his part, Scott Burgess states that he feels The Detroit News remains a source worthy of readers' trust. In a comment to Jalopnik readers, he says,

"I think nearly every print publication -- including The Detroit News -- are trustworthy. The reason this became a big deal is because it is so rare, it never happened before and it certainly won't happen again at the paper. In 15 plus years I had never had anything close to this happen to me. Journalists are a dogged group of people who work extremely hard, are typically underpaid and want to do the right thing.

In recent years, we've seen a lot of polarization of issues and I think that's been more of a threat from online the changing ways people consumer media. There are a lot more voices out there and papers shouldn't feel threatened by them, they should embrace them. I have always enjoyed the discussion, the debate, thoughtful response and evolution of ideas. There seems to less of that nowadays."

Advertisers must sell product, and it's natural for an auto dealership to complain about negative reviews of the wares it sells. It's also not a stretch to understand how a newspaper would pay attention to an unsatisfied car dealer, as automotive ads are one of the biggest sources of revenue to newspapers. Still, that doesn't get Wolman or The Detroit News off the hook, and a carefully-worded apology is too little, too late when the appropriate action would have been to back up the staff of "expert writers" the apology glowingly brags about.

[Source: The Detroit News]

 

I think it's well worth reading the "real" article in the Telegraph instead of a very small selected part in Jalopnik.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/news/8368343/Road-testing-under-the-microscope.html

As it has been said many times before....they all do it!

 

I was told there was pressure from a local Chrysler dealer,but that wasn't confirmed.

 

I guess dealer pressure was in fact the truth.

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=146976

 

Saddest part of all this is that it takes years to build a reputation for building a superior car....

And in a few minutes on the internet it can all come crashing down if you do something dumb....

 

Criticizing Chrysler in Detroit these days is like holding a wake in a hospice