Everything wrong with Wheels Car of the Year 2021 (Mazda CX-30)
Wheels magazine highlights the true cost of bad incentives in the automotive media landscape, with Car of the Year 2021. This is what happens when you kick your audience under the bus
Wheels magazine - that irrelevant icon of paper publishing. ‘We still think there’s a future in paper. We watched a documentary on that last night on VHS, after a carrier pigeon delivered the TV guide, shortly after he saw the program on a clay tablet in Egypt’.
Wheels awarded Mazda CX-30 the 2021 BCOTY trophy: Bullshit Car of the Year. Jesus.
CX-30 is - of course - more mainstream than last year’s official Shitbox of the Year, the Three-Pronged Suppository EQC. But like EQC, Mazda’s CX-30 is really just pumped-up version of another virtual twin in the stable.
CX-30 is essentially a Mazda3 hatch with added ground clearance and, in some cases, on-demand AWD. So, well done there, moving the automotive sector profoundly forward. By jacking up a Mazda3 - to add 15mm. That’ll be $3000 extra, thanks. Unless you want the top-spec CX-30 X20 Astina, which will be $52,000, instead of $45,000 for the Mazda3 X20 Astina.
That’s $7000 more, for 15mm of irrelevant ground clearance.
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Because, if you were a carmaker, that’s what you’d want to be at this point - almost (but not quite) as successful as Holden. Editor Dylan Campbell there. Well done, dude. (A back-handed compliment to the number two car brand in Australia.)
Pro Tip, Big D: ‘Criterion’ is the singular. One criterion. ‘Criteria’ is the plural. Five criteria. If that’s a press release pisstake - well played. If a whole editorial team couldn’t pick that one up #FFS. Especially after big, bad Beech talked you editorial dudes up.
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More Hot Air Rises
I’d suggest the only future motoring enthusiasts actually touching a Wheels magazine today are tidying up the loungeroom after making sure their grandfather is just having an afternoon nap and is not yet dead.
Andrew Beecher there, from the same bullshit car of the year press release as ‘criterion’ dude. Beech isn’t a bad bloke, but he’s cursed with being the CEO of this ongoing near-death experience. So, to Beech I would say:
I love you, dude, in the most hetero way known, but facts matter. You streamed this announcement - billed by you as Shitsville’s (quote) “most coveted motoring award” - you streamed it live on YouTube, at 10am Monday.
And by ‘live’ I mean you pumped out a wholly contrived and epically self-indulgent pre-recorded video package that was un-watchably choppy - presumably the result of low upload bandwidth, which you should have tested, because you’re (you know) a multi-million-dollar business. Allegedly. And the audio was crap.
Apart from that: Nice.
As for “content that engages”: Australia’s most allegedly coveted car of the year award had about 220 peak concurrent viewers, live, insofar as I could tell, watching it live. 220 - not 220,000. Nineteen of them had to be you lot, and maybe 200 industry insiders. Plus me, doing roasty research. You could count the punters on one hand, dude.
The saddest thing is that, statistically, it seems to me nobody except Wheels and the finalists gave a shit.
Then Wheels uploaded a non-terminally-choppy clean copy of the pre-recorded live-look package shortly after the livestream ended. 260 total views of that in the first four hours, as I sit here in my Fat Cave on my buns of steel, writing this, according to Wheels’ YouTube home page.
You know what’s missing here? An audience. And you know why? Because you Wheels dudes have betrayed your audience once too often. And in my opinion this is emblematic of what happens when a publication immerses itself in the bad incentives that proliferate in the legacy media. It’s why Wheels is on death’s door.
Give the people what they want
Here’s just a sliver of what the dwindling Wheels audience has had to say (on its own YT channel) about Mazda MX-30 as Car of the Year 2021, and Mercedes EQC in 2020, as well as the publication itself. Tell me I’m wrong.
Just a handful of 463 comments from my report (32,000+ views):
Audience matters: A View to a Kill
Red means a poor result, yellow means irrelevant or self-indulgent content, and green means some modicum of what some might refer to as ‘success’.
Have you figured out what an entire editorial team of so-called journalists cannot? Why is nobody watching Wheels content? Elementary, Watson.
Yaris is an extremely popular vehicle to Australian consumers, so surely Wheels must be able to get someone to listen to their cringeworthy review.
Yaris was one of three finalists - the Wheels package on Yaris has been up for three days, and it’s had 509 views in that time. Not 509,000. Not 50,900 views. 509. BMW 4-Series - the other finalist - 581 views in three days. That’s a lot of crickets.
Perhaps viewers had all cut to the chase and were all watching your package on the winner, CX-30. Not exactly, 9.4k views in three days. My arse verified that as well. So dependable.
If that’s content that engages, it’s ‘drawing board’ time, dudes. Time to go back.
Big, bad Beech there again. I so want Wheels to succeed, but as someone who’s written dozens upon dozens of pieces for Wheels, historically, I’d suggest you guys are just doing this badly. If I was part of the audience, I’d conclude Wheels sucks. It’s that nauseating blend of self-indulgence and industry appeasement. Mainly. Good thing we didn’t step in it.
And the evidence is: About a thousand views in five hours for the biggest gig on the Wheels calendar is a compelling case against this allegation enduring relevance.
Plus, you cannot serve two masters - readers and the industry - with your irrelevant BCOTY award. Wheels chose a side. You went with ‘betamax’. Should’ve picked ‘VHS’, dudes.
Here’s what I mean by systematic ‘bad incentives’: Criterion dude leads a team that (I’m tipping) is shit-scared of making waves. They do these car reviews and I am certain (personal opinion) that their single over-arching concern is not to get a carmaker offside.
Because it’s nice going to the premium gigs. That platinum frequent flier status. Those five-star hotels. That ‘rockstar’ treatment. Swanning around in those cars they could not otherwise afford to sit in. Wouldn’t want to upset that apple cart, right?
Just be nice - that’s all it takes. But even if you are that journo brave enough to risk killing off that otherwise unaffordable lifestyle, and be properly critical, the rug will go out from under your feet, hard, when a carmaker’s marketing director gets the shits with you sufficiently to instruct the advertising agency to pull all the advertising from the publication.
I’ve been on the receiving end of that, several times, on TV and in print, and over one thing I said on radio - it’s not fun if you’ve got a mortgage to pay, and mouths to feed, and no other income. So that would be both the carrot and the stick of bad motoring media incentives.
And the only problem with playing this game is, of course, that carmakers become increasingly intolerant of any criticism. The threshold of acceptable critique gets lower and lower over time. They’re striving for ‘none’. ‘Reviews’ thus become suck pieces. Carmakers are of course generally too stupid to understand that criticism in independent reviews more than validates any praise.
But you, in the audience: you are not tone deaf. You can tell when you are being thrown under the bus, editorially. Like, you clicked on the word ‘review’ but instead you got ‘industry suck piece’. Because all the criterions changed, and the so-called reviews are no longer for you; they’re for the carmaker.
The publication has chosen a side - and it’s not your side. Bad incentives.
Wheels needs a reality check - not ‘cheque’
So what do you do? You turn away. You go somewhere else. Somewhere, hopefully, where the time isn’t stuck perpetually at ‘suck’ o’clock. The legacy motoring media is too thick to figure this out. Too addicted to keeping the golden tap open by cosying up to their mates in the business.
And they’ve remained in this holding pattern for several years now, self-indulgently ignoring the writing on the wall, telling each other they’re still relevant, listing all the many and varied criterias that allegedly substantiate this entirely bullshit argument.
Perfect example of bad incentives…
CX-30’s not a bad vehicle. It’s a Mazda3 with ground clearance. But Mazda3 goes better because it’s got the same engine and it’s lighter, and it’s $5000 cheaper. So there’s that. And of course the Federal Government is suing Mazda Australia for alleged deceptive and unconscionable conduct. I’d want to know that if I were in the market for a car. I’m funny like that.
These kinds of issues don’t get a run because they’re only relevant to you as a consumer thinking about buying a Mazda - these issues don’t put Wheels in Mazda’s good books.
Mazda doesn’t want to see that kind of thing in print - and that’s who this award is for. Mazda.
This is what I mean by a system dripping with bad incentives. The big question is how we cure it. What are the ‘criterions’ for that? Can we roll out a vaccine before Wheels’ imminent appointment with Dr Kevorkian? I don’t suppose so.
I suggest to you that the fix is under way now. Wheels has thrown its audience under the bus - that’s you, and you’re not coming back.
It’s going to be disconcerting any day now for Wheels to wake up and discover that you in the audience are in fact a necessary part of the ecosystem, not to mention the business plan.
Just ask any cockroach how it feels to wake up one fateful day, minus its head.
It’s all about the trust, the inspiration, the engagement. And, of course, the criterions. What could possibly go wrong?’
Pro Tip: Buy the Mazda3. Cheaper than MX-30. Goes better. Excellent car. I can even get you a discount. Full review here >>
The CX-60 combines performance, batteries and SUV-luxury to beat Lexus, Mercedes and BMW while Mazda refuses to go fully electric in favour of big inline six-cylinder engines. If your family needs lots of legroom, a big boot, and grunt, the CX-60 needs to go on your shortlist.