Carmine
Old Man with a Hat
I started writing a reply to the RareClassicCars 1967 Imperial video, but then I realized the trend is a whole lot bigger than this. These guys aren't stupid... They know that virtually any car has a fanbase and that by using keywords like "worst, failure, flop, dud, etc." in the title/description their videos will end up on sites like this and Fakebook pages. And that equals clicks which then equals cash. I'll start with Adam's page...
When he first came on the scene, I thought "wow, that's cool. Videos on something other than musclecars!". But the thrill didn't last long as I got tired of long winded tropes about ballast resistors, Lean Burn (which wasn't even trying for lean-burns by 1978), etc. Then I realized he's also playing the role of intellectual by repeating a lot of what was written 20 years ago in higher-brow magazines like Collectible Automobile. Not that there's anything wrong with that, it's just that mixing a lot of obscure trivia with your own dumb opinions builds a fanbase status that isn't justified. I'm fully convinced the guy is just mailing it in now by clipping photos off the web, leaving them on screen for 3-4 minutes while he drones on. For cripes sake, you could at least use a free screen recorder program and move the cursor around to the various features you're talking about.
In particular, his 1967 Imperial video (to be fair, there was no way I was sitting through the full 15 minutes) just starts with a static image of someone's for-sale posting while he makes the case that Imperial faded away by repeating the dopey criticism that it was somehow wrong to move away from a 10-year-old frame, cowl section, bubble windshield and seating position that kept the Imperial in the 1950s. Going to a rigid unibody structure, with plenty of drivetrain and suspension isolation was the right move. A real deep-dive might have mentioned that spending a LOT of money on 95% unique "visual" items and ending up with a profile that looks very similar to a '67 Plymouth Fury was the real culprit. And then of course the failure to properly market the car... I always found it interesting the in 1969 they made a half-hearted attempt to talk about the luxury of a luxury car that handled well, but it was just a page within the catalog you already had to be in a showroom to read, not something that brought the fight to conquests. The European luxury car makes eventually began to exploit this, but Chrysler could have done it a decade earlier. The point about separate showrooms & special treatment is solid, (also stolen from any solid analysis) but that discipline should have been there in the 1950s. By the time the brand started cooling-off in the 60s, it was hard to enforce upon thousands of independent businessmen. It survived as long as it did because of a few loyalists that valued the driving experience over the dealer experience.
But now I digress from the broader topic... This is a pretty large snapshot of negativity, lots of things out of context, lots of opinion, and some stuff that is just BS.
I could talk about more than just Adam, because there are a LOT of others that follow the exact same model (Ed's auto reviews, Regular Car Reviews, Hoovie, Doug, etc.). Now we have AI bots scanning all these pages and creating "facts", and I could provide some interesting examples of that as well, but I can't add any more scree shots and I don't know if anyone will even care about the topic.
When he first came on the scene, I thought "wow, that's cool. Videos on something other than musclecars!". But the thrill didn't last long as I got tired of long winded tropes about ballast resistors, Lean Burn (which wasn't even trying for lean-burns by 1978), etc. Then I realized he's also playing the role of intellectual by repeating a lot of what was written 20 years ago in higher-brow magazines like Collectible Automobile. Not that there's anything wrong with that, it's just that mixing a lot of obscure trivia with your own dumb opinions builds a fanbase status that isn't justified. I'm fully convinced the guy is just mailing it in now by clipping photos off the web, leaving them on screen for 3-4 minutes while he drones on. For cripes sake, you could at least use a free screen recorder program and move the cursor around to the various features you're talking about.
In particular, his 1967 Imperial video (to be fair, there was no way I was sitting through the full 15 minutes) just starts with a static image of someone's for-sale posting while he makes the case that Imperial faded away by repeating the dopey criticism that it was somehow wrong to move away from a 10-year-old frame, cowl section, bubble windshield and seating position that kept the Imperial in the 1950s. Going to a rigid unibody structure, with plenty of drivetrain and suspension isolation was the right move. A real deep-dive might have mentioned that spending a LOT of money on 95% unique "visual" items and ending up with a profile that looks very similar to a '67 Plymouth Fury was the real culprit. And then of course the failure to properly market the car... I always found it interesting the in 1969 they made a half-hearted attempt to talk about the luxury of a luxury car that handled well, but it was just a page within the catalog you already had to be in a showroom to read, not something that brought the fight to conquests. The European luxury car makes eventually began to exploit this, but Chrysler could have done it a decade earlier. The point about separate showrooms & special treatment is solid, (also stolen from any solid analysis) but that discipline should have been there in the 1950s. By the time the brand started cooling-off in the 60s, it was hard to enforce upon thousands of independent businessmen. It survived as long as it did because of a few loyalists that valued the driving experience over the dealer experience.
But now I digress from the broader topic... This is a pretty large snapshot of negativity, lots of things out of context, lots of opinion, and some stuff that is just BS.
I could talk about more than just Adam, because there are a LOT of others that follow the exact same model (Ed's auto reviews, Regular Car Reviews, Hoovie, Doug, etc.). Now we have AI bots scanning all these pages and creating "facts", and I could provide some interesting examples of that as well, but I can't add any more scree shots and I don't know if anyone will even care about the topic.
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