It is probably worth weighing in here, because many of the negative comments about this event every year are based on flawed assumptions.
1. 2 of the 5 judges do not work for the mag. One of them works for ARB, so he brought 4WD knowledge without any ties to this industry.
2. Judging is done essentially via a blind ballot. We then tally each judges scores after the event. There is no cooking of the scores, and no good reason to. The fact is, this award is NOT awarded to more people than it IS awarded to, so it is not based on looking after the advertisers, 11 of whom don't win...
3. We would like to sell more magazines. The mag would not exist otherwise. My team and I work hard to maintain the integrity of this award, to ensure it is worth the ink, so to speak. People buy the mag to learn something. And while we cannot put every camper on the block (some cannot make it; time constraints, etc), we pick quality campers first. Essentially, it does amount to a tacit endorsement of the 15 campers invited by me...and I am more concerned with ensuring my name is not associated with a less than standard product than I am with how much advertisers spend.
That is why this is the only award of its type that isn't BS. 4WD of the year goes to a revolving gallery of crappy cars because Toyota and Nissan do not release yearly updates to their products. I select the best campers in the country each year to compete, not an arbitrary selection based on model upgrades, or how much anyone advertises.
Feel free to disagree with the final winners, but the method behind the madness is sound. The sad thing is that magazines, as a whole, have ignored anything resembling journalistic integrity for so long, we have all become very cynical, even nihilistic.
There is meaning in the world, though, and occasionally a half good bloke!
Carlisle
I will explain.
Please remember that this is just my personal observations and opinion.
The more a manufacturer advertises in any type of magazine the more likely that manufacturer is to win any comapairisons the magazine has.
If a fair compairison is to be done it should be done by folks who have absolutly no affiliation with either the manufacturers or the magazine. Said results should then be posted/printed in their entirety and unedited in any way...
Bill
