Category: The Critics Respond

The Critics Respond, Or; Dr. Detroit Meets Dr. Delete

Posted on by
avatar Tom Klockau

This generation has been referred to as the “Glamour Birds” for some time. I reviewed a friend’s immaculate ’71 Landau last year. Not to be confused with the 1964-66, AKA the “Flair Birds.”

http://jackbaruth.com/?p=7088
CC Capsule/QOTD: 1967 Thunderbird – What Nickname Shall We Give It?
2018/03/01 at 7:39 am

It’s too bad about what’s going on at the site I used to write for. What was a nice little community that just liked yakking about old cars is slipping away into a fiefdom. Hell, I’m not the only one who took a powder from there; we could start a club. Oh sure, if you agree with the big cheese, you’ll probably be fine, but heaven forbid you stray from the party line.

It was my own fault. I commented and should have known better…

Continue Reading →

The Critics Respond, Part Forty-Seven

Posted on by

This one is funny, for a couple of reasons. First of all, it shows everybody’s favorite troll, Deadweight, in full-on Baruth Derangement Syndrome mode. Guys like this fail to understand the economics of the internet—if you really hate me so much, the absolute WORST way to protest me is to click on everything I write, read every word of it, and then leave a comment. Seriously, that’s a triple fail.

The other reason that this is such a poor troll is that he’s protesting a guy who has literally made it his job to call out unethical behavior in others. I am the reason that TTAC has a disclosure policy. You can read my arguments for it here. I have never accepted anything over $50 in value from an OEM, and I’ve left a few presents behind at the hotel that were excessive in nature.

Let me go ahead and recap everything I’ve ever accepted from a manufacturer in my five years in this “business.”

Continue Reading →

The Critics Respond (sorta): A Saga of Stolen Content

Posted on by

 

Last week, I wrote my first TTAC editorial since…well, you know, that one. By all measures, it was well-received—good user engagement, significant readership, and over 2,000 Facebook shares. But there was another article about the Focus RS and dealership issues that ran three hours later which did even better.

Over on OppositeLock, which is the user-content driven Kinja automotive site, user LJ909 wrote a post entitled “The Focus RS has been sitting on dealer lots and dealers can only blame themselves.” Hmm. I mean, it wasn’t exactly the same as my title, “The Focus RS is Dead, and Dealers Are to Blame,” but it was pretty close.

Regardless, LJ’s post blew up, with over 4,000 Facebook shares and nearly 70,000 views—a far cry better than the couple of hundred views his previous posts had gotten. Like this one. And this one.

Hey, wait a sec…didn’t TTAC do posts on those stories too? Why, yes. Yes, they did. And on the same days, too.

Hmmm. Something’s rotten in the state of Kinja.

Continue Reading →