Marco.org

Ray Wert at Jalopnik on the North American Truck of the Year award:

Right now, however, whatever criteria the committee does use doesn’t seem to make sense. More to the point, if there aren’t any good trucks, then just don’t give an award, OK?

(Via Ben Brooks.)

This award, which needs to be given to a compact SUV because “there weren’t any new or substantially changed trucks introduced this year”, is a great example of an unhelpful-to-consumers review like Ben and MG have talked about.

If I heard about the “North American Truck of the Year” from any manufacturer’s marketing materials, I’d probably assume that some prominent industry publication looked at all of the trucks available in North America this year and picked the one they thought was generally the best. In fact, they’re only picking the best out of new or redesigned models, so they’re reducing the eligibility pool down to very few models — and models that wouldn’t fit many people’s needs who are looking for a “truck”.

The tech industry is no stranger to this type of narrow back-patting and the dysfunction that results.