About the Hearst Autos Gear Team: Why Trust Us
With a combined 206 years of automotive publishing experience, the teams at Hearst Autos—Car and Driver, Road & Track, Car and Driver, and Autoweek—know cars better than just about anyone.
With so many of our trusted automotive magazines and newspapers replaced by websites of dubious motivation and questionable expertise these days, the Hearst Autos Gear Team evaluates gear on its own merits, compares it to the competition, and gives you our opinion. Our hands-on experience and honest evaåluations are driven by decades of knowledge and experience in cars, enthusiasts, and the gear that drives us.
If you’re increasingly baffled, bemused, and disappointed by the fluff that passes for “expert” automotive reviews and opinions online these days, you’re not alone. All featured gear and products are selected by real humans on the Gear Team. We never accept products in exchange for editorial placement, and we won’t take “payola” to feature any product. User reviews and rankings are a consideration, but we don’t rely on them.
How We Select Products & Gear
The Hearst Autos Gear Team gets our hands on almost every product, tool, and piece of gear we recommend. If we can’t get the stuff ourselves, we rely on the combined decades of the wisdom of our writers and editors, as well as the reviews by, and recommendations of, experts we trust. We’ll never claim anything to be the “best” if we wouldn't recommend it to our friends or buy it ourselves, and we won’t call anything “tested” unless we’ve put it through our own wringer.
How We Acquire Products & Gear
Hearst Autos buys much of the gear and products the Gear Team tests. Of course, some are supplied by manufacturers for testing purposes; they don’t mind our exacting testing processes and honest evaluations because they believe in the quality and value of their own work. Fact is, we’re skeptical of companies who refuse to offer products for evaluation by the Gear Team.
Why Trust Us
Being the biggest means Hearst Autos isn’t worried about making the sale; we’ve got reputations to live up to, and an informed, enthusiastic readership that knows it can rely on us to deliver the goods. Welcome to the Gear Team.
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