Sport Truck Connection premise

From: Jon Steiger (stei0302@cs.fredonia.edu)
Date: Mon Mar 08 1999 - 19:56:52 EST


  Hi,

  Your show (and website) were brought to my attention via a post on
the Dakota Mailing List (www.dakota-truck.net), where you're taking a
bit of heat over the info posted on the "The Show" portion of your
website where it says:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|Sport Truck Connection is the first National Television show devoted solely to
|new Light Trucks and SUV's. Each week, Mike and Jon, bring real world
|information about these vehicles directly into your living room. They test the
|vehicles in the way that you would use them, NOT on a racetrack with
|useless information about "g's" or "0-60" times, but rather how they would
|be to live with, day after day, month after month. Items like, "Are the seats
|comfortable?", "Does the vehicle do what it was designed to do, and more
|important, does it do what YOU want it to do?", "Do the sun visors really
|block the sun?", "Do drinks in the cup-holders spill on corners?", "Are the
|back seats just for looks?", "How does it ride, both on and off road?", and
|many of the other pieces of the puzzle you don't always get to put together
|when on one of those "all to short" test drives when buying or leasing a
|vehicle.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

   I believe the main problem comes from your assertion that performance
numbers ("g's", "0-60 times", etc.) are "useless". There are over 600
members on the Dakota list, and a great number of us DO race our trucks.
Obviously, the membership runs the gamut from die hard racers to grocery getters,
but many of us race at the dragstrip, several others autocross, and there is
a huge "offroading" contingent. For some of us, sun visors, cupholders, etc.
ARE the "useless information", what we want to know are the perfomance numbers,
and how can we get faster?

  I believe that the day to day operation of the truck AND the performance
numbers are important; by eliminating either one, you neglect a big part
of the overall personality of a truck.

  Anyway, I just wanted to bring this to your attention. I found it
especially strange given the fact that the title of your show is
"SPORT Truck Connection". If you're going to ignore performnance numbers,
why not change the name to "Truck Connection"?

  Thanks for listening.

                                              -Jon-

  .--- stei0302@cs.fredonia.edu ----------------------------------------.
  | Jon Steiger * AOPA, DoD, EAA, MP Race Team, NMA, SPA, USUA * RP-SEL |
  | '96 Dodge Dakota V8 SLT CC (14.58@93.55), '96 Kolb FireFly 447 |
  `--------------------------- http://www.cs.fredonia.edu/~stei0302/ ---'



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