CarWOW



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carwow helps you choose what new car to buy, then helps you to buy it too!

Compare great deals from the best main dealers without the usual hassle, pressure & hidden costs.

An easy way to choose what new car to buy. Featuring aggregated expert reviews and ratings from top uk magazines and journalists. Plus user reviews, photos, stats and videos for every new car.

Aggregated expert reviews and ratings
We compile the most helpful car reviews, so that you can quickly find out what the experts think of each new car. Quite simply we save you trawling the web to research new cars!

User reviews and ratings
Read through car reviews written by the owners themselves, to see what they think of their cars. Learn how many miles per gallon they're getting, so that you'll have an idea of what the car will cost to run.

Quickly see what the experts think of each car
The buzzScore is the number you'll see next to each car. Basically, it sums up what expert car reviewers think of each car in one number.

It is calculated by taking the average score given to that car from expert reviews. The higher the buzzScore, the better the car!

Find out what new cars would suit you
Using our simple Car Chooser tool, you can discover exactly which new cars would suit you. Just enter in what you want from a car, and how much you'd like to spend. It's that simple!

Statistics, photos, videos and more!
Easily compare up to three car's specifications side by side, scroll through high quality images and watch useful videos from around the web.

Plus you can save cars that take your fancy, by clicking the 'Add this car to My Garage' button, which is next to each car. Then when you log back in at a later date all your saved cars will be there.

That's the basics on how the site works. Want to know more? Scroll down a little and keep reading!


How do you determine the score given by each review?
We analyse each review to determine a numerical score that represents the author's opinion. This score is out of 10 and is used to calculate the buzzScore for each car.

The score is based on the impression that we get from the review, the words used and the number of positive or negative comments about the car.

If the journalist has already given their own numerical score then we strongly take this into consideration. We usually give the same score, but don't always, for a number of reasons; the publication may give consistently higher, or lower, scores than other publications. Or the journalist may be giving a very high/low score for comic or dramatic effect. We aim to be neutral and simply represent what was written.

Do you include user scores in the buzzScores?
No. Reviews from the owners of each car are incredibly useful as they show just what it's like to live with. However, it's unlikely most people have driven enough cars to know how they compare to the competition, whereas the experts will have done.

What do the different buzzScore colours mean?
We have a simple visual guide to quickly show you how highly rated each car is. We've split them up into 4 different grades. The grade is determined by the buzzScore:




Does a low buzzScore mean I shouldn't consider that car?
Hmmm, tough one. If a car has a low score then it normally means that it's outclassed by other, similar cars. That doesn't always necessarily mean it's a bad car, often just that rivals are better.

It may be that it is particularly poor in a few areas, however, those areas may not concern you! That's why you need to read the full reviews, so you know the areas each car is strong and weak in.

How do you deal with the buzzScore for new engines and facelifted cars?
Car manufacturers regularly tweak the cars that they have for sale, such as tweaking the engines available or changing the look of the car. It can often be really confusing trying to work out what has changed and what the differences are.We will try and indicate if the review is of an engine that is no longer made, or if it is a review of a pre-face lift model.

For the buzzScore, we have devised a fairly simply system to determine whether the review score counts towards the buzzScore.

If a car has ten or more reviews of its current/new engine or version, then the reviews of those current engines are the only scores counted towards the car's buzzScore. Example: There are ten reviews of an engine no longer made, and only two reviews of the new engine. Calculation - We will continue to count all review scores towards the buzzScore, until there are ten reviews of the new one. When there are ten reviews of the new engine then these are the only ones used to calculate the buzzScore.

I visited the site last week and now the buzzScore is different. What happened?
The scores do fluctuate, as we are adding new reviews all the time. Unfortunately the reviews for a car don't all get published at once, it normally takes a couple of weeks for reviews from each publication to come in. Additionaly new engines or versions may be added over time, so we include reviews of those when they are published.

Which reviews do you link to?
We link to a set list of UK based publications. These publications are chosen because we believe they offer consistently good reviews that are well written, informative and unbiased.The approved publications are updated regularly, and they test a significant number of new cars.

We believe the sources we link to are the most helpful for new car buyers, so we urge you to not just read the quotes we provide. Click on the link to read the full article, you'll get a far better understanding of the reviewers opinion! That way you'll end up making a more informed decision and won't end up with a car that doesn't suit you.

Plus many of the sources we use provide important information that we don't include, such as depreciation estimations, car tax calculators etc...

The publication whose reviews we link to are - AutoExpress, Autocar, Car Enthusiast, Car Magazine, CarPages, Evecars, Evo, Fifth Gear, The Independent, Motobar, Motors.co.uk, Parker's, PistonHeads, The Times (not including content behind paywall), Top Gear, The Telegraph and WhatCar?

We also link to audio reviews by The Gas Station Podisode, because they're awesome.

I know of a really good publication and you don't use their reviews. Why is this?
We realise that there are a lot of other excellent review sites out there that we don't include. This is often because we feel they don't quite meet our criteria.

For example, they might be a site that only reviews Porsches. Although they may write useful reviews, they will naturally be biased towards Porsche.

Or a site might not manage to drive as many new cars as we'd like. We use publications that are likely to drive the majority of new cars out.

We only include UK based publications. Although many cars are sold throughout the world, the actual specification is often different between countries.

If you know of a good review site that we don't include then please contact us, we'd like to take a look. There are already a couple of sites whose reviews we plan on adding, we just haven't got time at the moment!

I found a review on one of your approved publications and you haven't included it. Are you blind?
We may have missed it, though we do constantly check that we haven't skipped reviews! There may be a different reason though.

It's most often because the car reviewed is only a prototype, or an early pre-production model, therefore we don't normally include the review. Or it may be that the journalist didn't actually get a chance to drive it, only be a passenger in it. Please do get in touch us if you spot a valid review that we've missed!

Do you ever write reviews?
Running the site takes up all our time at the moment, but in the future we plan too. However these will not be counted in the expert reviews, they will only go on our blog.

We don't drive enough cars to make a comparative judgement, and we are not trained journalists. Simply put, we don't have the knowledge that the expert critics have!

Do you use website scrapers to get the reviews?
No. All our reviews are found and read by humans.

Lots of review aggregators use computer trickery to 'scrape' sites to find their reviews, none of their team actually reads them.

We read every single review to analyse what score represents the author's opinion, and we only include reviews from the best sources, so you're not presented with a load of useless rubbish!

Who runs the site?
The site was founded by James and Alex. With contributions and work done by a small group of fellow car geeks.

It was publicly launched for beta (early) testing on 21st October 2010. This is version 1.0 of the site. There's plenty more to come!


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