[advantage20]

The issue here is not so much the allegedly overly positive substance of the review, as this doesn't prove per se that the reviewers' judgment is necessarily biased or even paid for by BMW. The car potentially might well be that good, claiming otherwise without having test-driven it ourselves would be irrelevant.

The issue is that it's simply a very poor actual review at all. Quite a few inaccuracies about the tech / data / non-driving aspects, okay no big deal as long as the driving aspects are reviewed in depth... After all Tiff is an outstanding driver with racing credentials and hey, maybe he just doesn't want to bother too much with the rest... Well how disapppointing to see that, aside from a few comments about acceleration and suspension comfort, we hardly get any specific feedback on the car's actual driving dynamics, how accurate the steering feel is, exactly how the car behaves in a corner, to what extent you can steer it with the throttle, how agile it is on a twisty road, what about understeer, etc. i.e. a detailed driving review along the lines of what Chris Harris or Steve Sutcliffe are doing on a regular basis.

This lack of accurate feedback about the actual driving dynamics is what's disappointing from a driver of Tiff's caliber. Hence why the very first assumption (that the car might well be as good as the reviewers claim), though possible, unfortunately loses credibility because it's not properly backed up. Add in the quite amateuristic approach and specifically the lack of rigor in reporting accurate technical data in favor of a general message that 'it's just great', and you get many people jumping to the conclusion that the review must at least be biased because the driver just loves them BMWs too much to bother providing accurate details, or even has been paid by BMW. However given the amount of inaccuracies they let slip through, I'm inclined to believe that precisely there is no way BMW paid for this review, rather the reviewers for some reason just didn't want to go through the trouble of formulating a more in-depth judgment, may be laziness or may just be the deliberately mainstream / entertainment policy of the given media they work for.