The Aston Martin Lagonda - as reviewed by Doug DeMuro

June 28, 2019 6:35 AM

The 1987 Aston Martin Lagonda - Doug DeMuro reviews any car he can get his hands on, and he says it straight. In this video, he reviews the 1987 Lagonda, from Aston Martin, famed maker of ultra-lux hyper-cars trying to muscle in on the performance luxury Brit sedan market dominated by Jaguar, Bently and Rolls Royce models in the '80s. It does not go well.

Doug DeMuro is most famous for reviewing without pity ultra-lux rides from the $3,000,000 Bugatti Chiron in twenty-teens carbon fibre blue to the '70s VW Thing, in stamped steel orange.

In one car review, he is grinning and laughing and honest throughout, in the other, he's giving a serious review paid for by the manufacturer, and he lets you know it up front. His stilted cadence and deadpan tells the tale. He's the Chef John of Automobilla. The more his voice rises and falls, the more interesting the vehicle.

posted by Slap*Happy (38 comments total)

I used to ride my bike by one of these parked in the lot of a random countryside bodyshop. They do look pretty unique. Doug's delivery isn't for everyone, but then again Chef John grates the rest of my family the wrong way. His review of a Previa nearly convinced me to buy one, until I drove one again. And the VW Thing is a personal favorite, my dad had one for a while.

Still, though, if I'm actually going to be killing time watching YouTube car reviewers, I prefer Mr. Regular's MLA-inspired takes. (previously)
posted by St. Oops at 7:05 AM on June 28, 2019 [1 favorite]

Mr. Regular > Doug

I stopped caring for Doug's reviews when he flipped out over the quirkiness of a 70's vehicle having the dimmer switch on the floor.
posted by spikeleemajortomdickandharryconnickjrmints at 8:01 AM on June 28, 2019 [5 favorites]

The Chevy Malibu Maxx had a very similar fixed sunroof configuration - shabby little mesh things for the rear passengers only. I wonder if it was a nod to this Aston? I always figured it was a cost cutting measure.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:04 AM on June 28, 2019

T H I S is what gets me about Doug DeMuro's reviews: he takes the "show, don't tell" rule and throws it out the window. He's a show and tell, tell, tell guy all the way. Every review is made up of a dozen statements like this: "Here's a neat feature about this cupholder, the cupholder does this neat thing, and I think that is pretty neat."
posted by peeedro at 8:19 AM on June 28, 2019 [4 favorites]

Mr. Regular drives Doug's second-hand Ferrari for a Christmas special. They're mutual fans.
posted by Slap*Happy at 8:48 AM on June 28, 2019

He did a similar review of an 80s Lamborghini, and much like the Lagonda, it is striking to me just how bad the cabin control layout and interface are.

I occasionally jump into a per-minute car-share Benz, and the controls are just as terrible and unintuitive, compared with "regular" cars.

I wonder if luxury car companies have to pack their vehicles so full of barely-useful features to justify the expense, and that the interface is more or less an afterthought, at that point.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 9:12 AM on June 28, 2019 [2 favorites]

Has anyone else noticed a difference since he moved out to San Diego? His reviews are still good, the cars are still cool, but it feels more... corporate? Polished? Not that that's a bad thing, but I can't imagine him running a Hummer over another car these days.
posted by wpgr at 9:25 AM on June 28, 2019 [1 favorite]

Yeah, he used to be a lot more quirky himself and offered a sometimes absurdist take on car reviews and auto culture. But since he's embraced the DougScore and the "quirks and features" format his reviews have been formulaic. I think that he's made a conscious choice to do that, along with the repetitiveness in his narration, because that's what works for attracting both an audience and sponsors when they know what to expect out of his videos.
posted by peeedro at 9:38 AM on June 28, 2019 [4 favorites]

It is an incredibly weird car. I highly recommend reading the the story of Evel Knievel's custom version. After he beat up a 20th Century Fox exec with a baseball bat, he bought a Lagonda and and drove around the country, sleeping in a coffin trailer he had custom-built for it, and painting watercolours (or possibly just pretending to). It was for sale not that long ago. There's a nice series here from a Polish photographer which maybe captures the appeal a bit better than the nasty burgundy paint job in the video.
posted by tardigrade at 9:42 AM on June 28, 2019 [1 favorite]

That coffin trailer has a spoiler. A spoiler!
posted by ardgedee at 9:48 AM on June 28, 2019 [1 favorite]

I coveted this car as a kid, but mostly because of the futuristic cabin in the older version. What happened by 1987?
posted by JoeZydeco at 10:34 AM on June 28, 2019 [2 favorites]

The backstory on the electronics in that car is kind of interesting too.
posted by JoeZydeco at 10:39 AM on June 28, 2019 [2 favorites]

Watched the Thing review and felt the heavy press of cheerful moronicity.
posted by Pembquist at 11:04 AM on June 28, 2019

Really enjoy Doug but haven't really followed him off Jalopnik. I gave up Mr Regular because I couldn't take his sense of humor anymore. It's too close to how I was in high school and going along with it (ie, keeping on watching) feels like giving up all the personal growth I've had in the last umpty-some years. Has it changed over the last couple years?
posted by everythings_interrelated at 11:17 AM on June 28, 2019 [2 favorites]

This guy is great. His reviews come up in my Youtube recommendations from time to time, and they're always entertaining.
posted by notsnot at 11:23 AM on June 28, 2019 [1 favorite]

If he knew how to get into a car properly, he'd have no trouble getting into the back seat. Your feet go in last, as you lift them and turn in. I also see he didn't know how British door latches worked. Dear oh dear.

I was 7 and car-mad (I'd just been given J D Scheel's Cars of the World, and I carried it everywhere) when the Lagonda came out. It was the reason I wanted to be rich and famous, because of course I'd drive one then. Every car I drew was a Lagonda. I was smitten.
posted by scruss at 11:51 AM on June 28, 2019 [1 favorite]

I like Doug's reviews but it's interesting to see that a number of channels have picked up on one of the most under-discussed aspects of YouTube success: have a predictable format.

I watch quite a few channels (67 at the time of writing) and the ones with bucket loads of subscribers stick very closely to their tried and true format. I guess it's great for advertisers.
posted by benoliver999 at 11:56 AM on June 28, 2019

I sat through it sometime back because I was curious about that dreary, silly car, but oy vey, DeMuro's hyperactive kids-show-host presentation style is so off-putting that I'm horrified to find that Youtube now wants to autoplay all his endless, I'm-above-editing-like-mere-mortals showcases of sing-song community theater hamvoice and I can't abide his inability to use a thesaurus long enough to determine that there are actually more words to describe things off the beaten track than "weird" (to say nothing of how everything vaguely good in DeMuroland is "cool").

I'm reminded, though, that the bland range of ultramundane cars that we get in the US are the product of our kind of automotive journalism. Like DeMuro, it's just the same thing over and over, and anything remotely off the vanilla-meets-jagged-macho-warplastics axis gets beaten out of the market with the but-it's-weird stick. Sigh.
posted by sonascope at 12:34 PM on June 28, 2019 [2 favorites]

His reviews are still good, the cars are still cool, but it feels more... corporate? Polished?

As corporate and polished as a review of some ultra-luxury car by a guy in cargo shorts and flip-flops can get, I suppose.

Also, the Doug Score really needs to go.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 12:41 PM on June 28, 2019 [1 favorite]

I'm pretty sure that's his normal voice, and he has to be over-the-top positive because he is borrowing the cars from other parties. He can't really trash talk poorly designed cars like this one or he will no longer have access to them.
posted by The_Vegetables at 1:23 PM on June 28, 2019 [1 favorite]

He spends about 30 minutes talking about largely irrelevant things like the font used for the rocker switch labels and less than 3 minutes describing how the car actually drives and performs. Granted, with a oddball car like this there's some room to point out design quirks, which are part of what makes the car interesting, but the ratio of minutiae to real content seems way off to me.
posted by Larry David Syndrome at 1:26 PM on June 28, 2019 [1 favorite]

that the bland range of ultramundane cars that we get in the US are the product of our kind of automotive journalism.

Not sure about that - I think it's mostly because all automotive journalists and car reviewers are young to middle aged upper middle class (mostly) guys with expectations about speed and power (rather than say car seat access, fuel economy, ease of parking, and safety/dependabilty) and because most are also poorly disguised advertisements for the product they are selling.
posted by The_Vegetables at 1:27 PM on June 28, 2019 [1 favorite]

I thought Lucas did the electrics on the Lagonda (as they did on every other British car...).
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 1:43 PM on June 28, 2019

You can tell Lucas didn't do the Lagonda's electrics by the lack of smoke coming out of the dashboard.
posted by peeedro at 2:16 PM on June 28, 2019 [5 favorites]

Why do the English drink warm beer, etc, etc.
posted by deadwax at 3:13 PM on June 28, 2019 [1 favorite]

I occasionally jump into a per-minute car-share Benz, and the controls are just as terrible and unintuitive, compared with "regular" cars.

I wonder if luxury car companies have to pack their vehicles so full of barely-useful features to justify the expense, and that the interface is more or less an afterthought, at that point.

I don't own a car but drive a fair bit for work and borrow/hire cars when I need them myself, everything from 25t trucks to little hatchbacks. Consequently I don't know where anything is in any vehicle and the worst to just drop in and use are the fancier things. Corolla? No worries, at home in two minutes. Lexus? Christ I don't know what temperature I want, just make me warmer, give me a dial. Where is the handbrake? Why do I feel like I've wet myself all of a sudden? (Unexpected seat heater.)
posted by deadwax at 3:20 PM on June 28, 2019 [4 favorites]

He spends about 30 minutes talking about largely irrelevant things like the font used for the rocker switch labels and less than 3 minutes describing how the car actually drives and performs.

I'm more the other way, at least for the big chunk of older cars he looks at. How a Ghibli drives... eh, I expect the answer is basically "Not up to modern standards" or "Not as good as a Miata/Civic-R" The weird decisions they made about where to put different things and how to make things and how to accommodate their stylish body design instead of the driver, that's more interesting to me.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 3:34 PM on June 28, 2019 [1 favorite]

I love cars, I love car reviews both written and videotaped, but whew, I couldn't take his Lagonda video delivery for more than five seconds (right about when he called the interior "insane" -- it felt like verbal clickbait.) Ditto the Thing video. He actually has inspired me to write and record my own videos that undersell things as exorbitantly as he oversells them, just for fun.
posted by davejay at 3:38 PM on June 28, 2019 [3 favorites]

I wonder if luxury car companies have to pack their vehicles so full of barely-useful features to justify the expense, and that the interface is more or less an afterthought, at that point.

I think it's a combination of: 1) showroom wow-factor to sell cars and give auto journalists something to talk about (how many youtube videos are there about pointless Tesla UX geegaws?), 2) the profit margins are thick enough at the high-end that the automakers can try out expensive ideas, and 3) there are a lot of two-year leases in the luxury vehicle segment; if you train users on a pointless gizmo like BMW's gesture control, you make it a little harder for them to move into a Mercedes S Class when their lease is up. People rightfully are going to resist learning a whole new way of doing the things they're accustomed to, so these driver interface eccentricities and difficult feature discovery act as a stealthy way for automakers to add friction to the switch to another brand for the most profitable customers.

So I'm with GCU Sweet and Full of Grace, the most interesting parts of Doug's videos are seeing how engineers chose to fit things in when mechanical packaging mattered in the days before everything in a car was a touchpad.
posted by peeedro at 4:05 PM on June 28, 2019 [1 favorite]

Doug has gotten somewhat repetitive, which is why I usually watch Hoovie's videos first. Still, he surfaces a lot of interesting bits that you don't get elsewhere.

Mr. Regular can go fuck a tree. I'm very tired of his "I'm not really saying this retrograde shit because I do it in an obviously mocking tone in order to make fun of the stereotypical owner of the car I'm reviewing" schtick. Hoovie does a lot of the same sorts of cars, and better.

Savagegeese and the Straight Pipes duo are far better anyway.
posted by wierdo at 4:10 PM on June 28, 2019

He spends about 30 minutes talking about largely irrelevant things like the font used for the rocker switch labels and less than 3 minutes describing how the car actually drives and performs.

This is what I love about his videos - he's an accidental UX critic. Cars contain interfaces and design surfaces, but most people never think about them. Doug, on the other hand, is obsessed with how drivers (ie users) do things like adjust the seats, control the cabin temp or read their mileage. I've learned a lot from watching his videos that have influenced how I think about user experience in my own projects.
posted by elwoodwiles at 6:33 PM on June 28, 2019 [3 favorites]

The Straight Pipes is a Canadian version of this and for me, a bit easier to take.
posted by bonobothegreat at 7:20 PM on June 28, 2019 [1 favorite]

I used to like watching Motorweek back in the day, when cars were actually desirable designs.

These days it’s BEV for me, though an F-250 w/ Tremor upgrades is oddly attractive to me...
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 10:54 PM on June 28, 2019

Oh man, all the 80s shitboxes that MotorWeek lauded for their relatively quick 12 second 0-55(!) times has provided me so many hours of entertainment in the past year. And gauges. Their obsession with "a full suite of gauges" and their bitter complaints about a car's lack lack of some gauge or another amuse me to no end.
posted by wierdo at 9:54 AM on June 29, 2019 [4 favorites]

I owned a '74 Thing as a daily driver for several years. It had been modded to hell and back to allow for trips through the Mojave. Roll cage, lift kit, bucket seats, dual carbs, external oil cooler, etc. The quirkiest thing was probably the windows. Everything else seemed pretty run-of-the-mill for a '70's Mexican VW.

I had several interesting conversations about it with strangers over the years, but these were my favorite:

Hip Hop Kid: "Hey yo, is this really called a Thing?"
Me: "Yup."
Kid: "Yeah, cuz my dad said, 'hey yo, look, it's a Thing!' And I was like, nah, man, it ain't called that, fer real?"

Drunk: "Hey man, dyoo wanna sell this car?"
Me: "How much do you have on you right now?"
Drunk: "I'm gonna buy this car. They need these in Hawaii."
Me: "That's a long way to drive."
Drunk: "Hey will you buy me a beer man?"
posted by Brocktoon at 10:25 AM on June 29, 2019 [2 favorites]

I had a '74 Super Beetle with the "Automatic Stick Shift" - when it was running it was the most fun car I've ever owned. When it wasn't... Oh, boy. Removing the torque converter on that beast and running down endless vacuum leaks gave me the confidence to wrench on my rides. Until my recent model Outback that requires you to uncouple the engine and lift it a bit on an engine jack to replace the plugs and the headlight bulbs. Paid a guy to do that.

Screw this. Next car is gonna be electric. I'd rather swap out the cells after their service interval rather than do oil changes in the driveway and a basic tuneup at the mechanic, because I don't have an engine jack.
posted by Slap*Happy at 9:28 PM on June 29, 2019 [2 favorites]

Huh, my Thing was definitely not a lot of fun to drive. It had whatever the complete opposite of power steering is. Most of my problems were electrical. The horn would sound during right turns. The ignition kill switch would shock the shit out of me on humid days. Something new and mysterious would find a way to drain the battery on a regular basis. Oh there's another quirk for you! The battery was located underneath the rear seat cushion. Eventually I removed the cushion permanently. I never allowed anyone else to ride in it anyway, death trap that it was. After 1974 it was classified as a "passenger vehicle" (I guess it was classified as a military vehicle up to that point?), and no way in hell would it ever meet the US safety standards, so adios to the Type 181.
posted by Brocktoon at 12:16 AM on June 30, 2019

Once you notice that Tyler Hoover holds his hands like a Ken doll at all times (except when he’s gripping the steering wheel), you will never not see it ever again.

You’re welcome and I’m sorry.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 5:26 PM on June 30, 2019