I think they both had wildly different expectations of what was appropriate in that situation. Neither came out looking very good, IMHO.
But engaging the press in a press release war creates the wrong image for the company. Who will hear about it? Viewers of Top Gear and the NY Times. And they won't be likely to guess their beloved news source is in the wrong. You can't win that kind of fight and he should have known better than to try. I can't believe it has been good for Tesla on balance.
Top Gear is the Daily Show of automobile journalism. Although it's entertainment, a surprising number of its viewers would cite it as their primary source of auto news.
Just as with the Daily Show audience, the Top Gear audience isn't thinking very critically about every subject presented. With that kind of audience, it's all about appearances. Merely having heard that there has been a kerfuffle over their prior coverage of Tesla is sufficient for viewers to think, "well, perhaps what I saw about Tesla on Top Gear wasn't quite accurate." In other words, since loud and silly is all that this audience can perceive, I think Musk did the right thing.
I was skeptical of Musk's reaction to the Times, but in net, I think Tesla came out of that looking seriously intolerant of journalistic hijinks. And many people respect that.
I was also on the side of it being a slight misstep for Tesla to make as much of an issue of the NYT and Top Gear problems, but in hindsight I think it's paid off for them. There's been so much good press now that people thinking back on the events may have a different opinion than when they first heard about it, and Tesla was less well known.
Jesus, is there some bad blood between HN and Top Gear? Or is this the bad blood, the Tesla thing?
On second thought, I could see that being it. HN pretty much idolizes Musk after all.
I think a suitable segment to parody would be the (rocket assisted) Mini Cooper Ski-Jump[1] from the Top Gear Winter Olympics Special[2].
For the low low price of a single Model S, a Merlin engine, and some quality time bodging one onto the other[3], he'd have a guaranteed viral hit in which to make his appeal to the public, as well as, almost certainly, the credibility of producing either a much better jump, or a much larger fireball.
As the saying (sorta) goes: "Never get into a rocket fight with a rocket scientist who owns his own rocket making company."
[1] http://www.bbcamerica.com/top-gear/videos/mini-ski-jump/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Gear_Winter_Olympics
[3] plus somewhere with a ski-jump they don't really like that much, and whose authorities don't have a problem with a mostly-horizontal rocket flight-plan, which might be tricky.
It doesn't really matter if their beloved news source is right or wrong, it still paints Tesla as litigious. The only time such suits over reviews expressly supported by the manufacturer go over well is when the reviewer committed gross fabrications or other inaccuracies.
The omissions in their suit speak quite loudly to me. For example, I just went back and rewatched the Top Gear review. They mention the engine overheated in one Tesla, and in the other the brakes failed while it was charging. I notice Tesla only made a big deal about the race track range estimate, which if I recall they didn't even claim was wrong- just misleading. That leaves an especially bad taste in my mouth- it's almost like Tesla is trying to discredit the apparently real failures by nitpicking unrelated minor details.
It all looks even more shady when you consider how few of these sorts of scuffles come up with Top Gear & other car companies.
(This is part of why Top Gear America is but a shadow of Top Gear UK)
Top Gear lied. Tesla wasn't expecting special treatment for sponsorship, they were expecting a modicum of honesty. You don't get to put this down to "culture clash" unless you're defining "ethical" and "unethical" as cultures.
Sometimes they fabricate things to make an awesome car look awful, sometimes they fabricate to make a mediocre car look awesome.
The common denominator is that they fabricate for the sake of entertainment. Anybody who actually watches the show would know and embrace that.
