Editorial Policy

1. What we publish

The Throttle Times covers vehicle ownership: what goes wrong with vehicles after they are bought, what fixing it costs, what maintenance is actually required, and which recalls and service bulletins apply.

We deliberately do not cover buying advice, road tests or new model launches. Pre-purchase research is handled by our sister publication, Feature and Fit. Keeping the boundary tight means our research stays narrow enough to do properly.

Every article starts from a question a real owner has, expressed the way they would ask it, and scoped to the model years the answer actually applies to.

2. Our source hierarchy

Not all sources carry the same weight. We rank them, and an article’s claims are built from the highest tier available.

3. Sources we will not use

The most common way an automotive article goes wrong is by inheriting a number from another article. Once a figure has been copied three times, it looks well established and has no origin at all.

So we hold to a hard rule:

• We do not cite another publication as the source of a fact. If they are right, the underlying document exists, and we go and find it.
• We do not use a figure whose origin we cannot establish, even if it appears everywhere.
• We do not paraphrase a document we have not opened.
• We do not treat the volume of repetition as evidence of accuracy.

4. How an article is produced

Every article, without exception, goes through these six stages.

• Define the question We write down the exact problem an owner is trying to solve and the model year range it applies to. If we cannot state it in one sentence, the article is not ready to start.
• Retrieve the primary records A researcher pulls the relevant recall campaigns, complaint records, service bulletins, maintenance schedules and warranty documents for that specific year and configuration, and files them against the article.
• Survey owner reporting We read what owners are saying to understand how a failure presents and how widely it is discussed. This shapes what we investigate and how we explain it. It never becomes a cited claim.
• Write against the records The writer works from the filed documents, not from memory or from other articles. Each factual claim is written with its source attached so the next stage can check it.
• Verify, line by line A second team member, never the writer, opens each source and confirms the claim it supports. Anything that does not check out is removed rather than softened.
• Edit and publish An editor checks scope, clarity, safety warnings and disclosure placement, then publishes with a date and a named byline.

5. Who does what

Seven people work on this site, and the jobs are deliberately separated. The person who writes an article is never the person who signs off on its sources, because it is very hard to catch your own assumptions.

Final editorial accountability sits with Sameer Patel, Founder and Editor. More about the team is on our About page.

6. How we use AI

Publishers being vague about this is exactly why readers have stopped believing automotive content, so here is the plain version.

What AI tools are used for

• Drafting and restructuring text from records our researchers have already retrieved and filed
• Summarising long documents so a researcher can find the relevant section faster
• Editing for clarity, structure and readability

What AI tools are never used for

• Supplying facts. A model’s recollection of a recall number, a cost or a specification is not a source and is never treated as one.
• Replacing verification. Every factual claim is checked by a person against the original document, regardless of how the draft was produced.
• Publishing unreviewed. No article reaches this site without a human researcher, a human fact-checker and a human editor having worked on it.

Articles are bylined to the people accountable for them. A byline on this site means that person stands behind the claims, not that they typed every word.

7. How we cite

Citation is placed next to the claim it supports, not collected at the bottom of the page where nobody reads it.

• Recall campaigns are given by their campaign number so you can look them up yourself
• Service bulletins are identified by their reference where the manufacturer publishes one
• Specifications and intervals state which model year and which manual they came from
• Where a claim rests on owner reports rather than a document, the article says so in those words

We link out to the original wherever a stable public link exists. Sending you to a government database that contradicts us costs us nothing we want to keep.

8. Dates and review

Every article carries a published date. Revised articles also carry a last-reviewed date. Both are visible on the page, not hidden in metadata.

Where a review changes something material, the change is logged under our Corrections Policy. Where a review finds nothing to change, we update the reviewed date and nothing else. We do not refresh a date to look current.

9. Cost figures

Repair costs are the easiest thing on a site like this to get wrong, and the most expensive for a reader if we do. Our rules:

• Costs are published as ranges, never as single numbers
• Parts and labour are shown separately where we can establish both
• Every figure carries the month it was compiled
• Ranges are built from published labour times and current parts pricing, not from other articles
• Where dealer and independent shop pricing differ materially, we say so rather than averaging them into one misleading number

10. Products and recommendations

Where an article recommends a part or a tool, four rules apply.

• The cheapest adequate answer is stated first, including when that answer is that you do not need to buy anything
• Fitment is established against the model years the article covers before anything is recommended
• Where a job should go to a professional, the article says so even though that earns us nothing
• No countdowns, invented scarcity or pressure language of any kind

Commission rates play no part in what we recommend. That commitment, and what happens if we ever receive a free product, is set out in our Affiliate Disclosure.

11. Independence from advertisers

No manufacturer, dealer group, parts brand, repair chain or advertiser pays to appear on this site, to be described in a particular way, or to keep something off it.

• Display advertising is served by third-party networks and is not selected by our editorial team
• An advertiser has no visibility of an article before publication and no right of reply beyond our normal corrections process
• We will publish that a company’s vehicle has a documented defect whether or not that company advertises here
• No commercial relationship has ever caused an article to be changed, delayed or withdrawn, and if one ever did we would disclose it

Where our money comes from, in full, is on How We Make Money.

12. The limits of our expertise

A policy about standards that overstates the team’s credentials defeats its own purpose. So, stated as plainly as on every other page here:

• Nobody on our team is a certified automotive technician, and we do not diagnose vehicles
• Our editorial team works from Durg, Chhattisgarh, India, and publishes for a United States audience
• Our authority comes from disciplined sourcing against US primary records, not from firsthand experience on American roads

We think that is a stronger foundation than claimed garage experience nobody can verify. It is also the truth, which makes it easier to keep. The full limits of what we publish are in our Disclaimer.

Where an article would benefit from technical review by a qualified technician, we will seek it and name the reviewer on the article. Where we have not been able to, we do not imply that we have.

13. Corrections

We will get things wrong. The measure of a publication is not whether it makes errors but what it does when one is found.

Corrections are logged and dated on the article itself. We do not quietly edit an error away and leave the page looking as though it was always right. The full process, including how to report something, is in our Corrections Policy.