Guild Member Profile: Dino Buratti

Dino is the latest member to take part in our initiative to help with recognition and making introductions easier at industry events, by revealing a bit more about members than can be gleaned from their Year Book entry. If you’d like to take part simply send to the News Briefs editor with a suitable landscape-shaped photo.

Name and job title: Dino Buratti, researcher/writer (cars), Which?

How did you get started in automotive journalism? I was a student on the MA Automotive Journalism course at Coventry University between 2021 and 2022 after studying history at undergraduate level at Coventry between 2018 and 2021. I then joined Which? in September 2022 after finishing the course; I’ve been there ever since.

What’s been your most memorable car review or feature piece? I often find I have a good time in Japanese cars, with my recent review of the diesel Mazda CX-80 earlier this year being the most memorable. It was, at the time, the most expensive and powerful car I’d ever driven on a week-long loan before, and was the first modern diesel car I’d ever driven on public roads.

The Mazda generally proved itself to be a pleasant antidote to the touchscreen-heavy range of cars I typically drive and was also very upmarket, efficient and spacious. Of greater interest was the fact that the driver who picked the car up from me told me that he’d delivered the same car to one Jeremy Clarkson the week before I had it on loan, which was certainly unexpected.

Which motoring story or investigation are you most proud of? I was (and still am) involved in a long-running investigation into potentially dangerous behaviour that was exhibited by the MG4’s lane-departure warning technology in our lab test of this car. The investigation involved negotiating with MG regarding its willingness to timely develop and release a software update to correct the issue, talking with the DVSA and VCA about how the software update would be approved for UK drivers and enquiring with our car lab for more detail about what happened.

I’ve also helped to raise awareness of the issue, with around 110 MG4 owners contacting Which? to tell us of their experiences with their car’s lane-departure warning technology. The VCA credited the investigation for prompting the update, while the majority of owners we’ve heard from that have received the update are pleased with it.

How has motoring journalism changed since you started? I may not have been in the industry for long, but even in a few years it’s clear that there’s now a greater need to make the most of the resources we have to maximise our outputs.

What was the first car or motorcycle you ever owned? The first (and only) car I’ve ever owned is my 2003 Seat Arosa, which I bought in 2017 to learn to drive in. With test cars often coming and going regularly, it doesn’t get used much but it’s often poignant to drive a car that’s very basic and doesn’t really have any safety equipment fitted. It’s also amusing to tell people that’s the car I own; they expect me to own something more modern or performance-focused.

Do you have a dream car or other vehicle you’d love to own or drive? I could say something exotic like a Ferrari (I am half-Italian, after all). But my dream garage would have four cars in it: an original Honda Insight (for the efficiency) a Volvo 960 estate (for practicality), a Jaguar XJR X308 (for luxury) and a Pembleton T24 (for driving for fun).

What’s the best road trip you’ve ever been on? I can’t say I’ve ever been on a road trip, weirdly. But the closest thing is my weekly (or so) commute from my Worcestershire home to the Which? office in London – it’s around 115 miles each way.

Which motoring event do you always look forward to? I’d say SMMT Test Day in May – it’s one of the few events where lots of motoring writers and content creators come together to drive cars and socialise with brands and each other.

What’s the biggest challenge facing automotive writers today? Changes to how search engines rank websites can make it hard for authoritative content to stand out for search engine users, with less definitive and more questionable content types being promoted over others. It’s therefore harder for writers to gain exposure for their work – regardless of whether they are freelance or employed.

Where do you see the future of automotive journalism heading? In the next 10 or 20 years I expect that a lot of print-focused operations will either significantly reduce their outputs or will close down entirely, as more people consume media online. And with a greater number of influencer-type people posting content through social media and video sites, it will be harder for writers to publish content that’s read by noteworthy numbers of people.

How do you think vehicle manufacturers could improve their media engagement? I often find that different car manufacturers communicate in very different ways. Some representatives are very easy to communicate with and get hold of, while you have to work hard to get very little out of others.

This isn’t related to the number of employees a PR team has; in fact, I often find that the smallest PR teams are among the most responsive while teams with larger staff numbers (or that employ external PR agencies to represent them) are among the least helpful.

What’s the strangest or funniest thing that’s ever happened on a car launch? One of the most surreal things to happen to me on a car launch was at the UK launch of the Mazda MX-30 R-EV. The driving route went from Liverpool to near Llandudno and back via North Wales. Part of the route went through Llanberis, which I’d last visited 12 years before as an 11-year old on a family holiday. If you’d have said to me then that the next time I would pass through the area would be on a car launch in a rotary-engined Mazda, I would have scoffed at the very thought of it…

If you could swap jobs with someone in the industry for a day, who would it be? One of my slightly odd interests is related to how manufacturers price cars and the offers they have. I’d be very interested in going behind the scenes to see how they decide what types of offers they’d promote and what sort of customer a brand would target with any given promotion.

What’s your go-to driving music or podcast? I don’t listen to music in my own car. In press cars I’ll either play music off my phone or listen to music stations like Gold.