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If you were to ask a cynical person (certainly not your author), they might say that there exist only two sources of online reviews: upset customers and bots. Since customers rarely go out of their way to praise a dealer even after the best of transactions, a tip from a reader that a Ford dealership might be using fake—possibly even AI-generated—reviews to boost its reputation shocked precisely zero of us.
After all, it’s 2025 and everything is fake. Does the world really need another story cautioning you to take Internet reviews with a grain of salt? Even your author was skeptical of the newsworthiness of telling people not to believe what they read online. Also, we’re online; please continue to believe us.
Our tipster steered us toward Huntley Ford on CarGurus, but there’s no shortage of similar slop on other platforms and supporting other businesses. But what we saw there both amused and deflated us. Check out this five-star summary from “Pavel,” whose family apparently had an amazing experience at Huntley!
Note the mid-review pivot from F-150 to Explorer—a car actually offered in a three-row configuration. The flip-flop makes that final sentence unintentionally hilarious. Here, we’ve been clamoring for single-cab pickups, meanwhile, Ford is apparently secretly producing a model that was clearly hybridized with an Expedition. A three-row F-150? In this economy?
Alternatively—and a bit more believably—the review is just fake. The lingering question, of course, is just how fake? After you read a few more, you’ll realize they’re working off a set of similar, but not exactly identical templates. There’s enough variation here for superficial plausibility, but when you see them all grouped together, the patterns become pretty obvious. The year, make, model and trim are always called out in detail (great for search!) and they’re always laced with positive adjectives.
The casing and grammar are also remarkably clean and tight, but have that sanitized air of sameness about them. Also, it appears they’ve been clumsily pasted from another app or content manager; they’re all littered with extra spaces—almost like you’re seeing the blanks on a “Mad Libs” sheet after they’ve been filled in.
If you’ll note, a few of them do list some negatives—long waits in financing, etc.—which would suggest a degree of objectivity. And hey, if we can normalize long waits as part of a “five-star” experience, that’s a win for the dealer too, right?
Now, look what happens if we scroll to the end of these identical, long-winded form responses and encounter some reviews which, while low-effort, at least have the general whiff of authenticity about them. The transition is clear as day. And Lloyd, wherever you are, I feel that energy. “Didn’t suck out loud” is pretty much where the bar sits these days.
Still not convinced? I need send you only so far as Google to see for yourself just how extensive the market for “reputation management” really is. “Whether you want to get more reviews, get reviews on more platforms, get rid of negative reviews, respond to reviews, or just manage your reviews, Kenect can help,” the company says right on its landing page. Meanwhile, this is just one of many guides to turning AI slop into something that sounds like it came from a real human. The text of that was probably written by AI too. Why not?
Even if we set aside the potential for digital tomfoolery, there are many reasons to use caution when reading dealer reviews. For starters, happy people rarely leave them. Dealers encourage it, of course, and some even offer incentives if you follow through, while simultaneously working to intercept any negative reviews before they appear publicly.
But you know what? I really said it all above. It’s 2025 and everything’s fake. Proceed accordingly.
Got a news tip? Let us know at tips@thedrive.com!
Byron is an editor at The Drive with a keen eye for infrastructure, sales and regulatory stories.
