Ian Ashbridge's comments about being wined and dined by AGCO provided a sneaky insight into an area that we journalists don't often comment publicly on.
As someone who has pounded the machinery beat ever since the Ford 5000 was a youngster and attended more off-roader launches than you can shake a leather-covered gearstick at, I'm always struck by the difference in wallet power between the ag machinery firms and the car ones.
Certainly, the machinery firms can do a great launch, with a posh venue, lashings of dry ice, Ben Hur-style music and simultaneous translation of the phrase "variable-geometry turbocharger" into 12 languages.
But in the car world, the numbers are bigger and the stakes higher, so some of the launches are truly sumptuous. Also motoring writers (or muttering rotters, as they like to call themselves) get a bit spoilt, so car makers have to work hard to keep them happy. A launch in southern Spain or Italy is manna from heaven to us poor wretches in the ag journalism market, wheareas for the motoring correspondents on the national dailies and specialist car mags, a 4wd trek across Morocco or Colorado, with goumet meal stops taken in specially erected marquees on beaches or mountaintops, is much more the ticket.
Are we persuaded by such luxury to write favourable things about particular makes? Not really, because every car maker is doing the same thing. And anyway, motoring writers, like those of us in agricultural journalism, maintain the same fine tradition of grumpy, curmudgeonly, and ungrateful independence.