> The CARS section is similar to verbal reasoning sections providing passages with questions testing reading comprehension. The 500-600 word passages can cover topics ranging from the social sciences to the humanities, sometimes presenting in a convoluted or biased manner requiring the reader to consider what is being written from multiple perspectives.[25] The passages are designed to discuss topics that are unfamiliar to the reader, but success in this section requires strictly using information from the passage without using previously known knowledge.[
But what makes an IQ test is the theory that all performance on each of these skills correlates together strongly, indicating a single "general intelligence" factor (aka "IQ"). [1] Reading comprehension turns out to be highly correlated with mathematical aptitude, and musical aptitude, etc.
So the main criteria for an IQ test is not how it looks, or how it's structured, but whether it measures knowledge that has been acquired (aka "nurture") or ability to reason about new things. Since this test is measuring reading comprehension on topics that are unfamiliar to the reader, it is measuring the latter, and is likely to have a strong correlation with g, and thus looks like an IQ test.