(EXPANDED FROM 7/9/2021)
The recent death of Jean Jennings is a useful reminder that Automobile magazine’s biggest journalistic contribution was arguably that it elevated an unusually large number of women into senior editorial roles. This was an important step forward for an industry that had been utterly dominated by men.
David E. Davis deserves credit for hiring Jennings at Car and Driver magazine in 1980 and then bringing her with him when he founded Automobile in 1985. Jennings rose to the level of editor-in-chief in 2000. Over the next 14 years she used her power to dramatically shift the gender balance of the magazine’s editorial staff (Lorio, 2024; Wikipedia, 2024a).
In response to Jennings’ death, Car and Driver senior editor Elana Scherr mused, “When I first considered writing about cars as a career, wait, consider is too strong a word. When it first even came to my awareness that this was something people did and got paid for, there were two women in mainstream automotive journalism, Denise McCluggage and Jean Jennings. Between them they gave me hope there might be room for one more. And look where we are now! There are women hosting car shows, writing reviews, and racing in high-level motorsports” (Lorio, 2024).
Jennings and Davis had a tumultuous relationship
Davis might have been an important mentor to Jennings, but his working relationship with her was tumultuous. For example, in 2009 he told Autoline that he sometimes dreamed “of a FedEx flight on its way to Memphis flying over Parma where she lives and a grand piano falling out of the airplane and whistling down through the air, this enormous object, and lands on her and makes the damnedest chord anybody has ever heard. . . . And the next morning all they can find are some shards of wood and a grease spot and no other trace of Mrs. Jennings” (Smith, 2011).
For her part, a few years before Davis’s death Jennings had described him as “the most interesting, most difficult, cleverest, darkest, most erudite, dandiest, and most inspirational, charismatic and all-around damnedest human being I will ever meet. I have loved him. I have seriously not loved him. But this isn’t an obituary, so we don’t have to get into any weepy crap here” (Smith, 2011).
New owner tilts to ‘boys with toys’ after Jennings left
Jennings left Automobile after it was purchased by the Motor Trend Group in 2014. The magazine’s masthead then became dominated by men. This arguably resulted in a generic, “boys with toys” mentality. Not surprisingly, the magazine lost altitude.
In February 2020 Automobile published its last print edition (Wikipedia, 2024b). The website was eventually integrated with Motor Trend’s. There is still an Automobile Facebook page, but it consists entirely of Motor Trend content.
Also see ‘Automobile magazine’s bookshelf was fairly different from ours’
I didn’t find Automobile’s death to be a huge loss. The magazine primarily offered new car hype for the wine-and-cheese set with a few articles on collectible cars thrown in. This was similar to the formula developed by Davis when he launched the magazine, although he was big on “lifestyle” content. My favorite feature was Robert Cumberford’s columns about car design (go here for an example).
Road & Track appears to be attempting to take over Automobile’s upper-crust market niche with a “collector’s magazine” and other trinkets.
What lurked behind motto, “No Boring Cars!’
In the wake of Davis’ death, Jack Baruth (2011) offered a brutal critique of Automobile. He argued that the magazine’s motto, “No Boring Cars!” served as “an excuse, er, reason to demand an ever-greater variety of exotic machinery from the world’s press fleets and cross-continental promotional junkets. Hell, Automobile didn’t even bother to publish performance numbers. Why waste a day somewhere with a stopwatch, doing atmospheric correction like some kind of Bedard-esque nerd, when you could be tossing the keys to the valet and settling down for a long lunch at Detroit’s ‘London Chop House’?”
I never felt drawn to subscribe to Automobile. Its production values were a cut above other American car-buff magazines, but the editorial tone was rather bland. Even in its dog days, Car and Driver had more journalistic spunk. In addition, Automobile’s coverage of automotive history lacked the depth of Automobile Quarterly and Collectible Automobile.
By the same token, I didn’t pay all that much attention to Jennings’ writing. She seemed to be a colorful story teller but I wasn’t very interested in road-trip hijinks and other staples of the car-buff columnist. So I salute her pioneering efforts to bring women into the automotive media but can’t point to a favorite article. Readers are invited to share theirs.
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RE:SOURCES
- Baruth, Jack; 2011. “RIP David E. Davis, Jr.” The Truth About Cars. Posted March 27.
- Smith, Steven Cole; 2011. “Longtime auto journalist David E. Davis Jr. dies.” Autoweek. Posted March 27.
- Lorio, Joe; 2024. “Jean Jennings Has Died; Former Car and Driver Editor Was a Pioneering Auto Journalist.” Car and Driver. Posted Dec. 16.
- Wikipedia; 2020. “Automobile (magazine).” Page last edited September 25.
- ——; 2024a. “Jean Jennings.” Page last edited Dec. 18.
- ——; 2024b. “Automobile (magazine).” Page last edited Nov. 9.
This review was first posted on Nov. 13, 2020 and expanded on July 9, 2021 and Dec. 18, 2024.
I enjoyed Jean Jennings nee Lindamood’s content at C&D back in the 80s, think the first thing I read by her was about a race in Baja California around 1982. I enjoyed her writing and humor. It made C&D seem less stuffy than MT or R&T.
RIP Jean