I have mentioned before that monitoring the American automotive media reminds me of the Bruce Springsteen song, “57 Channels (And Nothin’ On).” The buff magazines and websites spend so much time trying to mimic each other’s coverage that they may as well all merge into one mega-website called Auto Obsession Warehouse.
This is a decidedly depressing state of affairs, so I was heartened to come across Driven To Write. This is a European website that seeks to “provide a distinctive voice and publish a diversity of writing you may not find elsewhere.”
Driven To Write strikes me as consistently meeting its goal. For one thing, it doesn’t post the clickbait common to U.S. websites. All of the Driven To Write stories I have read thus far have been thoughtful and thorough. No vapid, “If you had to pick one. . .” features or reposted car ads with half-assed commentary.
How do they get away with being . . . intelligent?
The business model of Driven To Write presumably removes any motivation to dumb down the content. The website states that it is “non-commercial, self-funded, and contains no advertising.”
Because this is purely a labor of love, Driven To Write was smart to pull together a team of contributors rather than trying to do a solo website. That said, I wonder whether a collaborative effort like this would be sustainable in the United States given the apparent individualism of so many auto history writers (at least outside of organizations such as the Society of Automotive Historians).
I also suspect that Driven To Write has more easily found a base of readers because it is mostly grounded in a European sensibility. Eruditeness seems to be a disadvantage here in the United States, where even Brock Yates was more famous for his Cannonball runs and rants against regulation than for his ability to string together elegant sentences.
This is not to suggest that Driven To Write has the pompousness of American auto media mogul David E. Davis. The website’s slogan is, “Still The World’s Least Influential Motoring Site.” That doesn’t appear to be false modesty, but I also wonder if the leadership of Driven To Write could use a wee bit more self confidence.
Good content marred by copyright infringement
Current front-page stories mostly focus on European automotive history, such as pieces on the Volkswagen Phaeton (O’Callaghan, 2022a) and Chrysler/Talbot Alpine (O’Callaghan, 2022b). However, there are also articles on American topics, such as a three-part series on Brooks Stevens. (Even though stories tend to be fairly long, authors often break them up into multiple posts.)
The author of the Stevens series, brrrruno, hits all the right factual notes as far as I can tell (go here, here and here). For example, he offers an overview of Stevens’s never-produced, post-war Willys passenger car that is more detailed in key respects than that of Stevens’s biographer, Glenn Adamson (2003), and Jeep historian Patrick Foster (2014).
By the same token, the website’s design is more polished than some American auto history websites. The body text is easy to read, photography crisp and layout uncluttered.
My only complaint is that Driven To Write plays fast and loose with copyright. One of my images — a fake design of a Stevens’s Studebaker concept car, was used without crediting me or asking for my permission (brrrruno, 2022). To make matters worse, my design, which had substantial differences from Stevens’s, was included in a collage that supposedly represented his works.
The only reason I found out about this website was because a Driven To Write commentator named Bob (2022) linked to an Indie Auto story on Willys . . . and my WordPress dashboard shows where most referrals come from. So thank you, Bob, for indirectly introducing me to this journalistic breath of fresh air. I am looking forward to a lot of good reading.
Driven To Write
- Free access
RE:SOURCES
- Adamson, Glenn; 2003. Industrial Strength Design: How Brooks Stevens Shaped Your World. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
- Bob; 2022. Commentator in “The Milwaukee Magician (Part Two).” Driven To Write. Posted Feb. 18 at 23:04.
- brrrruno; 2022. “The Milwaukee Magician” Part I, Part 2 and Part 3. Driven To Write. Posted Feb. 11, 18 and 25.
- Foster, Patrick R.; 2014. Jeep: The History of America’s Greatest Vehicle. Motorbooks, Minneapolis, MN.
- O’Callaghan, Daniel; 2022a. “Missing the Marque: Volkswagen Phaeton.” Driven To Write. Posted Feb. 4.
- ——; 2022b. “The Nearly Car (Part One).” Driven To Write. Posted Feb. 4.
ADVERTISING & BROCHURES:
- oldcaradvertising.com: Willys Jeepster (1948)
PHOTOGRAPHY & PHOTOSHOPS:
- Milwaukee Art Museum Brooks Stevens Archives
- Author’s photoshop: “1965 Studebaker Lark: Brooks Stevens’ (almost) baby Continental”
Dear Steve.
Many thanks for your review of the Driven To Write website. We are very happy that you like what we do. Reading through your introductory pages, it appears that Indie Auto and DTW are fellow travellers on our journey to improve the quality of automotive content on the Internet. I am very much looking forward to exploring your pages further.
Regarding the issue of our lack of attribution for your image, I would first like to apologise for our error. It was clearly our intention to include an image of the original Brooks Stevens design and not the one that you had adjusted. We are very aware of our responsibilities regarding the correct attribution of any images used in our pieces and try hard to ensure we abide by these. On this occasion, we fell short, but please be assured that we will correct our error directly.
In any event, this hiccup has, happily, made us aware of each others’ good work and I would like to return the favour by publicising your site on ours.
Eóin Doyle, editor of DTW, is currently travelling, but asked me to pass on his best wishes to you.
Kind regards,
Daniel O’Callaghan
Thank you, Daniel. You do great work, so I look forward to reading more of it.