How did you get into automotive writing?
I was attending Pratt Institute in the mid-1970s to study Industrial Design. I was an avid reader of Road & Track magazine and got the idea to do a small pen and ink illustration for the table of contents page. The magazine would run a new illustration there every month. So, I spent about 20 hours working on an illustration of a classic Rolls-Royce inside a barn and sent it off to the magazine. Some time later I got a letter saying it was accepted, and I would be getting a check for $35. I was shocked. I decided then and there I would not pursue automotive illustration and decided instead to write articles.
What was the first automotive magazine you wrote for when you started writing?
One of the first magazines I contacted with article ideas was CARS magazine. There editorial office was in Manhattan and I lived in Brooklyn, so after some correspondence, they invited me to their editorial offices. I met Jeremy Young and another editor there. I told them I had an idea for a series on muslcecar styling, which I titled "Musclecar Aesthetic." They liked the idea and told me to write several articles on Chrysler, Ford and Chevy. I did that and mailed them in. Naturally, these were my first attempts and they needed work. I visited CARS magazine again and they went over what needed work before they could publish it. I did the rewrites as they suggested, included the needed photos, and they published the whole series of six articles almost without any further editing. But another magazine I aspired to write for was Automobile Quarterly.
Read more of this interview.