Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / Journalistic journeys in the Autosphere with Matt Stone & Preston Lerner

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Journalistic journeys in the Autosphere with Matt Stone & Preston Lerner · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

• 0:00
  Break Fix podcast is all about capturing the living history of people from all
• 0:05
  over the autos sphere, from wrench, turners, and racers to artists, authors,
• 0:09
  designers, and everything in between.
• 0:11
  Our goal is to inspire a new generation of Petrolhead that wonder.
• 0:16
  How did they get that job or become that person?
• 0:19
  The Road to Success is paved by all of us because everyone has a story.
• 0:27
  Welcome to a very special reunion episode of Break Fix Podcast, where
• 0:32
  automotive journalism meets memory lane.
• 0:34
  Today we're bringing together two of the industry's most respected voices,
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  Matt Stone and Preston Lerner for a conversation that's equal parts
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  insightful, nostalgic, and full throttle fun with decades of experience.
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  Between them, Matt and Preston have chronicled some of the most
• 0:50
  iconic moments, machines and personalities and car culture.
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  From glossy magazine pages to bestselling books.
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  Their stories have shaped how we see the automotive world so tune in as
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  they reflect on their journeys, trade tales from the road, and share what
• 1:03
  still gets their engines revving today.
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  Joining us tonight is returning co-host Don Weiberg from Garage Style
• 1:09
  Magazine, one of the many personalities on the Motoring Podcast Network.
• 1:12
  Welcome back, Don.
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  Thank you, Eric.
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  How are you this evening?
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  I'm good.
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  And with that, let's welcome Preston and Matt to break fix.
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  Nice to be here.
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  Great to be here, Eric.
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  Yeah, just what he said.
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  All right, guys.
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  This episode's gonna be a little different than our Normal Road to Success.
• 1:26
  Tell me your life story.
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  You know, were you a petrolhead since you were a kid?
• 1:29
  This comes to us by way of the I-M-R-R-C because as a lot of our fans know, we do
• 1:35
  remastering of content from them as part of our history of Motorsports series.
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  And I came across this wonderful little DVD four gt, how Ford silenced
• 1:43
  the critics and humbled Ferrari and conquered Lamonts by Preston Lerner.
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  And inside this insightful DVD Preston talks about working with Matt Stone, and
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  I'm like, wait, wait, hold on a second.
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  What a small world we live in, especially the automotive world.
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  So I wanted to talk about.
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  How did you guys meet?
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  And let's just start from there.
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  I have one remembrance of meeting press.
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  The first time was at a book signing for his extremely definitive and
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  seminal book about the entire scarab scene, the race cars, the street cars,
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  LANs Rev Low, the whole scarab thing.
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  Now a lot of you out there will not know what a scarab is other than a a
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  dung beetle, but a fabulous breed of American born and built race cars.
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  That are just fabulous and gorgeous and fast and noisy and all that.
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  Nobody had ever written much truth to power about Revit Low and his effort
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  and the guys who drove for him and where the cars went and blah, blah,
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  blah, and Preston decided here's a story to be told proper, and he did it.
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  I have this book.
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  I think, again, if my house was on fire, that would be one of the books that would
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  go out the door with me because it's so well done on such an interesting story.
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  And it was a book signing, I believe, at the Auto books in Burbank.
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  And he was the guy behind the table with the pen.
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  And I bought the book.
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  And I don't have the pen, but I have the book and I have Preston as my pal.
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  So Preston, is that how you remember the story going, or, uh, well, not exactly.
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  Funny thing is, is you never know what you're gonna have
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  behind you in your bookcase.
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  Only by coincidence.
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  I have Matt's Irock book over here, right to my left.
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  It's just sitting there.
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  I wrote the SC book, and that was really a great experience.
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  It was wonderful to meet all those people from the early Sports Card
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  days of the fifties and then into the Formula One into the sixties.
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  But I remember Matt was, we were both freelancers at the time, and
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  I swear, Matt, you're pretty sure you wrote an escape road, as I
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  recall what it was called wasn't the Auto Week would do the one Pagers.
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  It was the one page per issue.
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  Classic car section.
• 3:36
  Yeah.
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  And you did one on the scab as I recall.
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  Okay.
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  It's coming back to me now.
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  Yeah.
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  That's my recollection of when we met.
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  We talked about the scabs, I believe.
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  Then I don't even remember doing a book signing at Auto Books for the scab.
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  Well, maybe we just met there and I got your book and you signed it for me.
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  I don't remember could, but I have very distinct memories of you and I
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  together the first time at Auto Books.
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  Although we've met up there many, many, many more times over a lot of other books.
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  But I knew it was scarab related for sure.
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  So we're going back a few years yet.
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  Yeah, that's 91.
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  90, 91. Now, was that 1890 or 91?
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  It was one.
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  Dinosaurs, Rome the Earth, that's for sure.
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  But okay.
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  Long time ago, but of course I lived in Burbank and Matt at the time was in
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  Glendale, so we were neighbors as well.
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  And we would run into each other periodically at various events.
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  Well, since we're on that subject, Preston, why don't you bring the audience
• 4:21
  up to speed on a little bit of your cv.
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  What magazines did you write for as a journalist?
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  So I started as a newspaper reporter in Dallas.
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  I was at the store Telegram, and then the uh, morning news never wrote for
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  the Times Herald started freelancing for various magazines, moved up to
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  California and I was originally doing stuff for Sports Court International
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  and Road and Track Specials, which was, it was a whole division back then.
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  It was incredible.
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  They would put out 13 issues a year, as I recall.
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  It was as big as the monthly magazine, but eventually I caught on
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  with Automobile Magazine, which was still a going concern at the time.
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  Thanks to Jean.
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  She was then Jean Linde mood, but later Jean Jennings.
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  That's who I did most of my, uh, car riding for was for automobile.
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  You know, Matt actually ended up over at MotorTrend.
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  So at the time we were competitors.
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  Eventually we were under the same corporate ownership, but
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  that was further down the road.
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  So what was it like, you know, you knew Matt, you met Matt, now you're
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  competitors in the world of journalism.
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  What is that like?
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  So Matt, from your perspective, and maybe tell us a little bit about your
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  journalism fame outside of MotorTrend and how it overlapped with Preston's,
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  but how did you guys feel as competitors?
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  From what I said, I mean it, it was a totally friendly competition.
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  I mean, we all competed for the same exclusive stories and the most juiciest
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  drive or most juiciest interview.
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  Certainly between Preston and I, only friendly competition.
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  But I would have to say our bosses.
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  Maybe not always because they were competing for the same newsstand
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  buyer and the same magazine dollar and the same advertiser dollars.
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  So it was very competitive.
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  And it was kind of funny because Road and Track and Car and Driver were
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  under the same ownership for a while as was automobile and MotorTrend.
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  We had in-house competitors and we had down the road competitors.
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  And like I said, person to person, it was more often than not very friendly.
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  If somebody from a competing magazine called and needed some help, I'd help 'em.
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  And I would like to say that there were few times I made that same call
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  that they helped me, but again, for advertising dollars, newsstand dollars,
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  and you know, those killer cover stories, it was pretty competitive.
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  It was pretty collegial I thought, but I was not on staff.
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  So Matt was on staff and he had to deal with the advertisers and
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  he had to deal with corporate.
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  Um, for me, I just would go out and do stories that were
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  assigned to me or, you know.
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  Or that I pitched in.
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  So speaking of Rodent Track, this is the post John Bond period, right?
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  So this is whole new management.
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  Totally different regime, right?
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  It was a different regime, but it was still, it was Matt Lorenzo was
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  doing it then, and it was, Matt may remember better than not, but
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  I still think it was the same.
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  It was before it was bought by Hearst and when they fired everybody
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  and they moved to To Ann Arbor?
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  Yeah, it was, it was Matt De Lorenzo and John Dinkle.
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  Oh, right.
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  Yeah.
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  Ron Sessions was running the specials.
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  That's the guy that I worked for when you were working for him too.
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  That was a lot of fun.
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  Yeah, that was great.
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  Yeah, that was way down the highway from John and Elaine Bond
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  and the much more modern times.
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  And that company was bought and sold.
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  I don't know, CBS owned them and somebody else owned them and then
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  somebody else owned them again and, and then most recently they turned
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  over their editorial and management staff, 48 different directions.
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  Nobody that I really still know there or do any work for.
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  The road track specials, which Ron Sessions ran at.
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  Andy Bhop was the second in command.
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  Andy was a, is a great guy and they put out 13 one shots a year.
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  So they did two new cars issues and they did two new trucks issues and
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  they did like a sports and GT car issue and, but I do remember like Road and
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  Track had an amazing library back then.
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  They were in, uh, Newport Beach at the time was before they moved in Arbor,
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  they had a librarian which is like incredible, a full-time librarian.
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  Otis Meyer.
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  Yep.
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  And when I wrote that SC book, they allowed me to use a bunch of their photos
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  free and I was able to just go through their archive, which was incredible.
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  They had just rolls and rolls and rolls of undeveloped film, of just stuff.
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  It was all archived and you could find stuff, but they didn't print
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  any, the unprinted stuff out for me.
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  I mean they had all the press kits and everything.
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  It was really incredible.
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  And I mean, I don't know how they did it putting out between the monthly
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  and this specialist 25 issues a year.
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  Those were the fat days of print journalism, that's for sure.
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  That brings up a really good question about the daily grind.
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  As an automotive journalist, my experience was somewhat different 'cause
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  I wasn't on staff, so I only worked on specific stories that typically.
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  About half of them that I pitched and half of them that were assigned
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  to me and kind of at automobile, I became, for lack of anybody else
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  there, kind of their racing experts.
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  So when they wanted to do a racing story, I usually did 'em.
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  I didn't do as many of the press trips for new car launches.
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  I typically didn't get assigned to those.
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  I did some of them and they were fun, but for me it was, it was
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  kind of a different experience.
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  And I was also freelancing for other magazines, non-car magazines as well.
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  So.
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  My experience is a little different than someone who would be on staff,
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  although Matt was a freelancer for many years before going on staff, but I guess
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  he would've a better perspective kind of from the two different viewpoints.
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  You know, generally it was a lot of fun.
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  I mean, there were some fabulous days.
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  There were a lot of great and good days and a few tough days, but it was
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  a lot of fun because you're surrounded by working with guys and gals that
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  love cars and love to drive and love to do all that kind of stuff.
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  I was sort of the cultural imperative and history guy, so when it was something
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  to do with history, cultural imperative, personalities, whatever, that was a
• 9:02
  lot of in my bucket, and that's where I got to meet a guy named Don Weiberg.
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  Uh oh.
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  I am happy to say these 4,000 years later, we are still friends and like
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  I said, some of the days were really fun and some of the days were just
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  long and some were long and fun.
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  One of the things that I so enjoyed is when we would go out on a staff road
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  test, okay, we're gonna take these four cars and we're gonna go to New Mexico
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  and shoot a feature and do a a road test.
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  And we'd sit around every night at dinner and talk about how we felt about driving
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  this car and that car, Hey, the seats on that one as good as this one or whatever.
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  And the dinner conversation was a blast.
• 9:39
  Everybody came from a different perspective and of course has
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  different physicality and different tastes in how they like to drive
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  front, drive, rear drive, all drive, VH, turbos, whatever Matt's words
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  painted this imaginary picture of what we all see on a top gear special.
• 9:54
  Is there any truth to those, you know, behind the scenes when you see like a
• 9:58
  top gear special and they've gone out and they've tested the cars and you see
• 10:02
  the crews and they're sitting at dinner.
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  I mean, is it very much like that or is that more dramatized?
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  The life that you led as a journalist, Eric, I bring to your table of lesson
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  Met Stone teach me long time ago.
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  We admit to nothing when the recording devices don't work.
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  You'll live in mystery.
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  I'll answer that a little more.
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  What the top gear guys have created is quite amazing, and those guys are all
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  personalities and, and I have respect for them and affection for them.
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  That's a little spiced up.
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  Okay?
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  That doesn't mean it's lies.
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  Or untruthful, but it is definitely seasoned for tv.
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  I enjoyed going out on the road trip with the guys and gals.
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  That was a lot of fun, a lot of work, long days, but it was really, to me, one
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  of the sweet spots of doing this kind of work was bonding with a great team,
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  and I had those most years, not every year or all the time, but most years.
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  Really good teams.
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  We worked hard and we had a blast and we did photo shoots until dark and
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  plus hopefully put it all together in a good story when we got back.
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  That was very satisfying.
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  Eric, now you see why I've always spoken kind of highly of Matt
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  Stone, having worked for him, having been his whipping boy.
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  He was fun to work for.
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  He really was.
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  He was never short of words.
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  He would always had an opinion about something, but he was always
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  really, really good at guiding you when you asked kind of questions,
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  when you had straight up ideas.
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  He had a a really great way of guiding you.
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  And I'll tell you, I remember a couple of those.
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  I mean, I never took the New Mexico vacations or anything like
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  that with you guys, boondoggles.
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  Yeah.
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  But I do remember a couple of long road trips where they were stuck
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  with me because they needed a body to drive the vehicle to the location.
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  And a couple of those were with Matt.
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  Yeah, I gotta say, I would only occasionally get called
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  in for some of the campos.
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  You know, you get four or five cars and needed.
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  Like Don was saying, you needed bodies, you know, even if you weren't gonna
• 11:51
  be writing the story, you needed somebody to drive the cars, get
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  'em from A to B and B2C, and so on.
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  And I found those to be the longest assignments because photography had to
• 11:59
  be done either very early or very late.
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  'cause they wanted the golden light.
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  And really the stories were driven by photography.
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  I mean, because the photographer only had one bite at the apple.
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  So the photographers needed to get what they needed to get and they needed to
• 12:09
  get it whenever they needed to get it.
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  And even though as a writer, you know, even when you were writing the story,
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  and a lot of times I wasn't writing the story, you'd think, oh, you spent all this
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  time driving the car and getting dynamic feedback and, and so on and so forth.
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  And no, you were mostly standing around waiting for the photographer to take
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  interiors and, and do beauty shots.
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  And for the high speeds thing, that would rig the suction cup card of the camera.
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  It was going two miles an hour.
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  It looks like it's going 180.
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  So I found those to be a little tiresome.
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  To be honest.
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  They were long days.
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  I like going out on feature stories.
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  I was by myself occasionally.
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  I had a photographer with me and I sort of set my own agenda.
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  That was a lot more pleasant for me.
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  I do remember Matt a couple of times watching you work with the
• 12:44
  other senior editors, including the man in the corner office, and I
• 12:48
  remember it was always impressive.
• 12:50
  They always kinda look to you.
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  Something I never understood, by the way.
• 12:55
  Right.
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  You were just playing it.
• 12:57
  Right.
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  You were just going with it.
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  You know?
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  They want my opinion.
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  I'll give it to 'em.
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  I was doing my thing.
• 13:01
  Yeah, it was always fun working with you.
• 13:03
  It really was.
• 13:04
  Except for that time, he slapped me across the face, but I guess I deserved it.
• 13:07
  Okay then.
• 13:08
  Now that is a Jeremy Clark's moment.
• 13:10
  We worked hard and learned a lot and went great and marvelous places, and made
• 13:15
  many, many friends all over this world.
• 13:18
  I mean.
• 13:18
  And I've heard Matt say it a bunch of times before, there's a difference
• 13:22
  between a writer and a journalist.
• 13:23
  So I want you guys to expand upon that for our audience, and this is no knock
• 13:27
  on you, tiktoks and Facebookers and all, well, maybe it's 40 characters and a
• 13:33
  crappy photo is not great journalism.
• 13:37
  In my humble opinion.
• 13:39
  It may or may not even be journalism.
• 13:41
  I mean, I guess if you got the one photo of somebody very, very important,
• 13:45
  running naked down through Times Square, maybe that's journalism.
• 13:49
  So when I was a kid, they called those tabloids.
• 13:51
  I just wanna throw that out there, what you described, right?
• 13:54
  Social media and all that.
• 13:55
  Content creator.
• 13:56
  Yeah, content creators, tabloids.
• 13:57
  But there's no analysis in that.
• 13:59
  It's, it's a crappy photo in 40 characters.
• 14:01
  I never have, nor do I now want anything to do with that scene.
• 14:05
  I don't do that stuff.
• 14:07
  Good luck to those who do.
• 14:08
  And if you make money good on you, and you have fun and
• 14:10
  you're providing good content.
• 14:12
  I love that you have to be a content creator.
• 14:15
  Now, you used to be able to be a writer or a journalist, and now
• 14:18
  you have to be a content creator.
• 14:20
  Well, I'm not sure there's really, uh, a tremendous difference.
• 14:24
  I mean, I, I kind of came to the game through newspapers.
• 14:27
  I didn't come through it as a car lover first, so I think I brought a little bit
• 14:30
  more of that kind of granular stuff to it.
• 14:32
  The thing is, is marginalism was a thing you really needed expertise in cars.
• 14:36
  More than journalism.
• 14:37
  I mean, if you weren't, if you didn't know cars, you could be a great journalist,
• 14:39
  but you know, you didn't know the nitty gritty about how cars worked and how
• 14:42
  they were supposed to handle and perform.
• 14:43
  You were kind of worthless, I think.
• 14:45
  I think you needed to really have both skills needed to be there.
• 14:47
  I would agree with that.
• 14:48
  I would say that not every writer is a great journalist, and not every journalist
• 14:53
  is a great writer, but there are poets.
• 14:55
  Poets can be fabulous writers.
• 14:57
  They may not know or understand the tenets.
• 15:00
  Journalist.
• 15:01
  The ideal quinella is when both of them meet in the middle in one
• 15:05
  individual with a singular writing voice and a singular mind that really
• 15:09
  understands the job, the topic, the story, and the results, and then really
• 15:13
  knows how to put it down in writing.
• 15:15
  And that guy's name is Preston Lerner, as far as I'm concerned, in the world
• 15:19
  of automotive journalism, the goat, that's the greatest of all time.
• 15:23
  Is that still Brock Yates or is there somebody else that
• 15:26
  you guys look up to and say?
• 15:28
  He was one of the greatest automotive writers of all time.
• 15:30
  Brock Yates, the assassin, just finished a manuscript for a book
• 15:34
  on racing from 64 to 73 pro racing.
• 15:37
  And so I. Went through all the literature magazines back in the day, and I
• 15:40
  gotta say, Yates was unbelievable.
• 15:41
  He was the most opinionated.
• 15:43
  If you agree with him, he was the best.
• 15:44
  If you disagree with him, you'd probably want to kill him.
• 15:46
  But I think he was probably the most influential journalist I know.
• 15:48
  He went beyond journalism, you know, cannonball stuff and safety and I
• 15:52
  mean, he was on TV as a broadcaster.
• 15:54
  I never really thought about who would be the goat, but I think he was the biggest
• 15:57
  name, best known outside of the field.
• 15:59
  I mean, he wrote novels.
• 16:00
  He was really something.
• 16:00
  I didn't know him very well, unfortunately.
• 16:02
  'cause I never worked for Car And Driver was never back in the Michigan area.
• 16:05
  I'd say he would be the first one that comes to mind.
• 16:07
  Yeah, and he absolutely had the chops.
• 16:10
  He had the chops and the receipts.
• 16:12
  Could I conclusively?
• 16:14
  Undoubtedly unequivocally name, name him the goat.
• 16:17
  I'd have to think longer and harder.
• 16:19
  But with Preston, he was right up there.
• 16:22
  Right up there.
• 16:23
  I knew him late in his life.
• 16:24
  What a fascinating guy to sit and talk with.
• 16:26
  Yeah.
• 16:27
  What do you, would you say Matt is the key differentiator between
• 16:29
  a writer and a journalist?
• 16:30
  They, again, can be the same person and can be acting.
• 16:34
  In a duality, but the tenets of journalism about, you know, corroborating evidence
• 16:39
  and doing good reporting and all of the stuff that goes with journalism, that's
• 16:44
  something not every writer understands.
• 16:46
  You know, in terms of attribution, of information, of quoting, of credits,
• 16:50
  of backup, of second sources, of all the things that make a great
• 16:54
  journalist may or may not have anything to do with being a great writer.
• 16:58
  Ideally, you want both using automobile as a, an example, David
• 17:01
  E. Davis, PJ O'Rourke, gene, I mean.
• 17:04
  They weren't really journalists.
• 17:05
  I mean, they weren't out there interviewing engineers and typically
• 17:08
  their reporters notebooks, like I was, you know, laying down specs.
• 17:11
  And that wasn't their job.
• 17:12
  I mean, they were there to reflect their larger than life personalities
• 17:15
  and tell great narratives, and, and they were great writers.
• 17:17
  You know, they had stuff that I couldn't do.
• 17:19
  I mean, no one was gonna mistake me for David e and, and when you
• 17:21
  were at a dinner, I mean, David e and Gene would just hold court.
• 17:23
  Matt too.
• 17:24
  That's not what, what I was, but the skills are somewhat different,
• 17:27
  but they're not antithetical.
• 17:28
  I think, like Matt said, if you could do both of 'em, that's better and better.
• 17:30
  So Preston, would you say then, for writers that are listening to
• 17:34
  this right now, we're just gonna use that term to not split hairs.
• 17:37
  If you're in the realm of non-fiction, do you think the transition to
• 17:41
  journalism is a little easier than a straight fiction writer?
• 17:44
  Or to Matt's point, a poet or somebody that's writing prose?
• 17:47
  I mean, I think it's pretty straightforward.
• 17:48
  I mean, if you're doing a piece where you need to do real reporting, I mean
• 17:52
  there, there is some experience you need or expertise and, but I think
• 17:55
  it's pretty easy to, you know, you ask people questions that you're,
• 17:57
  you're all of a sudden, you're a journalist, you're a reporter.
• 17:59
  I think you can learn that on the job.
• 18:01
  You know, the point is, sometimes I, I feel like when you watch,
• 18:03
  you know, the influencers, I mean, they're not asking questions.
• 18:05
  Their stock and trade is their own opinion.
• 18:07
  That's not what a journalist is.
• 18:08
  A journalist is not out there to give your opinion.
• 18:10
  You're out there to get what other people have to say about a subject,
• 18:13
  sort of pass that information along.
• 18:14
  So I think you can certainly do it, but I, a lot of people, they rather
• 18:17
  talk about their own opinions than they would get somebody else's opinions.
• 18:20
  That I find a little off-putting sometimes.
• 18:22
  But you know, I'm a little bit old school that way.
• 18:24
  And we could probably debate the difference when we bring in
• 18:27
  historians into this as well.
• 18:29
  Or we're recounting facts and figures just like as journalists
• 18:32
  would, but it's in more academic, you know, those kinds of things.
• 18:34
  But we'll put a pin in that for now.
• 18:36
  So, Don, do you wanna weigh in here?
• 18:38
  As we transition?
• 18:39
  I want to take you boys back to New Mexico and some of those road trips
• 18:43
  where we grind the hell outta the Audis and wonder if the Mercedes will survive.
• 18:48
  What were some of the more memorable stories, the more memorable
• 18:51
  assignments that you worked on, either together or separately, that
• 18:56
  still stand out in your head today?
• 18:58
  It's a great question, Don.
• 18:59
  I can name a couple from my own experience and I'm sure press has his too.
• 19:03
  Something we did at MotorTrend every year was a annual top speed shootout
• 19:07
  and we would go to a proving ground in Arizona on New Mexico that had a
• 19:12
  five mile banked oval Indianapolis motor speed bay, but twice the size.
• 19:17
  And we would bring a race driver de jour with us to take whatever car
• 19:23
  that was and ring them out to VM Max.
• 19:25
  On this five mile track, we had Justin Bell one time, Danica Patrick
• 19:30
  one time, and one I particularly remember who was the ice?
• 19:34
  Cool, wonderful professional, Brian Herda.
• 19:38
  Oh, and we, and we brought big weapons that time.
• 19:41
  We had the four gt, the first one, the five four supercharge V eight, and
• 19:46
  we had a Porsche Carrera gt the V 10.
• 19:49
  I'm trying to remember at the minute what the third one was,
• 19:52
  but we had that strata of cars.
• 19:54
  We're having a little meeting before, you know, photographers are
• 19:57
  snapping around a little and the test equipment guys are rigging up cars.
• 20:01
  And so Herta comes to me, he says, top speed, right?
• 20:03
  I said, yep.
• 20:04
  He says, you know, it could take me one or two laps to get to that.
• 20:08
  Take all the time you need.
• 20:09
  We're looking for the biggest number you can ring out of
• 20:11
  this car and stay in one piece.
• 20:13
  Boy, if he didn't do it too, Brian was the coolest guy, an
• 20:17
  extremely competent racing driver.
• 20:20
  He got in every car, and I think all three cars, if I remember, cracked 200 that day.
• 20:26
  And for a street streetcar granted of an exotic, very high,
• 20:29
  powerful one, that was impressive.
• 20:31
  And, and we have the pictures and the timing slips to prove it.
• 20:34
  Danica Patrick also did a very good job for us.
• 20:37
  She drove extremely professionally and listened to us and gave great feedback
• 20:41
  of what the car was doing in a corner, banked at whatever angle and mean.
• 20:45
  She was a complete pro and did a wonderful job.
• 20:49
  But those events were wonderful.
• 20:50
  Sometimes we had three or four cars, sometimes we'd bring 10.
• 20:53
  Another one I particularly remember, of course, uh, Preston and I have
• 20:57
  many of the same heroes, but one in particular, and this was my idea
• 21:01
  for a story, is, uh, Mario Andretti used to have a winery in Napa.
• 21:06
  And there were a whole bunch of great hot convertibles that had
• 21:10
  just roadsters and spiders that had come out about the same time.
• 21:13
  The Mercedes SL 55 A-M-G-A-V 12, Aston Martin DB seven, the BMWZ eight.
• 21:20
  So we thought, you know, let's just bring those things up to Napa, take
• 21:24
  pictures and we'll have Mario drive them, make him the road tester, putting
• 21:28
  Mario Andretti in a race car and saying, tell us about this race car
• 21:31
  that's not new ground to evaluate high performance and exotic cars on the street.
• 21:36
  Okay, Mario, we're out here driving in the backyards of Napa.
• 21:39
  What are you feeling?
• 21:40
  And I'm gonna tell you, I'll never forget that day, the last
• 21:43
  sign up in my brain when I die.
• 21:46
  We'll be thinking about that story and spending two days with
• 21:49
  him out just driving and talking.
• 21:52
  I'm pleased to say that he's still my hero.
• 21:54
  He's become my friend.
• 21:56
  I'll never forget that one.
• 21:57
  Anytime soon.
• 21:58
  There were others.
• 21:59
  But I've talked enough.
• 22:00
  Preston, I'm curious, was that before the Newman book or after the Newman book?
• 22:02
  Before.
• 22:03
  Cool.
• 22:03
  That's great.
• 22:04
  So back in again, the days when there were really elaborate press trips,
• 22:07
  Chrysler was doing a deal for, um, the second gen Viper had just come out.
• 22:10
  Remember the GTS coop with the blue with the white stripes?
• 22:13
  You mean second generation Daytona Coop.
• 22:16
  That's my favorite.
• 22:16
  Viper.
• 22:16
  I love that car.
• 22:17
  Tom Kaki was the, uh, legendary PR guy for Chrysler at the time.
• 22:21
  Put together this trip where we went with these vipers.
• 22:23
  We went to the berg ring, we went to spa and we went to Ram, or Reem, or
• 22:28
  however you pronounce it, in France.
• 22:29
  The plan was to go then to drive from France.
• 22:31
  We were supposed to go to the Arctic Reon and all these vipers
• 22:34
  would be there at the Arctic Reon.
• 22:35
  But it was really as incredible.
• 22:36
  So along for this trip to give like presentations at night where
• 22:40
  Phil Hill and Jesse Alexander.
• 22:41
  So it was really cool.
• 22:42
  I knew Phil Little and Jesse was a friend, and that was great.
• 22:45
  At any rate, what happened was the leg of the trip was like three days or something.
• 22:48
  We were going to the Arctic Dream.
• 22:50
  I was paired up with Phil for some reason.
• 22:52
  I don't know why.
• 22:53
  I mean, Phil Hill is like a, you know, a hero and I'm mostly asking him questions
• 22:56
  and he's talking, you know, I'm asking about various races and this and that.
• 22:59
  I'm supposed to be doing the navigating.
• 23:00
  Well, I wasn't paying any attention to the navigating, and I got us totally lost.
• 23:03
  So we're supposed to be at the York Triumph at a certain hour
• 23:05
  and we're nowhere close to there.
• 23:06
  We're lost in the middle of Paris and Phil had this reputation,
• 23:09
  justifiably for being very high strung.
• 23:11
  He was going insane because we were lost in Paris.
• 23:14
  You know, we were supposed to be at this thing.
• 23:15
  And I was like, you are Phil Hill.
• 23:17
  Who cares?
• 23:17
  You know, we don't need to be there.
• 23:19
  We, we've got our own Viper, you know, we made to the York Triumph after they'd
• 23:22
  done the big photo shoot and we missed it.
• 23:23
  And Phil was peeing the whole time at me, but I got a great story
• 23:26
  about, it's why I really didn't care.
• 23:27
  And like I had Phil to myself for like two and a half hours or
• 23:30
  whatever it was, in a Viper GTS.
• 23:32
  It was cool.
• 23:32
  And Phil was driving.
• 23:33
  I was just.
• 23:34
  Navigating or not navigating it.
• 23:35
  Again, those are the kind of press trips.
• 23:36
  I don't think they do anymore.
• 23:37
  I mean, it was like a three or four days.
• 23:39
  And I mean, they didn't even need to sell the viper to the media.
• 23:42
  Everyone in the media loved that car anyway, right?
• 23:44
  Mm-hmm.
• 23:44
  But that was, that was a great thrill.
• 23:45
  I mean, I, there's so many, when you ask the question, so many pinch
• 23:48
  me moments that I've had mm-hmm.
• 23:50
  Through this field.
• 23:50
  I mean, I'm just, I feel lucky to have been able to do what I've been
• 23:54
  able to do, and I never would've been able to do it otherwise.
• 23:56
  So just have to thank the powers that be for letting me have these opportunities.
• 23:59
  Preston is a very competent, road racer, good racing driver.
• 24:03
  But when you ride with Phil Hill, Mario Andretti.
• 24:07
  Any of those drivers that any of us have ever ridden with, you realize
• 24:11
  what a crap slow driver you are.
• 24:13
  I mean, it's uncanny.
• 24:16
  These folks have talents in their fingernails that you can't dream of.
• 24:21
  They're just talking and driving like it's a taxi rolling through a residential
• 24:25
  neighborhood at 25 miles an hour, except they're going 150 or whatever,
• 24:29
  and they're looking at you and talking.
• 24:30
  But they're also looking there too.
• 24:32
  It's I, you know, I don't know.
• 24:33
  They have talents and senses and calibrated ass.
• 24:37
  That just like normal people don't have, I call that a speedometer.
• 24:40
  I like that.
• 24:41
  I'm gonna order one of those, but it's just true.
• 24:44
  I, anytime I've ever ridden with a world class racer like that,
• 24:48
  it just reminds me how slow I am.
• 24:50
  You talked about racing, you talked about meeting Mario
• 24:53
  Andretti and all those people.
• 24:55
  What about meeting auto industry executives?
• 24:57
  Have you guys spent much time with those people?
• 25:00
  Matt, I know you have.
• 25:01
  I know you got some great stories.
• 25:02
  Good, bad, indifferent.
• 25:03
  I would say most times good.
• 25:05
  And I met a lot of them, and I particularly enjoyed the designers.
• 25:09
  The automotive designers or now the independent ones who designed
• 25:13
  great cars and went on their own, founded their own company.
• 25:16
  I knew Tom Char very, very well.
• 25:18
  I think Gito Gito, he's the goat, Giro is the goat of all ever and ever.
• 25:26
  I mean, just go through his roster of cars and you'll just go, this came
• 25:30
  outta one head from one guy's pencil.
• 25:32
  What's with, how did that happen?
• 25:34
  I really enjoyed hanging and banging with the designers, especially at an auto show.
• 25:38
  I used to go walking around with Tom or others and we'd walk up
• 25:43
  to whatever concept car and they would talk and I would listen and
• 25:46
  occasionally they'd ask my opinion.
• 25:48
  I thought, well that was really nice, but they don't care 'cause
• 25:51
  I wanna know their opinion.
• 25:53
  So the designers were terrific.
• 25:55
  I'll give you one example of, of two guys coincidentally that worked
• 25:59
  for the same company for a while.
• 26:01
  They would be Robert.
• 26:03
  Lutz.
• 26:04
  Oh, Bob Lutz and Chairman Lido, a AA Coka.
• 26:08
  Mm. Those guys as car company executives, they could smell it in the air.
• 26:15
  They had this nose, whether it was a trend or impending doom or whatever,
• 26:21
  they could just smelled the car business in the air, and they just had instinct.
• 26:27
  Now, did they make mistakes?
• 26:28
  Of course they did, but they also each achieved great things and saved companies.
• 26:33
  Those guys were fascinating just to sit and talk with Lotts, and he goes on and
• 26:37
  on about what's right and wrong with the car business or this car company.
• 26:41
  He smelled it in the air or the water, or in the blood or whatever.
• 26:44
  And Mr. Iaccoca too, I mean, you know, not every Iaccoca car was great.
• 26:49
  A whole lot of 'em were successful either as machines or as sales.
• 26:53
  Most of them were pretty smart guys and gals, some, not all the racing drivers
• 26:59
  'cause of our need for speed and all that.
• 27:01
  That's one thing and, and because of course how great they can all drive.
• 27:04
  But I enjoyed the designers.
• 27:06
  The senior most car executives that I could get FaceTime with, Luca Cordero
• 27:11
  de Montelo, he chairman of Ferrari for a number of years, positively brilliant
• 27:18
  guy, and has so much heat and so much enthusiasm for the car business.
• 27:22
  You, you can't believe it.
• 27:24
  And he would be the first one to tell you that when he took over all the
• 27:27
  things that were wrong with Ferrari and then he proceeded to go like a target
• 27:32
  shooter and fix them one at a time.
• 27:34
  Those guys are fascinating.
• 27:35
  Yeah, of course there's, there's guys that tanked and went nowhere and were
• 27:39
  supposed to be the great saviors of whatever company and did nothing.
• 27:43
  There were those two, but generally some pretty interesting.
• 27:46
  And smartphone, I will say.
• 27:47
  I mean, the ones that I met, they were all impressive and it's, you
• 27:50
  know, outsiders can always criticize and say, oh, what a stupid idea.
• 27:54
  The solstice or whatever.
• 27:55
  The Aztec, we can all agree the Aztec, there you go, someone messed up.
• 27:58
  But I mean, by and large, the people I met were all really bright.
• 28:01
  They were really committed.
• 28:02
  They were real, mostly car people.
• 28:04
  I mean, I didn't meet that many who were just bean counters.
• 28:07
  I'm sure they were there, but it's just that I think cars
• 28:09
  is a, it's a tough business.
• 28:10
  It became a lot tougher when you had a lot more foreign competition.
• 28:13
  Margins are small and it's a hard way to make a living, and so no
• 28:16
  one gets a ride all the time.
• 28:17
  Cut people a lot more slack than some of the critics do.
• 28:19
  I will also say the smartest, perhaps, of all of them that I
• 28:23
  have ever met and spoken to Roger s Penske, I've heard that quite now.
• 28:28
  That is one smart dude.
• 28:31
  He's too smart to be president, but he'd make a great president.
• 28:34
  But you know, he runs a global business employing like 70,000 people and you
• 28:39
  know, race teams that have been there, won that, and again, car dealership groups.
• 28:44
  As a guy who owns a big car dealership group, he is so influential he
• 28:48
  can and has convinced various car makers to do or not do something.
• 28:54
  Because his brain operates at a different level than mere mortals.
• 28:59
  I have nothing but immense respect and affection for Roger Penske as
• 29:04
  a truly brilliant and nice man who just really gets the car business.
• 29:09
  Was there a story that got away, something still that you wanna write
• 29:13
  about, someone you wanted to interview?
• 29:15
  I used to do a lot of stories about young guys before they had really succeeded or
• 29:18
  also some women, 'cause I also did Danica Patrick just sort of getting started
• 29:21
  out and I was gonna do something on, uh, Jeff Gordon and he had just moved
• 29:24
  up to Cup and they were going to do the first Brickyard 400, I believe it was 94.
• 29:28
  And I pitched the story to automobile about follow Jeff Gordon.
• 29:31
  He's going back to do, uh, indie, which he originally wanted to do Indie
• 29:34
  as Indy car guy, but you know, ended up being shunted over to to NASCAR
• 29:37
  because there was no future for Midget and Sprint car drivers in, in, in car.
• 29:40
  And so I saw this story to automobile and Gene Jennings Green lit the whole thing.
• 29:44
  I set everything up and at the last second, David e gave the assignment
• 29:48
  to offend of his, to just do a general story on first Brick yard four.
• 29:52
  So I didn't get to the story and Jeff Gordon won the race.
• 29:54
  And it was actually, it would've been like my greatest story ever.
• 29:56
  And Jean never forgot I didn't get that story in.
• 29:59
  She treated me.
• 30:00
  Uh, she gave me assignments that I shouldn't have
• 30:01
  gotten for years after that.
• 30:02
  Just to say I was sorry for not giving me that.
• 30:04
  That for me was the story that got away.
• 30:06
  I don't know that I have any of those tales, that too much that got away.
• 30:10
  I didn't, didn't miss much.
• 30:11
  But I bet you fall victim to the adage, never meet your heroes.
• 30:15
  So was there one story that was disappointing that didn't turn out the
• 30:19
  way you wanted it to, or it sort of broke the glass ceiling for you and
• 30:22
  you're like completely disillusioned?
• 30:24
  No, not that I, I met my heroes and never regretted one of them.
• 30:28
  Everyone that I would've put in the hero category that I ultimately met.
• 30:32
  I'm glad I did.
• 30:32
  And they were still my hero when we were done.
• 30:34
  And many became friends in that sense.
• 30:36
  No.
• 30:37
  Major mega disappointments.
• 30:39
  And I would love Preston's opinion on this too.
• 30:42
  When you get in whatever car, and it's supposed to be something that's
• 30:45
  supposed to be pretty good and you want the cars to be good, but you're
• 30:48
  disappointed when they're not.
• 30:50
  And that's happened.
• 30:50
  I'm not avoiding naming a suspect, but I'm trying to think of a car I
• 30:55
  would name, but I remember cars that just, it was hyped and noise and you
• 30:59
  wanted it to be good and it wasn't.
• 31:02
  It just fell flat.
• 31:03
  And that's disappointing.
• 31:04
  But you know, you, you have to write that story and you have
• 31:07
  to point those things out.
• 31:08
  And I always did.
• 31:09
  Always and why.
• 31:10
  Yeah, that's happened a few times.
• 31:12
  But anyway, press go ahead.
• 31:13
  How about you Again, I didn't do as much of the new car stuff
• 31:16
  somewhere better than those.
• 31:16
  I mean, I always felt thrilled to get in a Ferrari or get in those.
• 31:19
  Never disappointed for sure, but to get a little bit jaded.
• 31:22
  'cause you got in all the really great cars.
• 31:23
  So when you were in kind of a standard family sedan, it was hard
• 31:27
  to work up too much enthusiasm.
• 31:28
  Back to Eric's point a little, did you ever have that interview that you're
• 31:31
  just waiting to kill it with somebody That's really important, and you sat
• 31:35
  with that person an hour later and said.
• 31:36
  I got nothing.
• 31:39
  I did have a tape recorder fail on me once.
• 31:41
  Clearly some guys were better than others and, and Mario was the all time great.
• 31:44
  Mario was the best racing interview ever.
• 31:45
  Ever.
• 31:46
  Yeah.
• 31:46
  I mean he managed to convey his enthusiasm and he had great stories
• 31:50
  and I would, maybe not a lot, but certainly a substantial portion
• 31:53
  of racers were not race fans.
• 31:54
  They didn't succeed on the trek because they knew that N won the German
• 31:58
  Grand Prix and you know, beat the Silverados, but they were just fast.
• 32:01
  Um, sometimes it was disappointing to talk to people who didn't know
• 32:04
  the history or didn't really have a perspective on what was going on.
• 32:06
  And, you know, some guys were better noters.
• 32:08
  Mario was tremendous.
• 32:09
  The only guy who was really my hero growing up, Emerson Fitted Pol
• 32:12
  and meeting him after he went Indy for the first time was a thrill.
• 32:15
  He is the only guy who was autographed I ever got.
• 32:16
  He was great.
• 32:17
  Uh, a lot of fun.
• 32:18
  There were, a lot of them were great.
• 32:19
  The Hobbes, the Redmonds, they're all great storytellers and, and
• 32:22
  it's always fun to talk to him.
• 32:23
  Some not quite so good, especially the younger drivers not as interested
• 32:27
  in the history of the sport.
• 32:28
  Yeah.
• 32:28
  The ones who have perspective and are mega talents.
• 32:31
  Those are pretty well, always good talks, always good stories, always good interview
• 32:36
  because they bring so much to the table.
• 32:38
  But you're right, if they're just too young and and haven't really done
• 32:41
  big things, they have very little institutional memory, not necessarily
• 32:46
  crazy great successes to talk about yet.
• 32:48
  Those can be a little disappointing.
• 32:50
  But generally, uh, the ones who have perspective and mega talent, they're
• 32:55
  gonna give you a good interview.
• 32:56
  I'm glad Matt, you brought up the cars 'cause that was next on my list.
• 32:59
  I wanna share with you guys, just as an aside, and I know it's gonna ruffle
• 33:02
  Don's feathers, fellow journalist, I'm gonna put 'em in that category.
• 33:06
  John Davis from Motor Week was on the show many seasons ago and I asked him
• 33:10
  a similar question, you know, 'cause he reviews cars all the time and he said
• 33:13
  his favorite car, he got to drive a Ferrari Enzo, much like Preston, right?
• 33:17
  He's like, oh, Ferrari, that's awesome.
• 33:18
  And so I turned the question around.
• 33:20
  I said, the car that you were hyped to test drive and to review for the
• 33:23
  show and was a complete letdown.
• 33:25
  And he said the DeLorean.
• 33:27
  And he also added that he was really excited to buy one and because
• 33:31
  of the test drive, he didn't.
• 33:32
  And he ended up buying a Panera instead, which he's known for having
• 33:36
  a Panera for a very, very long time.
• 33:37
  So there you go.
• 33:38
  Well, on that note, Preston, if you're not up to speed, I am a DeLorean junkie.
• 33:44
  Oh, okay.
• 33:45
  Have more crap rattling around in his head about DeLorean than
• 33:48
  anybody has a right to know about.
• 33:50
  I love the cars.
• 33:51
  Yes, I know they're not very quick, but when compared to everything
• 33:55
  else in 1981, they weren't too bad.
• 33:57
  But I do remember going back to Road and Track when the car came out.
• 34:01
  Calm Bryant, he wrote, I remember you opened the magazine and
• 34:05
  there was this double truck and the DeLorean didn't slide.
• 34:08
  I mean, it's a really exciting looking picture.
• 34:11
  And I remember at some point in that article he writes that he
• 34:14
  really wanted to like the DeLorean.
• 34:17
  I mean, it literally just says, I really wanted to like the de DeLorean.
• 34:21
  I remember reading that.
• 34:21
  That always stuck with me and he kind of smooths it out over time.
• 34:25
  He does say things about, maybe it's not as quick as it looks,
• 34:29
  and maybe it doesn't do things.
• 34:30
  We would hope it would, but the DNA is there.
• 34:34
  You can feel it.
• 34:35
  You know, this car can be more in its next iterations.
• 34:39
  I always appreciated that about him, that he didn't quite slam the car.
• 34:42
  I've gone so far 'cause I have all these magazines from back
• 34:46
  in the day when the car is new.
• 34:47
  And I remember the one particular journalist who will remain
• 34:49
  nameless for his own health, who wrote a really scathing review
• 34:54
  of DeLorean way back in 81.
• 34:56
  Fast forward to, I don't know, 2000, somewhere in there
• 35:00
  when DeLorean popularity was just starting to come around.
• 35:03
  Younger people were starting to get more interested in them.
• 35:06
  And all of a sudden time was the great forgiver time, was making them a good car.
• 35:11
  And of course, back to the future had a ton to do with that.
• 35:14
  That same writer wrote an article about DeLorean saying what a great car
• 35:18
  they were, how wonderful they were, how ahead of their time they were.
• 35:21
  And I thought to myself in 1981, you tell everybody what
• 35:25
  a piece of junk this car is.
• 35:27
  Now here we are 20 some odd years later and you've got the gall to
• 35:30
  come out and say, oh no, this car was ahead of its time and it's terrific.
• 35:33
  So I found the original magazine where he bashed it.
• 35:36
  I found his little article and I put them together and I wrote a letter to him
• 35:41
  and I sent it to him and I asked him to please justify what he was trying to say.
• 35:46
  Never heard back from him.
• 35:47
  And then fast forward a couple years later, LA Aldo show, press days,
• 35:51
  pop up and guess who I run into?
• 35:54
  And there he is.
• 35:56
  Yeah, I shook his hand.
• 35:57
  I said, hi, I am Don Weiberg, how are you?
• 35:59
  And he is kind of looking at me like, I know that name.
• 36:02
  And I said, yeah, I love your review of the DeLorean.
• 36:06
  Gave him that deadpan stare.
• 36:08
  The look.
• 36:10
  I've never seen a face go white so quickly.
• 36:13
  And I'm just like, oh my God, this is actually a lot of fun.
• 36:15
  Now mind you, what I was not prepared for?
• 36:18
  How old was I?
• 36:19
  25, 26. Matt.
• 36:21
  He was like, your age.
• 36:22
  Okay.
• 36:22
  So I'm looking at him like, oh, he's supposed to be my boss or
• 36:25
  something, and here I am basically telling him off because he
• 36:28
  doesn't know anything about cars.
• 36:29
  And that was the fact.
• 36:31
  Over time I've learned that that guy actually knew very little about how cars,
• 36:35
  it was who he knew in the publishing industry that he kept getting these
• 36:39
  jobs and for some reason he kept getting thrown into the automotive circle.
• 36:43
  It was really, really weird.
• 36:45
  For the record, I was not that journalist.
• 36:46
  I just want that on the record.
• 36:47
  I know I looked you up.
• 36:50
  I know of what you wrote about Zaka You Okay.
• 36:53
  In my book, did that interview you for his book, by the way?
• 36:56
  Yes, he did.
• 36:57
  I go novan.
• 36:58
  So I know I opened Pandora's box by bringing this up, but actually
• 37:01
  we stepped backwards into a really important final point about the day in
• 37:05
  the life of an automotive journalist, which is the risk you take about
• 37:09
  what you write and what you publish.
• 37:11
  Can you keep track of everything you've written over, let's
• 37:13
  say a career 20, 30 years?
• 37:16
  And just like Don's anecdote, did that guy even remember what he said in 1981?
• 37:20
  Was he thinking that far, you know, 20 some years ago?
• 37:22
  So has that ever happened to either of you guys where you've had to, you know,
• 37:25
  recant what you've done or gone back or, you know, the letter to the editor was
• 37:29
  specifically pointed at something that you wrote, and how did you handle that?
• 37:32
  There's some things I've written that I wish I had written differently.
• 37:35
  The most embarrassing moment ever was an email I sent, which was not for
• 37:38
  publication, and it somehow got published.
• 37:40
  And then I heard from, uh, Leo Levine, the author of the Dustin, the
• 37:43
  Glory Great Ford Book, which I love.
• 37:45
  It was one of the great books ever.
• 37:46
  And he then wrote a second, the Dustin Glory two, which, or that's
• 37:49
  not what it was called, but it was, it picked up the story after 67 and
• 37:52
  it was not as great as the first book.
• 37:54
  And that's what I'd said in my email.
• 37:56
  To an editor who shall remain nameless.
• 37:58
  And he published that.
• 37:59
  And I got a call immediately from Leo.
• 38:01
  What, what?
• 38:01
  What did you like about the book?
• 38:02
  And that was, that was bad.
• 38:04
  But I have to think back for a while to see if there's
• 38:05
  anything I wanted to recant.
• 38:07
  Nothing comes immediately to mind, but I'm sure there was some, I'm sure there are
• 38:09
  many things I got wrong over the years.
• 38:11
  I can identify offhand something that I would absolutely recant because it was
• 38:15
  terribly wrong, factually incorrect.
• 38:18
  Awful, awful, awful.
• 38:19
  We're humans.
• 38:19
  We make mistakes.
• 38:20
  You have opinions that other people disagree with.
• 38:23
  That's fair game.
• 38:24
  And there were times when I had to answer those letters,
• 38:27
  and some of 'em I did answer.
• 38:28
  I mean, if somebody came to me with a well reasoned objection.
• 38:32
  I'd be happy to engage them and I did.
• 38:35
  If they're just, you know, out there, pure bashers who know nothing bashing
• 38:40
  me, the magazine, the story, and your mother and your, you know, all of
• 38:43
  that, I don't have time for that, for that ignorant explosion kind of thing.
• 38:47
  I could care less That person's an idiot.
• 38:49
  Or at least acting like one.
• 38:51
  But if somebody will engage me professionally and courteously
• 38:54
  with a disagreement, sure, I'll have that conversation anytime.
• 38:57
  Sometimes there's some group think is inevitable, you get a lot of guys together
• 39:01
  and something comes up and sometimes some opinions become sort of standard issue,
• 39:05
  even though they probably shouldn't.
• 39:06
  I remember Finity and Alexis came out in 89.
• 39:08
  A lot of the, the sports car guys liked the Infinity more.
• 39:11
  The Q 45 was, you know, a much more dynamically
• 39:13
  interesting car than the LS 400.
• 39:15
  And so we thought, oh, this is gonna be the killer car.
• 39:17
  Well, of course seems like Q 45 ended up being a bit of a disaster and the LS 400
• 39:21
  reshaped the entire luxury car industry.
• 39:23
  So yeah, I'm sure I was guilty there of getting that one wrong.
• 39:25
  I'm sure there's a bunch of stuff like that, but I don't recall
• 39:28
  ever being confronted like by Don or anybody, anybody like that.
• 39:31
  So I better take note of maybe after they see this episode I'll be in more trouble.
• 39:36
  Yeah, it's okay.
• 39:36
  Preston, I'm doing a little research now on your work and I'm
• 39:39
  gonna have to call you after this.
• 39:41
  I'd like to have a few words.
• 39:42
  I do wanna know who the journalist was though.
• 39:44
  Maybe after.
• 39:45
  We'll do that when the red light's off, right?
• 39:47
  For me, I wanted to be an auto journalist.
• 39:49
  That was what I wanted to do.
• 39:50
  I, you know, you guys are talking about the racing cars guys as
• 39:53
  your heroes, the Andrettis, and you know Matt Preston, you guys.
• 39:58
  Or my hero, you were the ones that I would pick up a road and track a MotorTrend car
• 40:02
  and driver and auto week, any of 'em, and read those stories about the new cars,
• 40:06
  about the classic cars, and to a young guy raised around cars, but looking to learn
• 40:11
  his own voice in the auto dom Auto sphere.
• 40:14
  Auto sphere.
• 40:15
  Very good.
• 40:16
  Yeah.
• 40:16
  You guys were the ones who gave me the knowledge to develop my voice.
• 40:20
  You were the ones who gave me the thought processes as to, gee Don,
• 40:25
  why is it you started liking Corvette a little better than nine 11?
• 40:28
  What happened there?
• 40:29
  Well.
• 40:29
  Reading about it and you guys putting it into words.
• 40:32
  So me, I took an internship, I wrote a letter to MotorTrend editor Steve
• 40:36
  Van Toon, who graciously called me, said, please come to my office.
• 40:40
  I'd like to meet with you.
• 40:41
  Let's have a conversation about what you're doing and what you wanna do.
• 40:43
  The guy was fantastic, absolutely incredible.
• 40:46
  And that was where I met Matt.
• 40:48
  That's where I met everybody else.
• 40:49
  But that was how you did it.
• 40:50
  In the old days.
• 40:51
  You wrote to somebody you wanted to be part of.
• 40:54
  You saw them as the authority, you wanted to learn from them.
• 40:57
  So that's where I went.
• 40:58
  Now that being said, so we're gonna switch gears.
• 41:01
  Talk about books.
• 41:02
  We've interviewed plenty of authors on this show, and I always kind of ask them,
• 41:06
  Matt included the journey of 80,000 words.
• 41:09
  Where do you start blinking cursor on the screen?
• 41:11
  It's a lot different than writing an article or something like that.
• 41:14
  It's more serialized to make things more complicated.
• 41:17
  When you're writing your own book, it's your voice, your opinion, your
• 41:20
  story, your fiction, whatever it is.
• 41:21
  And you're working with an editor, but you two have co-authored some books.
• 41:25
  How do you come to agreement?
• 41:27
  How do you write it in such a way that it's seamless and how
• 41:31
  does that work with editors?
• 41:32
  Can you explain the process of co-authoring a book together?
• 41:35
  The first book we did together, it was Matt's project.
• 41:38
  It was a Paul Newman book.
• 41:39
  Matt had me come in towards the end to help out with some of the
• 41:42
  racing portion of it, specific 'cause Matt had done a great job
• 41:45
  with, uh, especially the attainment, the movie winning and the cars.
• 41:48
  That was a great chapter on the, uh, the movie cars.
• 41:50
  And I was doing kind of more sort of the inter nuts and
• 41:52
  bolts kind of, uh, racing side.
• 41:54
  We each wrote our own material and then we vetted each other's material.
• 41:57
  So it worked out really well.
• 41:58
  'cause these days there are no real editors in the book publishing world.
• 42:02
  I mean, there, there's copy editors.
• 42:03
  It's not, you're getting first edit people giving you good ideas about what to do.
• 42:06
  So we were fortunately able, we were both writers, we've both done some editing,
• 42:10
  so we're able to look at each other's work, I think, and make it better.
• 42:13
  I think the voices sound pretty.
• 42:14
  I mean, I, I don't know, people could tell the difference
• 42:17
  between what we wrote or not.
• 42:18
  I think it was pretty seamless.
• 42:20
  And so we handed in something that we were happy with, get
• 42:22
  my perspective on this as well.
• 42:23
  But I was happy with, anyway, what, what we handed in.
• 42:26
  So it didn't really need to be edited and we actually probably didn't really
• 42:29
  want it to be edited 'cause we were happy with the product that we submitted.
• 42:33
  Does it get even more complicated though, when we bring
• 42:35
  self-publishing into the equation?
• 42:37
  Something like an Amazon where you really have to do your own work.
• 42:41
  Have you guys ventured down that path at all?
• 42:43
  I've never done that, but I, I also write a. Fiction and first book I sold.
• 42:46
  The only novel I sold so far, unfortunately.
• 42:48
  I mean, there was a New York editor who, he went through the copy page by page and
• 42:52
  he had thoughts on what needed to be done.
• 42:53
  You know, all the books I've done, I haven't done as many as
• 42:55
  Matt, but done seven or eight now.
• 42:57
  And I mean, there's really not much input from the editors at the publishing houses.
• 43:02
  I mean, they give you, you know, you.
• 43:03
  Talk about what you're gonna do ahead of time and then you pretty
• 43:06
  much deliver the product and then it is copy edited and proofread.
• 43:09
  What about like fact checking?
• 43:11
  Is that part of the editing process?
• 43:12
  Does the publishing house go into that or do they pretty much just trust you
• 43:16
  to turn in a book that's ready to go?
• 43:19
  Uh, you know, Matt, you just recently wrote the DeLorean
• 43:22
  book, and how did that go?
• 43:24
  You turned it in, did they go through it and make sure all the facts are correct?
• 43:28
  Is there somebody at the publishing house that does that,
• 43:30
  in that particular instance, Don?
• 43:32
  Yes.
• 43:33
  The commissioning editor, the guy who I reported to, so to speak, at motor
• 43:37
  books on this project, he normally could have and would've done it himself,
• 43:41
  but he was very, very, very busy at the time with numerous projects.
• 43:45
  He hired a woman to do a, a copy, edit and proof, and she
• 43:49
  just did marvelous research.
• 43:51
  She would come up, she said, well, I found this here, and you said this.
• 43:55
  Are you comfortable that you're right, or is this guy perhaps right?
• 43:58
  Or is everybody right?
• 43:59
  And, and her attitude and style to President's Point made it better.
• 44:04
  Mm-hmm.
• 44:04
  Now, you, you, you can get somebody who just, they're stuck in Wikipedia.
• 44:08
  I mean, I use Wikipedia, but is it my only source for everything I ever write?
• 44:13
  No, of course not.
• 44:14
  That'd be foolish.
• 44:14
  Mm-hmm.
• 44:15
  I want that.
• 44:16
  I want it to be good.
• 44:18
  I want it to be right and accurate, and that process, as Preston
• 44:22
  said, makes you better and makes the work better if it's good.
• 44:26
  Right.
• 44:26
  If it's somebody who's just anxious to make a name for
• 44:29
  themselves and steal your project.
• 44:30
  That's very dissatisfying.
• 44:32
  I think only one time have I ever had that, and it was a project that
• 44:35
  Preston and I also worked on together.
• 44:38
  Oh right.
• 44:38
  That was, you remember who that was?
• 44:40
  I do, isn't it?
• 44:41
  I don't think is there anymore, is it?
• 44:43
  I don't think so.
• 44:43
  I think that person who shall remain quite nameless isn't there.
• 44:47
  But yeah, when it's bad, it's awful.
• 44:48
  'cause then you start questioning yourself, right?
• 44:51
  And then you got a negotiation with this person of authority.
• 44:55
  Well, he's the editor he's supposed to know.
• 44:57
  Wait a minute, I did the homework.
• 44:59
  I know, and you get feeling like that sometimes, but if it's a good
• 45:02
  collaborative thing, you're all on the same page, you understand kind
• 45:06
  of what the book's gonna be, and you do your homework, it's fine.
• 45:09
  How do you justify your answers?
• 45:12
  In other words, in that, in that scenario where that lady walked
• 45:15
  up to you and said, well, I have this guy here saying A, you said E.
• 45:20
  Do you have notes on the situation?
• 45:22
  How do you say to that person?
• 45:24
  Well, this is how I came to my conclusion.
• 45:26
  When I'm doing a book project, I have banker's boxes next to my desk, and
• 45:30
  I keep every stitch of anything that has to do with that book, whether
• 45:34
  that's a screen print, an interview, a magazine article, a book, whatever.
• 45:39
  I build my own personal internet by the pound, and it depends
• 45:42
  on the quality of the source.
• 45:44
  And in some cases it's the source period.
• 45:47
  It's a direct quote from so-and-so who invented the thing.
• 45:50
  And I have his SAE paper or his interview right here in front of me.
• 45:54
  Miss copy editor, or who are you quoting?
• 45:57
  I keep everything handy until it's done.
• 45:59
  And again, sometimes there's a little bit of a negotiation and if you
• 46:02
  can't agree, there's nothing wrong with saying historical sources or
• 46:07
  authorities do not agree on this issue.
• 46:09
  Here's the two viewpoints, and I've done that and it sounds like
• 46:12
  a cop out, but it's like, wait a minute, I wasn't sitting there.
• 46:15
  Lightning doesn't strike with the answer.
• 46:17
  So if their source is credible and honest and was well founded and
• 46:21
  mine is a good solid direct source, I'll say, well, here's two opinions.
• 46:25
  Here's from the guy that designed it and here's from the engineer that built it.
• 46:28
  Nothing wrong with that.
• 46:29
  I mean, I love fact checkers.
• 46:30
  I wish they had more of 'em.
• 46:32
  Maybe it's some publishing houses.
• 46:33
  They devote more to that.
• 46:34
  I do know that automobile, I mean they had a part of the copy
• 46:37
  editing process was fact checking and they were really vigilant.
• 46:40
  You know, sometimes it was frustrating.
• 46:42
  You don't wanna have everything questioned.
• 46:43
  But I think it was good.
• 46:44
  I mean, it was rarely a time where Randy Blackwell was there.
• 46:46
  He went to Car driver.
• 46:47
  I think he still had car driver, but I mean, rarely he didn't catch something or
• 46:50
  at least something that we had to discuss.
• 46:52
  And I think that's, that's really important.
• 46:53
  You know, to Matt's point, sometimes the sources don't agree and sometimes you'll
• 46:57
  find sources disagree with the historical, what was written back in the day.
• 47:00
  And you have to sort of make a judgment call about, you know,
• 47:03
  what's right or what's wrong.
• 47:04
  But, you know, it's the famous New Yorker article about fact checkers,
• 47:06
  where one of the stories is, it was about the invention of the, uh, vibrator.
• 47:10
  The guy who invented it said it was 'cause his wife was frigid and the wife
• 47:14
  said it was 'cause he was impotent.
• 47:15
  And the poor fact checker had to like talk to the two people
• 47:17
  on asked which, which was it.
• 47:19
  And I guess they sort of didn't get that one resolved.
• 47:21
  But I mean, fact checkers have a tough job.
• 47:23
  So I, I like to, uh.
• 47:25
  Help them out as much as I could.
• 47:27
  At the end of the day though, it's my opinion that great
• 47:30
  editing makes you better.
• 47:32
  If it's really great work.
• 47:34
  Somebody who's not out to be a hero and put their voice into what you wrote, you
• 47:38
  know, if somebody's editing without ego and and is just really good on facts and
• 47:42
  style and the root tenets of journalism and all that kind of stuff, great.
• 47:46
  Editing makes my work better.
• 47:48
  I want that.
• 47:49
  Have you guys, either one of you individually or together as
• 47:52
  a team, have you ever worked on more than one book at a time?
• 47:55
  I have.
• 47:56
  I have done it.
• 47:57
  It can be tough.
• 47:58
  You have to be really smart and hopefully kg and good about, I don't want to be
• 48:03
  working on two projects that have the same deadline or on the same schedule.
• 48:07
  If I'm finishing up this and I'm just starting to wanna chase
• 48:11
  something new, that's okay.
• 48:12
  I'll start gathering information, might do some interviews, maybe do a little
• 48:16
  writing, but I want book A to be well down the river and on its way to the press.
• 48:21
  Before I get too far into book B, but I had a collision one time and it was hell.
• 48:25
  I'll be honest, it was very difficult for me to make that
• 48:29
  separation in my head comfortably.
• 48:32
  I did it, got away with it.
• 48:33
  It was fine, but it was tough.
• 48:35
  Yeah, I've never done, I mean, I would always do freelance work while I was
• 48:37
  writing, so sometimes you had to because you had to make a living, you juggle.
• 48:40
  Yeah.
• 48:41
  There's not a lot of money in car books, especially racing books.
• 48:43
  I mean, they're not laborers of love.
• 48:44
  Exactly.
• 48:45
  But magazine work just pays so much better that that's what would pay the
• 48:48
  bills, and so I had to make sure I was left time to do those assignments and
• 48:52
  did the books as time permitted, or you know, after dinner or something.
• 48:55
  It's nice to be able to stretch out on a project, you know, instead of
• 48:57
  doing, you know, a feature story of 2,003,000 words or 5,000 words
• 49:01
  is a really long feature story.
• 49:03
  By modern standards and book you get to write 50, 70, a hundred thousand words.
• 49:06
  It's fun to be able to stretch out like that.
• 49:08
  It's great to have that opportunity because you can't
• 49:09
  do that in a magazine story.
• 49:10
  You just just don't have the space.
• 49:12
  You know, you guys have written so much.
• 49:14
  You've spent your whole careers writing.
• 49:16
  Are there any stories that you feel.
• 49:18
  Are underrated or overlooked in automotive history that maybe deserve more attention,
• 49:22
  a little bit more light shined on them.
• 49:24
  What's really good, you mentioned Amazon and self-publishing, which once upon a
• 49:27
  time had a really terrible reputation.
• 49:29
  Vanity Publishing was what it was called and and people look down upon
• 49:32
  it and what's happened is, is now because the economics have changed
• 49:35
  and the software has changed, there's now the ability to write books on
• 49:38
  subjects that never would've been published because you couldn't make
• 49:40
  money writing a book about Lloyd Ruby.
• 49:42
  I mean, that would've been really borderline.
• 49:44
  Well, now you can do that.
• 49:45
  I mean, you can, you know, you can do that with desktop publishing.
• 49:48
  Makes it possible.
• 49:49
  So I think a lot of subjects that were too obscure to get through the
• 49:52
  mainstream media and really get out there in the world because they didn't
• 49:55
  pencil out financially, I think now are plausible when you go to auto books.
• 50:00
  This is the bookstore here in Burbank, pretty well known all over the world.
• 50:02
  I mean, there were just hundreds of books that I would happily buy if I could
• 50:05
  afford to buy all of 'em about subjects that, you know, they would've been an
• 50:08
  article, a 2000 word article, and now it's this 80,000 word book on Eddie Sachs.
• 50:13
  That would not have been done, you know, a generation ago, or even a decade ago,
• 50:16
  because no publisher would take that on.
• 50:17
  How could you possibly make it work?
• 50:19
  So I, I do think that's a great thing that's available now,
• 50:22
  and I'm, I'm happy to see that.
• 50:23
  Tell you one, Eric, that I would love to see researched and written
• 50:26
  by a relentless team of Wall Street Journal level investigative reporters.
• 50:33
  And I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but there's too much meat on this bones.
• 50:36
  I'd really love to know, did the big three put Preston Tucker down?
• 50:40
  Ooh, that would be good.
• 50:42
  I wanna know for sure.
• 50:44
  I have a feeling that there's a lot that people know that hasn't
• 50:48
  been said, although a whole lot of 'em are probably dead by now too.
• 50:51
  I don't know.
• 50:51
  Was Preston Tucker promoter and maybe a, a bit of a huckster and
• 50:55
  a this, that and the other thing?
• 50:57
  Yeah, maybe.
• 50:57
  But boy did he come up with one outrageously fabulous car.
• 51:01
  It was right at, you know, the end of the World War and car companies were
• 51:06
  scrambling for dollars, and I do know that within the halls of certain car makers,
• 51:11
  they saw that car and went, holy crap.
• 51:13
  That I do know.
• 51:14
  I've read interviews to that effect, but nobody has ever said for sure
• 51:20
  that some faction of the big three put him down or absolutely did not.
• 51:24
  There's several books out on Tucker and everybody talks some about it and did the
• 51:29
  SEC, the securities exchange violations.
• 51:31
  We've got all that, but did somebody just make sure that he didn't make it?
• 51:35
  I'd love to know.
• 51:37
  Okay.
• 51:37
  Let's dive right into it.
• 51:38
  Journalism, how has it changed since you began your careers?
• 51:41
  Where do you see it going?
• 51:43
  Join me.
• 51:43
  I'm Phil Donahue.
• 51:44
  What do we see from where you've been to where you are to where it's going?
• 51:49
  If I were the smartest guy, I would know that, but I'm not, so I don't.
• 51:54
  Preston, please back me or jack me on this.
• 51:57
  The whole internet and connectivity and anti-social media and all that kind
• 52:02
  of stuff changed it immeasurably and irreparably in a whole lot of ways.
• 52:07
  That's where I think the biggest paradigm changes came.
• 52:10
  Where is it gonna go?
• 52:12
  I wish I knew that.
• 52:13
  But there are countries, England particularly, that still seem to
• 52:16
  be able to turn out these beautiful long form magazines with long form
• 52:20
  stories and lavish photography and fabulous magazines, and sell 'em for
• 52:24
  10 or 12 bucks, which nobody here in America seems to be able to do.
• 52:29
  So where's it gonna go?
• 52:30
  I don't know, but that to me was the paradigm shift, the mysterious interwebs.
• 52:34
  I started getting journalism and I got a journalism degree, got a job.
• 52:38
  My first job with Don, you'll appreciate this, was out in Abilene, Texas,
• 52:41
  about three hours west of Dallas.
• 52:43
  And at the time that they had not just one, but two daily newspapers,
• 52:46
  they had an afternoon edition.
• 52:47
  In the morning edition.
• 52:48
  I'd say about half the people who worked there were people like me,
• 52:50
  the young guys and girls who wanted to go on to bigger jobs, and we
• 52:53
  wanted to get to the big city.
• 52:54
  And the other half were gonna stay in Abilene.
• 52:56
  And they raised a family on it, being a newspaper reporter editor
• 52:59
  or working in the back shop.
• 53:00
  There was a back shop back then because you actually had to
• 53:02
  physically put a paper together.
• 53:03
  You didn't just do it all on the, on the computer.
• 53:05
  And, um, you kind of thought that that was gonna be something you do for
• 53:08
  the rest of your life and you retire.
• 53:09
  And that was it.
• 53:10
  And in our lifetime, that just completely disappeared.
• 53:12
  I mean, Craigslist destroyed the classified, you know, the internet
• 53:15
  changed the reading habits.
• 53:17
  I mean, I'm not saying anything new.
• 53:18
  We were obviously, but, and clearly that came on to effect the card journalism.
• 53:21
  Moral as well.
• 53:22
  I mean, again, when Matt and I started four or five of
• 53:24
  these, it was more than that.
• 53:25
  But I mean, there was a bunch of Alist and Blist magazines that were great magazines
• 53:28
  that looked like that was something you would do for the rest of your life.
• 53:30
  You know, they've like all disappeared.
• 53:31
  It's, it's a really sad thing.
• 53:33
  And I don't know if I would go into drizzling now if I was starting out
• 53:35
  because it's, it's a different field.
• 53:37
  I don't know how you sell yourself.
• 53:38
  I think Substack is an interesting future, and I do think that's
• 53:41
  a way you can make a living.
• 53:43
  But I think you're more of a commentator, you're more of a
• 53:45
  pundit and you are a reporter.
• 53:46
  And for people who wanted to be straightforward journalist, I don't know
• 53:49
  where you really do that anymore because.
• 53:50
  Even we're out here in la.
• 53:51
  I mean the LA Times is a shadow of what it used to be, and it's like the
• 53:54
  third biggest paper in the country.
• 53:55
  It's a very, very sad to watch car journalism, especially
• 53:58
  because of the internet.
• 53:59
  And now you have so many influencers and you know, people doing car reviews
• 54:02
  so-called where they're getting a car from, not more manufacturer even,
• 54:05
  which, I mean, there was always, you know, some sort of questions about,
• 54:08
  you know, how objective you would be.
• 54:09
  I, I think we were objective, but there's always been, you know,
• 54:12
  people question it, but if you're getting a call from manufacturer.
• 54:14
  People now get 'em just from a car dealer, you know, and you're
• 54:17
  doing the review right there.
• 54:18
  And how honest can you be under those circumstances?
• 54:20
  Completely different field.
• 54:21
  And I wish that it were doing better and I wish I could be a
• 54:24
  little more optimistic, but I'm not that sanguine about the future.
• 54:26
  I'm a little bit in the same boat with Preston.
• 54:28
  I mean, telling somebody how to learn and train and make a living as an
• 54:32
  automotive writer, I'm not sure that's an answerable question from where I sit.
• 54:35
  It would be a, a short speech or a long boring one.
• 54:38
  I'm not sure which.
• 54:38
  One instance I just heard from a public relations person for one of the car
• 54:43
  companies was telling me that they had an event and they, and they had, I guess some
• 54:47
  of these folks were on liners and some of 'em were influencers and this and that.
• 54:51
  They paired up driver and a ride along to go drive this
• 54:55
  vehicle wherever, like 30 miles.
• 54:57
  And I mean, we used to do road tests a lot longer than 30 miles.
• 55:02
  Can I get an initial impression in 30 miles?
• 55:04
  Yeah, probably.
• 55:05
  But what she told me is this one particular outlet person.
• 55:09
  Did not have a driver's license.
• 55:11
  So the person he or she was teamed up with in the car drove the car.
• 55:17
  So this writer, editor, influencer person took the pictures with a
• 55:21
  phone and all seemed to care about was the technology in the car.
• 55:25
  If I paired it with my phone, what could I make it do?
• 55:28
  How good was the audio system, the nav system?
• 55:30
  All the infotainment and was it smooth?
• 55:33
  It didn't break down.
• 55:34
  Yeah, it drove, it went good.
• 55:35
  That's all he cared about.
• 55:36
  'cause that's from the right seat without knowing how to drive,
• 55:39
  that's all he could talk about.
• 55:40
  So that was a little bit of a, A brain shaker to me, definitely
• 55:44
  shows a different direction.
• 55:46
  That's actually really amazing.
• 55:47
  Let me, let me throw this one out there because one thing I've observed over
• 55:51
  the years, you know, I came as kind of a hybrid when I started interning with Matt.
• 55:55
  Yeah.
• 55:55
  The internet was just starting to get a little bit of traction, just
• 55:58
  starting to kind of get going.
• 56:00
  I was classically trained in all the print journalism, so
• 56:03
  I was going after that genre.
• 56:05
  One thing I see now compared to back then, thanks to technology or technology
• 56:11
  be damned, however you wanna look at it, it's so much easier for anyone
• 56:15
  to be an automotive journalist or an influencer, however you want to say it.
• 56:19
  The question is the quality.
• 56:20
  Can you trust this person?
• 56:22
  What does this person bring to the game?
• 56:24
  Why are you listening to this person when you're wanting to know more
• 56:27
  about the Mazda Miata or the Ferrari 3 0 8 or whatever, and here's this
• 56:32
  one person you always go to or these two people you always go to.
• 56:34
  You almost have to figure out who's more trustworthy.
• 56:37
  I guess where I'm going with this is I wonder if your younger chances
• 56:40
  are you grew up with this stuff.
• 56:42
  You know how to run the camera on the phone, you know how to edit.
• 56:45
  Do you guys think, as you know, as having been there, done that, seeing
• 56:48
  the future where you were as to where it came, do you think that'd be a good
• 56:52
  place for a young person to start?
• 56:53
  Is just to dive in the pool?
• 56:55
  If you think you've got what it takes to be an automotive journalist,
• 56:58
  do you make those little videos?
• 57:00
  Do you make those commentaries?
• 57:02
  What advice would you give to somebody who wants to do this?
• 57:04
  What do you think?
• 57:05
  I don't, I don't know Don.
• 57:06
  'cause I didn't come up that way, so I'm not sure exactly.
• 57:09
  I think one of the other things which Preston touched on a little earlier is,
• 57:14
  you know, back not too too many years ago, you know, working at a magazine or
• 57:18
  a newspaper was the way to make a living.
• 57:19
  Yeah.
• 57:20
  Posting to your blog may or may not be Joe Bob's cool car
• 57:23
  site without an income stream.
• 57:25
  You can mechanically do all that, but is it from your grandma's basement?
• 57:29
  Do you make a living?
• 57:30
  Are you professional at that?
• 57:32
  I think that's a bit of the missing link in the equation of your question
• 57:36
  and, and what does the person wanna accomplish if they wanna make a living?
• 57:39
  I think it's a hell of a challenge now.
• 57:40
  Or do they not need to make a living?
• 57:42
  I don't know.
• 57:43
  This is Blackwater for me and I, I don't know that I have a credible opinion.
• 57:46
  I'm not saying no, or that I don't know.
• 57:48
  I'm not saying no, but I'm saying I don't know, sort of listen to myself speaking.
• 57:52
  I kind of feel like I'm sort of a parody of the Boomer
• 57:54
  complaining about everything, and I don't wanna sound that way.
• 57:56
  I, it just meant it's, it's tough.
• 57:57
  But I do think, and I actually did have lunch with somebody, a young
• 58:00
  guy who was trying to get started and he was making his own videos.
• 58:03
  But I still think it's important somehow to have some sort of journeyman
• 58:06
  status where you, you're either an intern or you're, you start at the
• 58:09
  bottom or you start at a smaller place where you kind of learn the ropes.
• 58:12
  It's sort of hard to get into the business.
• 58:14
  Fully formed.
• 58:15
  You know, again, I was, there were small magazines that I started working
• 58:17
  at where, you know, the pay wasn't very good and writing for them, and kind
• 58:20
  of that's how I learned to do things.
• 58:22
  And I was sort of mentored by other people, and I hope
• 58:24
  that people can still do that.
• 58:25
  I'm sure that there's still ways to do that.
• 58:27
  I guess I like mad.
• 58:27
  I'm a little bit don't really know the social media world, and so I
• 58:30
  don't really watch any YouTube videos.
• 58:32
  I don't know exactly how that works, but I do think somehow you wanna be
• 58:36
  able to find somebody to help you along so that you're not on your own.
• 58:39
  So you have somebody sort of giving you some tips and helping you make
• 58:42
  progress if you can do it without somebody's help or more power to you.
• 58:45
  It's just, it seems like a pretty tough road to hoe I, if I were starting
• 58:48
  out, I would try to find some other people who are doing what I want
• 58:51
  to be doing and somehow approach them and see if you could get them
• 58:54
  to help you or something like that.
• 58:55
  A mentor who understands all sides of the coin, you know, I
• 58:59
  don't understand developing these income streams for somebody that
• 59:02
  needs to do this, earn a living.
• 59:04
  Is that part of the equation?
• 59:05
  Probably is.
• 59:06
  But how does all that get developed?
• 59:08
  I couldn't tell somebody.
• 59:09
  To Preston's point, if they're gonna be somebody who's gonna be tutored,
• 59:12
  mentored, big brothered, whatever, they really ought to have some grasp
• 59:17
  of all sides of all facets of the rock.
• 59:21
  Because without that, okay, you can operate your video camera and you can
• 59:24
  say, oh, this is a cool car goes fast.
• 59:25
  But how does that provide you a living?
• 59:28
  You're both talking about the new generation, the old
• 59:30
  generation, how they work together.
• 59:32
  Here, I'm gonna hit the bull that I'm staring at and I don't
• 59:35
  know if you guys see it or not.
• 59:36
  Artificial intelligence.
• 59:38
  You said go find a mentor, go find somebody you look up to.
• 59:42
  Okay, well I had a trillion of 'em in the autom.
• 59:45
  Is artificial intelligence, the new mentor, is that where young people
• 59:50
  can go and type in a question?
• 59:52
  Dear Mr. Chet, GTP, I want to be an automotive journalist.
• 59:56
  How do I do it?
• 59:57
  That's a good question.
• 59:58
  For certain types of information, AI can be extremely helpful.
• 1:00:02
  As a clearing center is the rounding up stuff.
• 1:00:04
  I would say going back a little more to what you said earlier, find and
• 1:00:08
  listen to voices that speak to you, and if there's a way to communicate,
• 1:00:13
  Hey, I like your stuff, you know?
• 1:00:14
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:00:15
  How do I do what you do?
• 1:00:16
  Well, you tell me.
• 1:00:17
  Will you share that to me?
• 1:00:19
  Not knowing Sounds like it could even be viable.
• 1:00:22
  I bet if you ask.
• 1:00:24
  GTP how to do that.
• 1:00:25
  The answer ain't gonna make a lot of sense.
• 1:00:28
  It might say, oh, you need to go to journalism school and then go to this.
• 1:00:30
  And I don't know, I'm looking at Eric's picture thinking,
• 1:00:33
  Eric, can you do this right now?
• 1:00:35
  Real quick, five seconds.
• 1:00:36
  Yeah.
• 1:00:36
  Don brings up a very valid point, you know, coming from the tech world
• 1:00:39
  to hear the argument all the time about how artificial intelligence
• 1:00:42
  is gonna make all our lives better.
• 1:00:44
  It's the foreshadowing of Skynet.
• 1:00:45
  And I wonder though, if writers will be replaced by bots, you know, bots
• 1:00:50
  being the chat gpt of the world and you know, all those kinds of things.
• 1:00:53
  So Preston, what's your thought on this kind of looking at it?
• 1:00:56
  I'm really worried about AI and, and the future that I'll have for writing.
• 1:00:59
  I mean, I think AI can definitely take over a lot of the stuff like,
• 1:01:02
  remember you, you know, the new car guides were like a staple of the
• 1:01:05
  industry for years and years and years.
• 1:01:07
  They were big money makers.
• 1:01:08
  You know, you'd write like 120 words on each model in the
• 1:01:11
  GMC lineup, whatever it was.
• 1:01:12
  Well, geez, AI can do that in a heartbeat.
• 1:01:14
  There's no reason why it won't be able to do that.
• 1:01:16
  You know, I kind of felt like I was sort of insulated because
• 1:01:18
  to do a profile of a race car driver, well, how's it gonna do it?
• 1:01:22
  You have to interview the guy.
• 1:01:22
  I mean, AI can't do that.
• 1:01:24
  I mean, I guess there probably is a way I could do it, but I, I kind
• 1:01:26
  of felt a little bit insulated.
• 1:01:28
  And also I'm kind of aging out I think, at the right time.
• 1:01:31
  But yeah, I do think it's gonna take a lot of the entry level stuff out.
• 1:01:34
  I mean, a lot of the press kit material, which used to be a big deal for the
• 1:01:36
  people on the PR side, you know, someone had to write those press kits.
• 1:01:39
  Well, I think the AI can will be able to knock those out in a heartbeat.
• 1:01:42
  What's missing from that part of the equation is the voice
• 1:01:48
  ua, the perpetual voice.
• 1:01:50
  If you ask Chad GTB, what's it like racing a Camaro in the TransAm series?
• 1:01:55
  You ain't gonna get a piece that sounds like Brock Yates, I promise you.
• 1:01:58
  To me, that's a great clearinghouse for facts and numbers and wheel bases and all
• 1:02:03
  that, but opinion, analysis and voice.
• 1:02:07
  I don't think we know that yet.
• 1:02:08
  Preston brings up a really good point about aging out of the industry and
• 1:02:11
  Matt, you've moved on to being an author now and as you look back over
• 1:02:15
  your careers as automotive journalists, what would you say outside of meeting
• 1:02:20
  your heroes and driving fantastic cars was the most rewarding aspect about
• 1:02:25
  telling stories in the automotive world?
• 1:02:27
  I mean, it's been a great ride, not just since I got to do interesting things
• 1:02:30
  and meet interesting people, but because as you say, you gotta tell stories.
• 1:02:34
  You got to relate stories to, uh, readers, at least editors.
• 1:02:37
  I don't know if the readers were reading the stories or not.
• 1:02:39
  It is still really rewarding to do that.
• 1:02:41
  There are stories that, that are untold or that haven't been told properly.
• 1:02:44
  The ability to sort of set things straight, explain what really happened.
• 1:02:48
  I still find that to be a very satisfying experience and I enjoy the ability to talk
• 1:02:53
  to guys and women who have sort of maybe gotten their do you know, to tell their
• 1:02:58
  story is also something that I really appreciate the ability to be able to do.
• 1:03:02
  That's the one good thing about journalism is you do get to.
• 1:03:05
  Tell other people's stories.
• 1:03:06
  You're not, it's always, not always about you or me.
• 1:03:09
  And, uh, I do appreciate the opportunity to do that.
• 1:03:12
  Yeah, me too.
• 1:03:13
  That's still very satisfying.
• 1:03:15
  There's a compelling kernel of a story and you turn it into a bigger
• 1:03:18
  story and it's a good story and it's interesting and people read it and
• 1:03:21
  like it, and, and they're informed about it instead of being misinformed.
• 1:03:24
  That's very satisfying as a basically a storyteller.
• 1:03:27
  I find value in that for sure, and I feel bad just 'cause I'm, I always
• 1:03:30
  say this, I'm a lot better in print than I am in person, and so I'm not
• 1:03:32
  probably articulating this the way I ought to, but like telling a story,
• 1:03:35
  I'm in the Delta Wing, which is one of my all time favorite projects.
• 1:03:38
  Even though it was an hideous, ugly car, I remember being able to tell that story.
• 1:03:41
  It was a thrill to be able to sort of pass along what went into that project
• 1:03:45
  and to sort of tell the backstory to people who maybe didn't want to
• 1:03:48
  hear it and didn't like the car and didn't like the people behind it.
• 1:03:51
  But that was really an enjoyable experience to be able to.
• 1:03:54
  Watch that car develop and then see it being tested for the first
• 1:03:57
  time and going to LA Mile watching it race there and actually got to
• 1:04:00
  drive that car later on myself.
• 1:04:01
  You dug.
• 1:04:02
  That was really a great, great experience.
• 1:04:04
  Um, never in a million years thought I would ever have that
• 1:04:07
  opportunity when I got started.
• 1:04:08
  You know, writing stories about city council meetings and school
• 1:04:10
  board meetings and stuff like that.
• 1:04:12
  Yeah.
• 1:04:12
  I think we're all kind of wondering, guy.
• 1:04:13
  Both have books under your belt.
• 1:04:15
  We all love them.
• 1:04:16
  Any new books on the horizon?
• 1:04:18
  What's next for Matt and Preston other than lunch at Bob's Big Boy?
• 1:04:22
  Yeah, we got that, but I got a book that's not gonna be out for,
• 1:04:24
  I think till 2027, unfortunately.
• 1:04:26
  But debell Pro Racing from 1964 to 73.
• 1:04:29
  Safety is the overarching theme, but it's also about, this is the era when racing
• 1:04:33
  becomes really much more professional thanks to, uh, television and sponsorship
• 1:04:37
  and money promotes r and d that creates slick tires, wings and turbocharging and
• 1:04:41
  all these things we now take for granted.
• 1:04:43
  I had a lot of fun writing that one.
• 1:04:44
  I don't know if anyone really cares about it, but it's a subject
• 1:04:46
  that's very dear to my heart.
• 1:04:47
  I will await my copy 'cause I care and that's when I first started
• 1:04:51
  really, really getting to know and paying attention to racing.
• 1:04:54
  Was that era that you just named so Yeah, for sure.
• 1:04:57
  I have one coming out that's at the binder right now and will be
• 1:05:01
  released in September called The Greatest Icons of the Silver Screen.
• 1:05:07
  It's about great or awful movie cars.
• 1:05:10
  Some are great, some are awful.
• 1:05:11
  Not only the cars themselves, but how they got cast and costumed in into that movie.
• 1:05:16
  But I work with a another guy who's kind of a cultural, IM Imperativeness guy
• 1:05:21
  and he wrote the capsule about the film.
• 1:05:23
  I was the car guy.
• 1:05:24
  And we also have interviews with folks that build picture cars and how cars get
• 1:05:29
  selected and you know, stuff like that.
• 1:05:31
  And you will be happy to know Don Weiberg that the Back to the Future
• 1:05:35
  DeLorean Time machine is on cover.
• 1:05:39
  Oh, got the cover.
• 1:05:40
  I love it.
• 1:05:40
  Yeah, so anyway, that's one.
• 1:05:42
  And I also have been working with the Bachman family.
• 1:05:46
  They of Galpin Motors, Galpin Ford, Galpin, everything else to do
• 1:05:50
  their family and company history.
• 1:05:52
  The rumor is we're gonna print it before the end of the year.
• 1:05:55
  Very cool.
• 1:05:56
  That's been a wild ride.
• 1:05:58
  I don't know if you're familiar with Galpin at all in any way, but very
• 1:06:01
  large and influential dealer group out here in Southern California.
• 1:06:05
  Very successful and has, I don't know, 10 or 11 brands now and
• 1:06:09
  dealerships all over the place.
• 1:06:10
  And I walked into a conference room.
• 1:06:13
  Full of bankers boxes, full of vintage photos going back to the 1940s.
• 1:06:20
  That's where we started.
• 1:06:21
  So anyway, uh, Gallin Motors will be out ostensibly early next year.
• 1:06:26
  We're grinding down the final edit right now, and they said, we'll,
• 1:06:29
  we'll print before the holidays, so that'll be out next year.
• 1:06:32
  And I have a couple of proposals in development, which I cannot speak about,
• 1:06:36
  but Stony done yet, unless nobody buys them, whether you're a longtime reader
• 1:06:41
  of their work or just discovering their impact, we hope this conversation
• 1:06:45
  sparked your own nostalgia and curiosity.
• 1:06:48
  We want to thank you for joining us on this very special reunion
• 1:06:51
  episode featuring the legendary voices of automotive journalists,
• 1:06:54
  Matt Stone and Preston Lerner.
• 1:06:56
  It's not every day we get to sit down with two storytellers who lived and
• 1:07:00
  wrote about the highs and horsepower of car culture across some of the best
• 1:07:04
  decades from tales behind the wheel, to insights from behind the keyboard.
• 1:07:09
  Their shared journey reminds us why cars are so much more
• 1:07:12
  than machines, their memories, milestones, and moving histories.
• 1:07:16
  And with that, Matt and Preston, I can't thank you enough for
• 1:07:19
  coming on Break Fix yet again and sharing your stories with us.
• 1:07:21
  And I, I look forward to seeing you both next time I'm out in California.
• 1:07:24
  Thanks, Don.
• 1:07:25
  Thanks, Eric.
• 1:07:25
  You, you guys have been great.
• 1:07:26
  It's really, yeah, it's good fun.
• 1:07:27
  Thank you being on here.
• 1:07:28
  Thanks for taking all this time and letting us talk and pontificate at great
• 1:07:32
  length, but there's no big boy combo in french fries here in front of us.
• 1:07:35
  What next time guys?
• 1:07:37
  We, we gotta make that happen.
• 1:07:39
  We all gotta get together at the Bobs.
• 1:07:40
  We, we should record one of these at Bob's.
• 1:07:43
  That'd be fun.
• 1:07:43
  That'd be awesome.
• 1:07:44
  Keep driving it and keep reading please.
• 1:07:51
  We hope you enjoyed another awesome episode of Break Fix Podcasts, brought
• 1:07:55
  to you by Grand Tour Motorsports.
• 1:07:57
  If you'd like to be a guest on the show or get involved, be sure
• 1:08:00
  to follow us on all social media platforms at Grand Touring Motorsports.
• 1:08:04
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• 1:08:07
  be sure to check out the follow on article@gtmotorsports.org.
• 1:08:12
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• 1:08:45
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