David E. Davis, Jr. Returns to Car & Driver

We picked up the July issue of Car
& Driver magazine recently and discovered that the man who was the greatest
editor ever of a special interest magazine is back as a monthly columnist. His name
is David E. Davis, Jr. He spawned a generation of editors in other fields of special
interest magazines struggled (and some still do) to bring to their readers truth,
criticism, insight, sass and entertainment instead of the pap and mediocrity. Davis
proved that an “enthusiast” magazine which relied upon the very companies it covered
for its income could also be truthful, have integrity and in the case of C&D,
be the canary in the coal mine. The coal mine was Detroit and you know what happened
to the canary. What does Davis have to do with testing boats?

David E. Davis, Jr., Mr. Car & Driver	Jeff Hammond BoatTEST.com Editor

David E. Davis, Jr. became an icon of special interest magazine editing when he
ran a picture of a Ford Pinto placed squarely in front to a junk yard on the pages
of Car & Driver early in the days of his 13-year tenure as editor. The picture
and article rocked Detroit. Suits in the executive suites immediately called him
a lose cannon, irresponsible, offensive, and they cancelled their subscriptions
as they complained that he was destroying the image of Car & Driver magazine
– an image fostered by a long line of fawning publishers who were little more than
lap dogs for their advertisers. Predictably, all Ford Motor divisions pulled their
advertising from Car & Driver.



Subsequent issues of Car & Driver tackled other rolling schlock being turned
out by Detroit in the early 1970s with same result and soon there were very few
ad pages left. David E. Davis, Jr. had the courage of his convections and his view
of automobiles was usually very much on target. (Most of our readers are too young
to remember when the doors of American cars didn’t fit quite right and the motto
of both management and the UAW was “good enough is good enough.”)



As we said, Car & Driver was the canary in the coal mine. Unfortunately, top
management in Detroit was in denial.

David started “Automobile” magazine for Rupert Murdoch from scratch.

As Davis shifted into high gear Car & Driver got thinner and thinner and was
soon profusely bleeding economic red ink. In no time publishing wags were taking
bets on when Davis would be thrown under the bus by the owner of Car & Driver,
a man named Bill Ziff.


Bill Ziff Made the Difference…



But Ziff also owned and drove American-built cars. He knew that Davis was right
and was exercising what we would now call “tough love” on and for Detroit. Ziff
confounded Detroit – and the publishing wags -- and stuck with Davis, who then over
the next 13 years of his career proceeded to show every special-interest magazine
editor in the country how to put out a publication.



Car & Driver back in those days was riveting. Each month people would rush to
the newsstands or wait by their mailboxes in anticipation of David’s latest issue.
What rattling-wreck would be called out this month? Who would be damned with faint
praise, or no praise at all, this month? And what was the hot, new car? What innovation
was truly worthy of the name? Were disc brakes used on foreign cars really better
than Detroit’s brakes? Did all steering have to be soft and mushy?

Davis is still in demand as a narrator of both Indy and Formula One races around the world.

Within about 6 months (remember this was long before the Internet), virtually everyone
who was interested in cars or the automobile business in the U.S. was reading Car
& Driver. Subscriptions and newsstand circulation surged. It took another year
for the brightest bulbs in Detroit’s marketing departments to realize that if they
wanted to reach the opinion makers who create “word-of-mouth advice” from Duffy’s
Tavern to board rooms, the best and most cost-efficient way to do it was to advertise
in Car & Driver – no matter what Davis was saying!


Does Editorial Have to be Boring?



Davis, with his irreverent approach and his defiance of the sacred cows of his industry,
had gathered the most influential automobile audience ever in the country. Each
month he gave them the truth in an entertaining way (does objectivity have to be
boring?), a twinkle in his eye and the best damned writing to be found most anywhere.
He single-handedly changed the coverage of automobiles from that of nothing more
than publicists passing on company-written press releases, to sharp-eyed, critical,
and incisive reports that were also fun to read. (Did we say “fun to read”? Where
is it written that reports on equipment should be boring to read?)



We will leave to others to parse the effect that Davis’ editorial at Car & Driver
had on the automobile industry. Was he leading the movement to well-built cars [read:
non-U.S.], or was he simply giving a voice to what the discerning American public
was already thinking?

Eddie Altman, the new editor of Car & Driver and a disciple of David E. Davis Jr.

Davis educated not only a whole decade of automobile buyers, but also a whole class
of editors in the publishing world in the 1970s and ‘80s. Suffice it to say that
he had many disciples. One is the geriatric editor of BoatTEST.com, the old fellow
with the white beard pictured next to Davis at the top of this article. He’d be
the first to tell you that he is no David E. Davis, Jr., but he would also tell
you that the reason that most people read our weekly e-newsletters is because of
the lessons he learned from Davis. (Hammond was editor of Boating magazine in the
early 1980s, another Ziff magazine which was down the hall from Car & Driver.)


At Least 12 Disciples…



Hammond tells us that the very first lesson he learned from Davis over lunch at
a local bistro was: “Respect your readers.” He says that once this lesson is learned,
the rest follows quite naturally. Once an editor respects his readers’ intelligence,
knowledge, and humanity, he can and must write to them as a friend. A friend that
has his own biases and warts, but none-the-less a friend who has good faith and
is seeking truth.



Because of David E. Davis, Jr., the dictum around the editorial offices of BoatTEST.com
is -- First—Don’t bore your readers! Second, write to your readers as respected,
intelligent boaters, ones with whom we can joke, go cruising together, show tough
love, disagree, and dream with – but never, ever mislead. Boating is a way of life
for many people, and it is to them that BoatTEST.com is dedicated.



Davis led the way showing that an editor has only his integrity to guide him. But
he also taught us that an editor could be playful, put his tongue in cheek, now
and then be grumpy, and blow out the conventional cobwebs in his readers’ minds
– cobwebs fostered by those unwilling, or unable to challenge conventional thinking.

To read Davis’s column in the July issue of Car & Driver…