Recently, upon returning home from out-of-town, I found the last of a long line of Automobile magazines waiting in my mail. After subscribing as long as I had, when the renewal notice came a few months back, I had no interest in re-upping.
As you likely recall, Automobile was Davis' attempt to move from a pure gear-head magazine full of stats, test numbers, and cars of most any type, to a glossy, Condé Nast of cars, much more Hamptons than Highland Park. All well and good. Though no yuppie or connoisseur myself, I enjoyed a lot of what they presented, including Robert Cumberford’s styling critiques. Other CD alum came with Davis to his new rag, including Jean Jennings – Lindamood at the time.
I had subscribed to the publication since soon after its debut issue back in the 1980’s, which had the audacity to compare the Toyota MR2 to a Ferrari – an attempt, I suppose, to repeat the type of buzz that publisher David E. Davis had caused by publishing a Pontiac GTO / Ferrari GTO comparison test at Car and Driver some 2 decades previous.
From the beginning of Jennings stint at Car and Driver there seemed to be, in every article with her byline, as much about herself – her job driving cabs, her job at the Chrysler proving grounds, her family, her shoes, what she ate on any given day – than whatever subject her articles were ostensibly about. Sometimes it was not too bad: a paragraph here or there in an otherwise interesting article. More often than not though, it was the same regurgitated stuff about her clothes, her dogs, her pre-writing work experience, ad nauseam. Once Jennings began her stint of editor at Automobile, she kicked it up another notch, featuring as many photos of herself as possible in her articles as the car(s) about which she was ostensibly writing.
This really hit home while perusing the pages of Automobile's most recent “25 Greatest Automobiles” issue. The choices of the cars contained not one surprise – the membership of many online car blogs and forums – including AutoPuzzles progenitor CarNuts.com -had assembled lists which were quite similar. But once again, while Don Sherman, Cumberford and others talked about the cars and why they were worthy of inclusion, Jennings regales us with details about the number of beds in her house, the brand of sheets on those beds, and all sorts of pictures of the cars, mucked up with her goofy modeling.
Personally, I like the looks of the McLaren F1. I'm glad it was included in their "Greatest" list. But was putting Jennings in the car, and lighting the cabin to highlight her ‘artistic’ pose necessary? I think not. Same with her piece on the Alfa Romeo: great car; yawn-inducing retellings of what people did when they saw her in the car, etc., and, of course, more pics of her driving the car. Is she so narcissistic that she insists on inclusion of her mug in every shoot, or does one of the art directors have a crush on her?
Either way, I’m not sorry my subscription ran out.
