Terry Ehrich (left) ran Hemmings and readily accepted Lamm?s idea of starting a new magazine called Special-Interest Autos. Text and below photos copyright Michael Lamm 2012
I?d like to veer off course again, this time to talk about Special-Interest Autos magazine and how it started.
After three years at Motor Trend, I left in late 1965 and took a job as publications director for the University of the Pacific here in Stockton, California. I thought I?d love working for a college, but I didn?t. So in August 1966, I went out on my own and put up a shingle as a freelance writer and automotive editor.
That?s not an easy way to make a living, and there were now five Lamms to feed, but somehow it worked out. We bought a house in Stockton, I built a little office inside our garage, and the kids knew that while I was in there, clacking away at my Royal Standard, they had better stay out.
When our neighbors asked what I did for a living, I told them I was self-employed, but the fact was and still is that there?s a very thin line between being self-employed and unemployed.
My primary freelance markets during those years were Motor Trend, Car Life and Popular Mechanics. I knew the people at Motor Trend quite well, and I?d left on good terms, so they gave me a fair amount of work. Another good market was Car Life, the magazine John and Elaine Bond at Road & Track conceived as Motor Trend?s rival, the idea being to expand the Bond empire so it could compete more directly with Petersen Publishing Co. Petersen published Motor Trend, Hot Rod, Car Craft, Rod & Custom, Sports Car Graphic and a number of other titles.
John Bond and Robert E. (Pete) Petersen were polar opposites. Pete was basically a salesman, and John Bond was what I?d call an automotive intellectual, a car enthusiast with a degree in engineering and the ability to write. He?d come into the magazine business sideways. John?s very deep and broad passion for cars gave him the ability to recite, with amazing accuracy, such things as engine specifications, wheelbase lengths, model dates and anecdotes about people involved in the auto industry.
John was a walking encyclopedia of automotive facts and trivia, and he had the good sense to gather about him other people of similar interests, men like Tony Hogg and Dean Batchelor, both of whom also had knowledge of all things automotive.
Pete Petersen was, in my opinion, more in tune with the audience(s) he was appealing to, but he didn?t have anything like John Bond?s background or intelligence about cars. Pete could pick good editors, and it?s to his everlasting credit that he chose Walt Woron to become Motor Trend?s founding editor in 1949 ? one of the best moves Pete ever made. Other good choices were Wally Parks and Ray Brock, who edited and nurtured Hot Rod. Wally later founded the National Hot Rod Association, and Ray went on to oversee all of Pete?s magazines for a number of years in the 1960s.
Natural Editors
A longish digression here about editors. There are people who have a natural ability to edit books, magazines and newspapers. I see this talent as similar to that of artists. Some people can draw, some can compose music and others can sculpt. Most of us mortals can?t do any of those things, but a small, gifted minority can.
Same applies to editors. Some people have a natural ability to determine what?s interesting, to distill the essence of a fascinating topic, then to put words on paper that make the topic lively and clear, and/or to inspire writers with those abilities. It?s not a skill given to everyone.
I think I can best explain my concept of a ?natural editor? by example. For a number of years, a young fellow named Lorin Sorensen worked at our local Sears as the store?s security manager. Lorin didn?t much like his job, and he happened to own a 1940 Ford woody, which is how I got to know him.
One day Lorin came to me and said that he had a chance to become editor of The V-8 Times, the magazine published by the Early Ford V-8 Club of America. He had no editing experience, so before he committed himself, he asked me to give him a few pointers. Together, we thumbed through old issues of the Times, and I was astonished by his ability to judge interesting articles and differentiate them from those that merely filled pages. He had this knack for pointing out what made the interesting articles interesting and the dull ones dull.
He turned out to be, by my definition, a natural editor, even though I had no idea at the time whether he could actually spell or proofread or do any of the dozens of things an editor needs to do in order to put out a magazine. But I figured he could learn all those things on his own, and he did.
Lorin Sorensen edited The V-8 Times for several years and then went on to publish the landmark Ford Life series of magazines and books. Lorin had that simple, natural ability to intuit what people wanted to see and read, and that talent eventually led him to a very happy and prosperous livelihood.
Walt Woron, Tony Hogg, Dean Batchelor, David E. Davis, Jr. and, on a larger scale, William Randolph Hearst also had that ability, and I?m sure that?s what marked all of them as good editors. Some were also good writers, but there?s a huge difference, and neither ability has to overlap.
Enter the Formula
Back to car magazines. In the late 1940s and 1950s, editors like Walt Woron and John Bond pretty much enjoyed carte blanche in terms of publishing what they wanted. The automotive world in the broadest sense was their oyster, and if Walt found an interesting backyard custom, he ran an article about it. If John Bond wanted to do an article about Henry Seagrave?s 1926 world land speed record, he did. Car magazines in those days weren?t yet drawn and quartered; they didn?t adhere to a formula.
Today they do. Today we have vertical rather than horizontal car magazines. Instead of the sorts of magazines that Walt Woron and John Bond edited, which took on any and all automotive topics, from testing to car buying to classics and homemade specials, today we have magazines devoted solely to hot rods. Or to sports cars. Or off-road vehicles. Or racing. There are car magazines that cover only Corvettes or Mustangs or MoPars.
Today?s four mass-circulation car magazines ? Car and Driver, Motor Trend, Road & Track and Automobile ? also tend to be fairly vertical. More to the point is that they?re formulated. All follow roughly the same formula month after month, road tests being their staple, with new-car news plus racing and a certain amount of tech articles thrown in. They occasionally branch out into personalities, and all run columns, usually by people on their staffs.
Today?s newsstand auto magazines tend to follow a formula, thus ending up with a certain sameness.
And I?m sure you?ve noticed that all four march along pretty much in lockstep. If you see a red Dodge Viper on the cover of one, chances are it?ll be on the cover of others. Ditto inside ? a lot of the coverage involves the same cars. Part of that happens, of course, because auto manufacturers release certain cars at certain times, so they?re new when they?re new. And the car companies invite A-list automotive journalists to the same previews and press junkets at much the same times. That?s the nature of the beast.
Inside the Beast
And back now to my early adventures in freelancing. One of the more interesting magazines I worked for was Car Life, John Bond?s effort to unseat Motor Trend. Car Life?s editor, Jim Hamilton, knew he had a tough row to hoe, and if he couldn?t keep upping Car Life?s circulation to approach that of Motor Trend, he?d soon be out of work.
Jim copied Motor Trend?s formula to a large extent, but he also wanted to get away from the formulaic sameness. He was willing to experiment with the sorts of articles he knew Motor Trend wouldn?t run, such things as biographies of Craig Breedlove and Zora Arkus-Duntov; articles about street racing; the history of automatic transmissions; offbeat topics.
And offbeat was where I came in. I guess Jim got desperate, because I was able to talk him into letting me do all sorts of articles about older cars and, most notably, special interest cars. The other magazines, when they ran anything at all about older cars, covered the same classic marques and topics ? what I called ?the Auburn-Cord-Duesenberg syndrome.? Jim agreed, and we decided to run articles about automotive history as it influenced the industry and contemporary cars.
After I?d done a certain number of articles about special interest makes and models for Car Life, the thought occurred to me that maybe there?s enough meat in that topic, with a nice selection of offbeat cars tossed in, to fuel a magazine in its own right. And that?s basically where the idea for Special-Interest Autos (SIA) came from: my work for Jim Hamilton at Car Life.
I took a mental inventory of what sorts of articles I?d put into SIA, but I knew from the beginning that I couldn?t write, edit, publish and distribute a startup (upstart?) magazine on my own. I?d need a partner, preferably one already in the magazine business. The Big Four publishers wouldn?t go for the idea, because SIA couldn?t possibly generate enough circulation or advertising. In my mind, that pretty much narrowed it to a partnership with Hemmings Motor News (HMN).
I phoned Hemmings cold early one morning in 1969 and asked to speak with the publisher, Terry Ehrich. I?d never met Terry and didn?t know a thing about him, but he seemed the person to ask. Terry came on the phone. He sounded affable but a little reserved. I explained my idea and, to my utter amazement, he took an immediate interest in it.
Terry asked me whether I could fly out to HMN?s headquarters in Bennington, Vermont, on a certain date in the near future so that I could get together with him and his partners at their annual corporate meeting. Hemmings was owned, at that time, by Watering Inc., a corporation whose three principal officers were Terry; his father-in-law, Bayard Ewing; and George Waterman, a wealthy New England car collector. The three of them had bought Hemmings from its founder, Ernie Hemmings, and moved the magazine to Terry?s hometown, Bennington. Terry ran the show, and all three were equal partners.
Terry invited me to come out a few days early and stay with him at his house outside Bennington. I flew to Troy, New York, rented a car, drove to Bennington and met Terry on what I recall was a Thursday afternoon. The corporate meeting was to take place on the following Sunday.
Terry Ehrich grew up in Arlington, Vermont, where his father had served several terms as a state senator. Terry graduated from Harvard and worked for a while as ad manager for the New York Review of Books, but he didn?t like Manhattan and moved back to Bennington, where he became very much involved with the community. He and I hit it off immediately, and I found him to be very informal, cordial and straightforward. One of the first things we did was walk down to the stream at the back of his property, perch ourselves on rocks and just talk.
Previously, back in California, to prepare for the board meeting ? one of the scariest events of my life ? I?d put together a dummy magazine and gathered some of my articles about special interest cars that had run in Car Life. The four of us met in Terry?s office at the former schoolhouse that Hemmings used as its headquarters. I was nervous, clearly, but that went away pretty quickly.
Bayard Ewing. Photo courtesy Rhode Island School of Design.
Bayard Ewing and George Waterman were both old-money New Englanders, as was, actually, Terry Ehrich. Bayard got his B.A. from Yale and earned his law degree at Harvard. He lived and worked in Providence and served one term in the Rhode Island legislature. Bayard was also a trustee of the Rhode Island School of Design and was heavily involved with United Way and a number of other charities. From 1955 to 1968, he served as a Republican national committeeman.
George Waterman (center) was one of Watering Inc.?s principals, the others being Terry and his father-in-law, Bayard Ewing. Waterman began collecting cars in the 1920s and saved a number of historically significant vehicles from the boneyard. Photo courtesy VMCCA.
The third Hemmings partner, George H. Waterman Jr., was one of the nation?s pioneer car collectors. He favored historically significant vehicles and early race cars and had owned, among many others, the 1866 Dudgeon steam car (now in the Smithsonian), an 1896 Duryea, a 1908 Benz, 1911 Fiat Tipo S-74, 1904 Napier, 1908 Isotta-Fraschini and a 1907 Renault. By combining his own collection with that of Kirkland H. Gibson, George set up the Boston Museum of Automotive Conveyance in 1933. He?d also helped found the Veteran Motor Car Club of America. George was the partner with gasoline in his veins, and it was he who?d put together the deal to buy out Ernie Hemmings.
George and Bayard had formed Watering Inc., which combined their two last names, as a financial partnership and, in 1966, they bought five decommissioned P-51 Mustang fighter planes from the Egyptian air force. They were planning to bring the P-51s to the United States to sell, but before they could do that, the Six-Day War broke out and Israel bombed military targets near Cairo. The P-51s went up in flames (as opposed to down in flames). Fortunately, George and Bayard had the foresight to insure all five planes, and I think Watering Inc. actually came out ahead.
Our meeting went well, and the partners decided to create a separate corporation within Watering Inc. They would put up $5,000 seed money and I would do the same. Bayard decided that this would make both entities equal partners, and by equal, he meant 50/50. This was unusual, because Watering Inc., being the dominant partner, could have insisted on 51 percent, making me a minority stockholder. But Bayard set up a 50/50 arrangement so that everyone would feel motivated to put in equal amounts of effort.
SIA and Hemmings
On a practical level, I would have full editorial control of SIA, with the ultimate responsibility of delivering press-ready material to the printer every other month. Hemmings would take care of the business end of SIA: publicity, advertising, newsstand sales, subscription fulfillment and all the financial aspects. Fortunately, Hemmings already had everything set up to do that, and HMN became the perfect vehicle to promote and publicize SIA, being the largest old-car magazine in the world.
So we were set to go, and the first issue was scheduled to come out in October 1970. We picked that date to coincide with the big Hershey swap meet in Pennsylvania. Hemmings ran teaser ads for SIA ahead of Hershey, and staffers would be at the swap meet in force. The plan was to hand out free copies of SIA #1 to everyone we could buttonhole and, as a result, I think we sold something like 2,500 subscriptions right out of the Hemmings tent.
As an aside, we?d overprinted SIA #1 by hundreds of copies, and we dumped the extras in a huge trash bin on the swap grounds. That night, some smart person came along and pulled most of those magazines out. He sold them back to us years later, and we resold them as back issues. The back-issues department, by the way, consisted of our three pre-teenaged sons stuffing the appropriate copies of SIA into envelopes and slapping stamps and address labels on them.
I have to say that I did have a lot of fun ? and I mean a lot of fun ? editing SIA. I wrote about half the magazine myself, and I quickly learned to do gang research and gang interviews for future issues. That led me to become a huge advocate of having research sources vet my manuscripts before I committed the articles to print. I?d made a mistake in SIA #1 about the Sharknose Graham, spelling designer Amos Northup?s name with an ?r? (Northrup). Jeff Godshall, the noted historian and author, caught me on that one. Afterward, I sent out vetting copies to everyone who had anything to do with an article, and I?m pleased that I did. An original source always knows the subject better than any writer, so unless there?s something besides fact involved, it makes a lot of sense to have as many people check for accuracy as possible. I know some writers disagree, but that?s my firmly held opinion.
For gang research, I was fortunate to have Harrah?s Automobile Collection fairly nearby. Reno is a three-hour drive from Stockton and, by leaving at five in the morning, I could be at Harrah?s research library when it opened. The person in charge of the library was Skip Marketti, who now heads the Nethercutt Collection in Southern California.
Skip went out of his way to make research material available, and the library had one of the best card indexes and old-magazine collections I?ve ever used. Sometimes I?d Xerox all the index cards pertinent to an article and then, from home, order Xeroxes of the requisite magazine pages. Skip always provided everything free of charge, and for that I?m grateful to him and to Bill Harrah.
Harrah?s would also let me take cars out of the collection and photograph them at different locales around Reno. The museum made my life a lot easier and, in time, became a huge benefactor of SIA.
The magazine?s circulation grew more rapidly than anyone anticipated and, by the end of our first year, we were making money. That?s extremely rare for a magazine, especially a small one. Typically magazines take years to become profitable, but we had the built-in publicity machine of Hemmings, and that made a huge difference.
What It Was All About
What I tried to do with SIA was this: I wanted to give readers the panorama of American automotive history from the 1920s through the 1960s by documenting it a bit at a time. I intentionally stayed away from the heavy classics ? the Auburn-Cord-Duesenberg syndrome ? first, because those cars had already been written to death and, second, because they really didn?t have much lasting impact on the auto industry (Packard excepted). I wanted to talk about the mass-produced, more common cars and how they and their creators ? the designers, engineers, marketers, etc. ? shaped history. And I tried hard not to steer SIA into the ruts of a formula.
Then, too, I?ve always been interested in automotive styling, and I tried to emphasize the importance of design along with its relationship to other industry disciplines: sales, manufacturing and American culture in general. Plus I?ve long held a soft spot for offbeat cars: the oddball one-offs; those designed and built by a single individual; cars that flew or swam or embodied far-out concepts, like safety or the diamond wheel pattern.
I figured what interested me would interest SIA?s readers. In my peregrinations to Detroit ? and I went there three or four times a year to do research ? I stumbled onto all sorts of topics that I not only found fascinating but that ended up being much more than footnotes to automotive history. For example, I?d heard of Briggs and Murray, the bodymaking firms, because Ford collectors always talk about them in regard to Model A?s. But I never knew until I did a little digging how hugely important Briggs, Murray and even Budd had been to Detroit manufacturers throughout the 1930s and 1940s. And how little recognition they?d gotten.
As I did at Harrah?s, when I?d go to Detroit I?d do as much research as frantically as I could and then come home, sift through the documents and photos and order additional material as needed. In those days, 1970 through 1974, I?d visit Detroit?s hallowed shrines of automotive research: the Henry Ford Museum Archives, Detroit Public Library Automotive History Collection, Automobile Manufacturers Association (AMA, later MVMA), plus various libraries and archives at Chrysler and General Motors; also their ad agencies.
GM at that time had 36 separate libraries, one each for all five car divisions plus GMC, Terex, Central Staff, Fisher Body, Delco, Ternstedt, Design Staff, Detroit Diesel, etc. Unfortunately, most of those facilities have since been combined or abandoned.
But in those days, most Detroit archives and libraries gave researchers free run of the place. I could spend hours rummaging through photo files with no particular topic in mind, just to see if I could turn up something interesting. And I nearly always did. The Ford Archives, then under the direction of Hank Edmunds, was especially charitable in that I could wander back into the stacks and poke around to my heart?s content.
Hank?s archivists, and most especially Dave Crippen, let me set up my camera stand so I could copy pictures at will. The Ford Archives assessed no fees, and they didn?t even insist on a credit, although I was always careful to give them one. The Detroit Public Library likewise allowed the copying of photos, and I brought home hundreds of pictures that way.
General Motors and Chrysler similarly rolled out the carpet, and all the car companies very generously allowed me to interview their engineers and designers, either face to face or by telephone. I?ve always had a tape recorder hooked to my phone at home, and it?s been one of my most valuable research tools.
I tried, whenever possible, to interview the people involved with the cars and projects I was researching. In fact, I tried hard to concentrate on the human side of the auto industry rather than the hardware: people rather than cars and machinery. And I tried to quote my sources directly, using their words.
Fortunately, a lot of early industry movers and shakers were still living in the early 1970s, so I could talk to people like Emil Zoerlein about designing the ignition system for the 1932 Ford V-8, Carl Breer?s sons about their dad developing the Chrysler Airflow, and Ed Cole about how the 1949 Cadillac V-8 influenced and evolved into the 1955 Chevrolet small-block V-8.
(I remember one time phoning Bob Gregorie, the retired 1930s-1940s Ford design chief, at his home in Florida. Bob was in his late 80s by then. His wife, Evie, answered and said, ?You?ll have to wait a minute. He?s up on the roof, cleaning out the gutters.?)
And at the end of every article, I tried to give credit to the various people and institutions who?d helped me put the story together. I think that was important, not only because it gave them a well-deserved pat on the back but because it reminded me whom I?d talked with so I could call them again for another article.
Burning Out
As I say, producing SIA was great fun, but it was also an awful lot of work. I was usually at it from five in the morning until eight or nine at night, seven days a week, and I hadn?t taken even a short vacation in the four years I spent turning out the magazine. I tried at one point to hire an assistant, but I quickly discovered that I make a terrible boss, so I had to let him go again. Mea culpa.
SIA did use a number of freelancers, and I tried to get the best in the business, artists like Russ von Sauers and Dick Hanson; writers like Karl Ludvigsen, Jan Norbye, Jeff Godshall, David L. Lewis, John Bond and Maurice Hendry. And I made it a point to pay them on the day I received their material, unlike most magazines of that era, which paid on publication. I?d been paid on publication too many times as a freelancer. Payment on publication is like going to a grocery store, filling your shopping cart with food and then telling the checkout clerk, ?I?ll pay for this when I eat it.?
Mike edited SIA non-stop for four years, finally sold his half to Hemmings in early 1975. The magazine lives on as Hemmings Classic Car.
Anyway, after four years and 24 issues, I burned out and decided I needed a rest. I also wanted to spend more time with JoAnne and the kids. The boys were growing up way too fast. I told Terry my feelings, and he sympathized. ?Let me see what I can do,? he said.
A couple of weeks later, he called and asked whether I?d like to sell my half of the magazine. I said sure, but who?d want to buy it? He said Watering Inc. would. We kicked around some figures, arrived at a price, and I suddenly found myself out from under a very demanding mistress. Terry, George and Bayard had been more than generous in accepting my initial SIA proposal, and they were equally generous in buying me out. The sale gave me money to start my book-publishing business, so I?ve been grateful to them ever since.
Terry passed away in January 2002 at age 60, much too young, and I still miss him. He was one of the world?s good people. If everyone shared his sense of decency, his morals and scruples, the earth would be an infinitely better place. The irony is that Special-Interest Autos lives on, although not with that name. It?s now called Hemmings Classic Car, and I?m pleased that it and I are still around and talking.
One final note: I?m afraid I?ve come to the end of the road with this series, at least for now. I?d like to thank Dan Strohl and Hemmings for allowing me the pleasure of writing Cars I?ve Loved and Hated, and I?d especially like to thank you, Hemmings readers, for the wonderful, thoughtful comments you?ve posted at the end of each chapter. You?ve been more than generous and very good for my ego. I?m deeply grateful.
Not saying that this means the end, but it?s going to be a busy summer, so I figure I?d better quit ? at least temporarily ? while I?m ahead. Meanwhile, a friend in Connecticut and frequent commenter here at Hemmings, Casey Shain, has promised to put all these blog posts together in digital form, and when he finishes, I?ll make them available on CD. We?ll let you know when that happens.
And if you?re an absolute glutton for even more punishment, you might want to go to the La Feria, Texas, historical website, where I posted a series of reminiscences a number of years ago. When you get there, click on Reminiscences of La Feria by Michael Lamm at the upper left.
Again, many heartfelt thanks, and have fun!
Michael Lamm grew up in South Texas. He has always loved cars and, after graduating from Columbia University in New York in 1959, took a job as editor of Foreign Car Guide, a magazine about VWs. In the mid 1960s, Mike became managing editor of?Motor Trend and, in 1970, he co-founded Special-Interest Autos magazine in partnership with Hemmings Motor News. In 1978, Mike began to publish his own line of automotive books. For more information, go to www.LammMorada.com.
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