David E. Davis, who gave many of us a reason to buy automotive magazines, died this year

David E. Davis, Jr., died on March 27, 2011, while recuperating from cancer surgery. He was 80 years old. Davis was widely acknowledged as the dean of automotive journalism, the man who turned Car and Driver into the world’s largest automotive magazine, and the founder, in 1986, of Automobile magazine. Over his long career, he worked at all four major car titles, with detours for triumphant stints in the advertising business.

David E. was born in Burnside, Kentucky, on November 7, 1930, in a house with no running water. He learned to drive on a Jeep belonging to his uncle, who enlisted David E.’s help building a road up to the house. That was the first in a lifetime of automotive adventures stretching across six decades and seven continents.

He said the secret to his success lay in his ability to marry southern storytelling to big-city presentation. These gifts prompted Bill Ziff, the owner of Car and Driver up until 1985, to call David E. “the man who made special-interest magazines sing.” It was a formula that many other magazines, including some with great literary aspirations, rode to their own success. And it’s still the foundation of what we try to do here every month.

He was so in love with the craft and subject matter of car magazines that he came to inhabit an archetype. He was the dashing, witty, high-spirited, and deeply knowledgeable writer/editor who brought the automobile to life, whose personal flair transferred to whatever he was writing about.

http://blog.caranddriver.com/david-e-davis-jr-1930%E2%80%932011/

;-)

Road tests had real, measured data. Articles were rarely "puff pieces". And individual writers were always careful to distinguish fact, impression, and opinion.