Yahoo Autos Roll the Crash Reel, Boys: How I Got (and Nearly Lost) My Job at Car and Driver
From the July 2015 issue
People often ask me how I got this job. The short answer: I knew where then–editor-in-chief Csaba Csere lived. I rode by his house one day on my bicycle, not coincidentally while he had a stack of résumés on his desk for an open position. I don’t remember much except swearing that, if hired, I would always represent the magazine with utmost professionalism. About two months later, I played a key role in destroying four of the six cars in a European-sports-sedan comparison.
On the day of testing, we were breaking in a new road warrior named Brock Husby, who eventually went on to become a real NASA rocket scientist. After finishing the skidpad runs out at Chrysler’s proving grounds, we exited in our usual haste, but Brock hadn’t yet learned the facility’s layout. When I playfully passed him in a Volvo S60, he goosed his Audi A4 to return the compliment—just as I was turning right for the exit road. The sudden deafening thunderclap was Brock’s Audi trying to bore a hole through the Volvo at the rear-passenger door. True fact: That door was perfectly sealed and operable afterward, while the Audi looked like a Mr. Potato Head dropped on concrete. It was thoroughly redesigned, it was hemorrhaging fluids of various colors, and both of its front half-shafts had popped out of the transaxle. Once again I went to Csaba’s house, this time to plead for clemency for Brock and me. Either I was very persuasive or he was very tanked.
That was on Friday. On Monday, I was driving to work in the test’s Saab 9-3 when a Jeep came out of the morning sun like a Focke-Wulf 190 and swiped the corner of the car. Upon being given the news, executive editor Tony Swan gave me till 4 p.m. to get the car fixed up well enough to go on the test. He didn’t even bother to say “or else.” I did it using rattle cans and bungee cords, but Csaba banned me from press cars for a month. I immediately called my brother, Steve, to borrow his ’82 Porsche 911SC so I wouldn’t look like a dog in a cone collar the next morning driving my wife’s purple Saturn. If I forgot to say it, thanks, bro.
The fourth car? Former Audi PR doyenne Jennifer Garber (now Garber Cortez) handed over her own leased A4 to replace the damaged one. Coming to the end of a steep hill in Pennsylvania, the car bottomed-out hard, punching the drain plug through the sump. “I had to drive a Eurovan for a year because of you!” she yelled at me. We’re friends now, on Facebook.
Soon after, I was in the high Mojave Desert testing a Viper ACR, a Corvette Z06, and an SVT Mustang Cobra R. Still a rookie, I hadn’t suction-cupped the test gear to very many cars up till that point, and none that lacked ABS. Someone should have tapped me on the shoulder before I got into the Viper and reminded me of the non-ABS braking procedure, as it is definitely different from the ABS procedure, which is to just stand on the pedal until the car stops. After the first run, the Viper sat brooding at the end of two 100-foot solid-black pavement stripes, the cockpit rapidly filling with smoke.
I thought the smoke was strange, but there was work to be done, so I ran the test again. And again. And maybe one more time, the memory is fuzzy here. Then, sensing a problem, I drove the car thunk-ga-thunking back to co-worker Barry Winfield, who observed dryly that the front tires looked “tetrahedral.” Winfield gracefully volunteered to drive it back to civilization, where the workers at the tire shop insisted on taking pictures of the naked cords.
There were other disasters. A Lincoln LS slid off a road made slick by the septic discharge from a cabin in West Virginia. My root-beer-brown Mercedes-Benz CLS once rearranged the rear bumper of a Toyota Highlander. A Ferrari 599GTB Fiorano went wild on me in Italy as I tried to drift it for the camera, hitting a wall mere feet from a monument to Enzo Ferrari. The very next day, I watched as a Lamborghini Murciélago LP640 driven by factory test driver Valentino Balboni spun backward into a road sign, smashing the bumper and taillight. Balboni got out, surveyed the damage, and said with a sigh, “Game over.”
I nearly died on the Mulsanne straight at the wheel of a Chrysler PT Cruiser diesel during a parade lap preceding the 24 Hours of Le Mans. The organizers thought it would be fun to let everything from a 1929 blower Bentley to a Ferrari Challenge Stradale on the track all at once. John Phillips was supposed to do that story, but upon reaching the Detroit airport, he became flummoxed by the exigencies of modern air travel and went home. I got the assignment via a panicky email shortly after unwittingly biting into a sheep’s brain while talking to then–GM CEO Rick Wagoner over a buffet dinner. I thought it was roasted cauliflower.
As I get older, it seems to be easier to keep calamity at bay. The biggest challenge working for a car magazine that has been around for 60 years is trying to fill a page with an original thought. I’ll let you know if it happens.
You Might Also Like