Jean Jennings

Jean Jennings is an American journalist, publisher and television personality covering the automotive industry — noted for making the industry more accessible to a broad cross-section of enthusiasts.[1][2]

For American programmer, see Jean Jennings Bartik.
Jean Jennings
BornJean Marie Lienert
Pen nameJean Lindamood
Jean Lindamood Jenkins
OccupationWriter, Car and Driver (1980-1985)
Writer, Automobile (1985-2014)
Editor in Chief, Automobile (2000-2014)
President, Automobile (2006-2014)
Founder, JeanKnowsCars (2012-2018)
Correspondent, Good Morning America
GenreAutomotive journalism
Website
www.jeanknowscars.com (dormant)

After writing for Car and Driver (1980-1985), she co-founded Automobile, where she continued to write her widely known column, Vile Gossip, after becoming the magazine's editor in chief (2000-2014) and president (2006-2014).

She was the automotive correspondent for Good Morning America (1994-2000)[3] and the Oxygen network.[4] She was later the Chairman, CEO and host of the self-branded automotive website and blog, Jean Knows Cars (2012-2018), has written articles for LinkedIn and edited the book, Road Trips, Head Trips, and Other Car-Crazed Writings. She continues to write a Vile Gossip column intermittently, for Autoblog.com.[5]

Jennings received the 2016 New England Motor Press Association's Lifetime Achievement Award;[6] the Motor Press Guild 2016 Lifetime Achievement Award[7] and the 2007 International Motor Press Association annual Ken Purdy award for Excellence in Automotive Journalism — for her June 2006 Automobile cover story, "Veyron in the USA."[8]

Widely known for automotive adventures with some of the most prominent and important figures of international automotive culture — Jennings is noted for her distinctive hats and unfettered personality.

Background

Jennings grew up in a Catholic family with four brothers[9] (also reported as five brothers)[10] on a farm near New Baltimore, Michigan, the daughter of Audrey Jean Lienert (1924-2016, née Gagnon)[9][11] and Robert Marcellus Lienert (1926-1988).[12] Her father had a master's degree in journalism from Northwestern,[13] was a copy editor at the Detroit Free Press and later became the editor of Automotive News.[14]

Having learned about cars from her father,[9] she recalled that he routinely brought home new and interesting cars for his work. He once took her, age 7, and two brothers for a test drive from their house in a brand new supercharged Studebaker Avanti — driving it inadvertently into a ditch at high speed but quickly recovering to the pavement before returning home, noting that their mother was not to hear the details of the test drive.[15] Her oldest brother, Paul Lienert, became a noted automotive journalist, managing editor of AutoWeek and a correspondent for Thomson Reuters.

At 14, she was an exchange student in Ecuador where she learned to drive in a Toyota Land Cruiser in the Andes mountains.[16][17] She attended St. Mary's Queen of Creation school from 1960 to 1970; and later attended the University of Michigan (1970-1972), dropping out after three incomplete semesters.[16]

At eighteen,[13] she became a taxi driver — buying a used Plymouth Satellite with a 318 V-8 engine,[18] painting it yellow, installing a roof light and a meter, and joining the Yellow Cab Company in Ann Arbor, Michigan, as an owner/operator. While there, she redefined the city taxicab boundaries, trained and created a training manual for new cab drivers, and was elected president of the Yellow Cab board. She married Tom Lindamood, a taxi dispatcher, in 1979.[19] Five years later, with the taxi driving having become increasingly dangerous,[19] Jennings became a driver at Chrysler's Chelsea Proving Grounds and later worked at Chrysler's Impact Lab, where she crashed cars, test drove cars, welded[13][20] and wrote for its award-winning union newsletter.[19]

In 2014, Jennings co-founded the annual Caden's Car Show with C.S. Mott Children's Hospital, celebrating the life of eleven year old Caden Bowles, a car enthusiast who died while waiting for a heart transplant.[21] Jennings has Type 2 Diabetes, sits on the board of directors of the Metro Detroit and Southeast Michigan chapter of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and has emceed the organization's Promise Ball Gala.[22]

In a 2016 interview, she counted as large influences on her life a Catholic upbringing "with a heavy emphasis on reading, Latin, and the pursuit of nothing less than perfection;"[16] a disruptive bent brought out by working on an underground newspaper; and a heavy desire to escape her dirt-road, middle-of-nowhere childhood, the latter facilitated by learning to drive at an early age.[16]

She now lives on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere (in Michigan) with her husband, Tim Jennings.[4]

Career

In 1980, at her brother Paul's encouragement, one month after she was laid off at Chrysler, she applied at Car and Driver and was hired as a staff writer by editor David E. Davis (1930-2011). Though she considers herself a poor automotive prognosticator,[16] in the November 1984 issue of Car and Driver, she presciently ended her Oldsmobile Calais review, "won't it be embarrassing if, twenty years hence, the division goes under because all its customers have died?"[23] The division folded sixteen years later, in 2000.

In 1985 she left Car & Driver with Davis, co-founding Automobile magazine and becoming its first executive editor. Under the motto "No Boring Cars," the magazine competed directly with three other successful automotive magazines, Motor Trend, Car and Driver and Road and Track — with a decidedly more upscale, high style, high-profile focus,[24] heavier stock paper[24] and the only one of the four to be perfect bound (not stapled)[16] — with lush, four-color printed photography and ground-breaking art direction. Within a year, the other three major car magazines changed to perfect binding and full color printing, hiring new editors and art directors as well.[16] She became Editor-in-Chief in 2000 at Automobile and President in 2006.[25]

At Automobile, Jennings became known for her automotive adventures with some of the most prominent and important people in and out of automotive culture. She spent 9,000 miles in the first of Brock Yates' One Lap of America with Parnelli Jones in a panel van disguised as a Stroh's Brewery truck; was close to auto writer and racer Denise McCluggage for 30 years; mooned race car drivers Dan Gurney and Phil Hill; drove to the top of the world with Swedish rally driver Erik Carlsson; spent a day in 1990 and drank Johnnie Walker Red with Porsche design chief Tony Lapine and 90-year old champion Bugatti driver Eliška Junková (Elizabeth Junek) at her apartment in the Swedish embassy in Prague, just after the Berlin Wall fell;[16] rode motorcycles across China with Malcolm Smith; followed the Camel Trophy in Madagascar; raced in Baja with a Russian circle-track driver; navigated in the 2000-mile Pirelli-Classic Marathon vintage rally in a 1965 MGB across the Alps with Stirling Moss and in 1983 drove a yellow prototype C4 Corvette with Chuck Yeager.[5]

She would later say she had a "desire to pursue adventures around the country and the globe, even as [David E. Davis] remained dismayed by my inelegance... I thrived because I could tell a story."[26]

Unabashed and outspoken, Jennings became an undercover spokesmodel at the 1988 North American International Auto Show, reciting a memorized sales pitch for the Eagle Premier — wearing a copper lamé gown, heavily teased hair and such heavily glamorized makeup she was left largely unrecognizable.[3] In 1988, at Good Morning America she startled Diane Sawyer, live on air, after calling the new Chevrolet SSR, "bitchin" — explaining to the clearly ruffled Sawyer that it was an acceptable California hot-rodding term.[3] She taught an Oprah Winfrey Show audience how to change a tire and jump start a car.[4]

Jennings was periodically estranged from Davis,[27] whom she described on his death in 2011 as "the most interesting, most difficult, cleverest, darkest, most erudite, dandiest, and most inspirational, charismatic and all-around damnedest human being I will ever meet. I have loved him. I have seriously not loved him."[27] For his part, Davis claimed on a televised show to have dreamt of a "FedEx plane dropping a grand piano over [Jennings'] house, with the aftermath being splinters and a grease spot where [she] had been standing."[28]

Jennings was profiled by Susan Orlean for The New Yorker, appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, and has been a regular on-air contributor, including on Fox Business Network; CNBC's Closing Bell, Squawk Box, Behind the Wheel, and Power Lunch; MSNBC; CBS's This Morning and Evening News, and CNN's American Morning and Headline News.

In 2014, she was a judge for the ten-episode, Chevrolet-sponsored reality show, Motor City Masters which highlighted car-based design challenges.[29]

In 2012, while still with Automobile, Jennings founded a self-branded website and blog, Jean Knows Cars, with the backing of Automobile's owner, Source Interlink, carried online and 18 newspapers nationally.[30] Source Interlink reshuffled its holdings in 2014, letting go of Jennings as Editor in Chief at Automobile and firing 90% of its staff.[31] Her website and blog remained active until about 2018.

She continues to write and podcast with Autoblog.

References
  1. "'Evening With Automotive Restoration' Features Expert in Car Journalism". McPherson College. April 22, 2015. For decades, Jean Jennings has been helping make the automotive world accessible to non-experts
  2. "Jean Jennings Joins Tribune". Tribune Content Agency. Tribune Content Agency is pleased to announce the addition of automotive writer and editor Jean Jennings to its roster of content contributors. Jennings is the Chairman and CEO of JeanKnowsCars.com, which she founded in 2012 after winding down her acclaimed 29-year tenure as Co-Founder, President and Editor in Chief of Automobile Magazine. JeanKnowsCars.com is a premium automotive and lifestyle website that features an innovative and entertaining blend of video and written content. With its authoritative advice and car-buying features, combined with its humorous and irreverent take on cars and the automotive lifestyle, JeanKnowsCars.com has captured one of the broadest and most diverse audiences in the industry. "Jean's expansive knowledge of cars and her sense of humor provide a wealth of information and entertainment for car enthusiasts and those looking for the best car for their lifestyle" said John Barron, editor and general manager at Tribune Content Agency. "Her blend of entertainment, interaction and information strikes a chord with readers and is a fitting addition to our offering."
  3. "Jean Jennings looks back at the North American International Auto Show". Hagerty Media.
  4. "Jean Jennings of AUTOMOBILE MAGAZINE Wins 2007 Ken Purdy Award for Excellence in Journalism". jeanknowscars.com. Archived from the original on 2014-03-28.
  5. Jean Jennings (December 11, 2020). "That time Chuck Yeager and I flew low over California in a yellow Corvette". Autoblog.
  6. Lisa Brock (June 1, 2016). "New England Motor Press Association 2016 Honors & Awards". New England Motor Press Association.
  7. "Legendary Auto Editor Jean Jennings is named 2016 Motor Press Guild Lifetime Achievement Award recipient". Motor Press Guild. November 15, 2016.
  8. "Jean Jennings of AUTOMOBILE MAGAZINE Wins 2007 Ken Purdy Award for Excellence in Journalism". PRWEB.com.
  9. "ANTHONY MICHAEL LIENERT". Legacy.com. August 21, 2015. LIENERT ANTHONY MICHAEL January 8, 1963 - August 21, 2015. Tony was valued for his expertise in trees and entomology and was working on an M.S. in horticulture at MSU. He died of complications from diabetes. Survived by wife Teresa Westbrook Lienert; mother Audrey Lienert (née Gagnon); siblings Paul (Anita), Jean Jennings (Tim), Charles (Joann), and Thomas; six nieces and nephews; mother-in-law Nellie Westbrook, and many relatives and friends. Preceded in death by father Robert Lienert (d. 1988). Mass Tuesday, September 1, 11 a.m. at St. Mary of Redford.
  10. Jean Jennings (March 6, 2014). "Notorious Women: Elizabeth Junek". Jeanknowscars. Archived from the original on 2014-06-07.
  11. "The Business of Hospice: One Family's Story". Anita Lienert.
  12. "Robert Marcellus Lienert". Findagrave.
  13. "The Badass Women of Automotive: Jean Jennings". Motorhead Mama. January 29, 2018.
  14. Susan Orlean (February 12, 2001). "Fast Woman". The New Yorker.
  15. Jean Jennings. "My Father's Avanti Test Drive". jeanknowscars.com. Archived from the original on 2015-04-04.
  16. Micah Wright (June 30, 2016). "Talking Shop With Automotive Expert and Media Maven Jean Jennings". Linked In.
  17. Jean Jennings (February 29, 2016). "While You Weren't Paying Attention, Your Car Learned How to Drive". Linked In.
  18. Jean Jennings (February 27, 2014). "Taxi Driver Revisited". Jeanknowscars.com. Archived from the original on 2014-06-17.
  19. Kat Stoeffel (December 19, 2012). "Meet the Hat-Loving Woman Who Edits Automobile Magazine". New York. My first husband was a dispatcher and sent out one female cab driver who was murdered by a passenger on his way to a nearby town to try to murder his girlfriend.
  20. "David Davis Jr. Dies at 80". The New York Times, March 28, 2011, William Grimes.
  21. "History of Caden's Car Show". Mott Children's Hospital.
  22. Janet Miller (May 4, 2013). "Automobile Magazine President Jean Jennings confronts diabetes head-on". Anne Arbor News.
  23. "Vintage Review: 1985 Oldsmobile Calais Supreme – GM Deadly Sin #26 – Car And Driver Predicts Death". Curbside Classic. November 26, 2016.
  24. Grimes, William (March 28, 2011). "David Davis Jr. Dies at 80; Elevated Automotive Press". The New York Times. The New York Times Company.
  25. IMPA Ken Purdy Award Winners
  26. Jean Jennings. "It was the best of times. 25 years at Automobile Magazine". Ann Arbor Observer, May 2011.
  27. Smith, Steven Cole (27 March 2011). "Long-time Auto Journalist David E. Davis Jr. Dies". Autoweek. Crain Communications.
  28. Alex Taylor III (May 13, 2011). "Death of an iconoclastic journalist". Motorworld.
  29. Jean Jennings (March 6, 2014). "What I'm Driving". jeanknowscars.com. Archived from the original on 2014-03-11.
  30. "Jean Knows Cars Launches". Autowriters.com. October 28, 2012.
  31. Brandon Turkus (May 29, 2014). "Automobile closes Ann Arbor office, releases most of staff". PRWEB.com.
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