Monday, December 02, 2019

Jean Jennings

started out adulthood by dropping out of UofM in order to avoid flunking out, then drove a taxi.

Learned how to weld, became a test driver for Chrysler in a govt women's job quota creation program, won awards for her writing of the union newletter, got hired to piss off the all male writing team at Car and Driver.

Shifted with David E Davis to start up Automobile magazine as exec editor, then editor in chief, then president of Automobile magazine. 29 years running.

Then in or about 2012 Jean went to try her hand at JeanKnowsCars.com and it doesn't exist on the internet anymore.

She wrote great articles, and better op eds.  I miss reading her columns, she was the only one that pointed out that women don't get far in the car world... in her Nov 2012 back page of Automobile magazine, she stated that women only own 2.8 percent of the 18,000 car dealerships.

Well, yeah. Women just don't open car dealerships, and never have. I'd guess that at least half of the dealerships that women own, were inherited or married into. I bet no one who ever reads this will have ever known a woman that decided to open a car dealership. Or a motorcycle dealership. Unless you work at a car dealership, I bet you don't know a woman that has ever sold cars for a living. (the one you met while buying a car doesn't count - I'm referring to personal experience of your friends, classmates, relatives, etc)

Jean also pointed out that every chief designer and every head of every car company in the world is male. Since she said that in 2012, GM hired Mary Barra...

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jean-jennings-85206110

1 comment:

  1. I always enjoyed reading Jean's columns in Automobile, along with David E. Davis, Leon Mandel, Brock Yates and John Phillips in their magazines. Maybe because most of them aren't necessarily journalists, they have a different writing style than some of the other magazine columnists.

    Somewhere I have a book of car stories that Jennings edited. I should find it and re-read it sometime.

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