She learned to drive as a 14-year-old exchange student in Ecuador, at the wheel of a Toyota Land Cruiser in the Andes mountains.
She drove in a demolition derby. She rode in an off-road race with Walker Evans. She ran Brock Yates’s One Lap of America three times, first in the inaugural year with Walker Evans and Parnelli Jones (in a beer-delivery van), next with Canadian WRC driver Nicole Ouimet, and lastly with Hurley Haywood.
A long career as a writer and editor led to multiple awards, including the International Motor Press Association’s 2007 Ken Purdy Award to Jean Jennings for her June 2006 Automobile cover story entitled, “Veyron in the USA,” https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2007/04/international-automotive-media-awards.html
https://www.theautopian.com/jean-jennings-the-woman-who-made-autojournalism-fun-dead-at-70/
And was awarded the New England Motor Press Association’s 2016 Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Motor Press Guild’s 2016 Dean Batchelor Award for Lifetime Achievement.
Jean was the first woman to lead a major monthly national car magazine. After 29 years with the publication, she was promoted to editor-in-chief of Automobile in 2000. She added the title and duties of President in 2006. Under her leadership, Automobile was the first car magazine to win a National Magazine Award.
Jean’s column, Vile Gossip, was a consistent must-read.
She served as the automotive correspondent on ABC’s Good Morning America from 1994 to 2000, took the same role on the Oxygen network, and was an expert correspondent on numerous news and magazine shows.
5 years ago I told you all about her, https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2019/12/jean-jennings.html because I was so damned impressed
For a perfect example of how cool she was as a writer, https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2014/05/bernie-moreno-who-started-his-working.html
I only have known of 3 women writers in car magazines, Denise McCluggage, Jean Jennings, and Elana Scherr.
If you've ever read Lives by Hendrik Van Loon (my advice is read everything he ever wrote, he also did the illustrations) then you'll know the premise of the concept of the game show from the 60s, about inviting the most wonderful people to dinner, and conversing with 4 or 5 amazing people at the same night. (What's My Line, I've Got A Secret) Jean would sure as hell be on the list of people you'd want there.
Remember her, she made Automobile an unreadable waste of paper.
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