“You guys at Autoweek get to do all the fun stuff.” Shifting the teetering stack of boxes from one hip to the other, I instinctively responded, “Well, there are tradeoffs.” Thoughts long-festering swam into my head, of our skeleton crew of a staff, every member of which is required to wear three or four hats; of largely flying under the wider corporate radar, the system optimized for a trade-magazine culture—very inside baseball stuff, to be sure, but still, the kinds of things that invoke “feelings” and “opinions” in a workplace (air quotes preferably performed in the manner of Chris Farley) and that can put one instantly on the defensive.
But as my former colleague from Automotive News receded down the hall, I thought, no, he’s right, dammit: We do get to do all the fun stuff. While he’s chasing sources and gathering quotes and trying to scoop his competition on whatever the next cool tech coming out of the auto industry is—and leaning on a support staff of hundreds to help ferry his very newsy stories along (OK, maybe not hundreds), we’re flinging Ferraris and Fords around racetracks and down country roads the world over; talking racing with drivers both famous and workaday in pit boxes at Le Mans and LeMons; organizing and participating in grassroots motorsports events next to the gleaming sand dunes of Northern Michigan; and we’re doing it all because that’s what car people do. That’s what our people do.
Take our most recent extracurricular activity: creating the beautiful image on our January 14, 2019, cover. The hard numbers behind the build are detailed elsewhere; what’s not immediately clear is the emotional impact. Yes, it took every person on the Autoweek staff putting in hours of work to create that image. I can personally attest to the tedium that is sticking wads of adhesive on the bottom of car after car after car after car. Others could better describe the monotony of adhering said cars on the Velodrome surface, how quickly the feet and legs tire of climbing the plywood track, the full banking requiring a ladder to access. That scale may not be immediately evident; fanned out on a track designed for speedy fixed-gear bikes who fly around the 50-degree banking at speeds up to 35 mph, the cover image took most of the 10,000 cars Hot Wheels sent to us.
Individually boxed Hot Wheels cars. Each of which required unboxing.
But oh, the process and the product involved so much more than simply putting together the ingredients of a cool picture. The whole affair was truly bonding, a task we tackled together, as a staff, each of us a little, crazy cog in the achievement of a grander lunacy—after all, who needs Photoshop?
(Not to mention, if you’ve never given a full case of brand-new Hot Wheels to a car-crazy 5-year-old and gave him license to go to town, then you’ve never experienced pure, unfiltered joy.)
So as I embark on my 20th year with Autoweek, there are few places I can think of I’d rather spend my 9-to-5s.
Executive Editor NATALIE NEFF can be reached at natalie.neff@hearst.com
