Genre Automotive journalism Name Jean Jennings | TV shows Motor City Masters | |
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Occupation Writer, Editor, Publisher | ||
Jean jennings bartik eniac pioneer
Jean Lindamood Jennings is editor of the automotive blog JeanKnowsCars.com and former president and editor of Automobile magazine. A former taxi driver and Chrysler test driver, Jennings edited the 1998 Road Trips, Head Trips, and Other Car-Crazed Writings. She is noted for her expressive millenary choices.
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Jennings has been writing about cars and the car business for more than thirty years, having learned about cars at the kitchen table from her father, who was editor of Automotive News. At age eighteen, she bought a used car, painted it yellow, installed a toplight and a meter, and joined the Yellow Cab Company in Ann Arbor, Michigan, as an owner/operator. Five years later, Jennings went to Chrysler’s test track, where she worked as a test driver, welder, and mechanic in the impact lab.
In 1980, she was hired as a writer at Car and Driver magazine, and in 1985 she left to help establish Automobile Magazine as its first executive editor. She became Editor-in-Chief in 2000 and President in 2006.
Jennings has won awards for her feature writing, her car reviews, and her monthly Automobile Magazine column “Vile Gossip,” including the 2007 Ken Purdy Award for Excellence in Automotive Journalism. In particular, she works to give women a voice in the male-dominated automotive space. She has stated that she started the website JeanKnowsCars.com to provide a perspective on buying, owning and enjoying cars for people who don’t read specialized auto-enthusiast publications, explaining, “I know the secret car-guy handshake, so you don’t need to.”
Jennings was the subject of a Susan Orlean profile in The New Yorker, appeared on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno," and was "Good Morning America’s" automotive correspondent from 1994 to 2000. Jennings is a regular on-air contributor to broadcast media, including 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.
Jennings lives in Michigan with her husband, Tim.