How We Know What We Know

It might embarrass Richard Feast if I told you that his riotous wife, Cynthia, calls him "Thingie"-or maybe it wouldn't embarrass him at all. He's married to her, after all. Perhaps my concern is rooted in our very first meeting, at the 1981 Geneva auto show, when the children (and dogs) in Europe dressed better than I did, and my father's European editor, Richard Feast, introduced himself-three-piece tweed suit, round wire-rimmed spectacles, and all-to me. I knew who he was because three of my fellow mechanics at the Chrysler Proving Grounds and I had pooled our money for a one-year subscription to Automotive News to find out what the Detroit papers (and the UAW) weren't telling us about our sinking Chrysler ship. Feast's byline stood out because he had all the inside dirt and he could really tell a tale. Being a fledgling automotive journalist with a mere six months on the job made me humble in his luminous presence.

But the clothes I was wearing when I met him . . . yikes. I thought you should dress in supreme comfort to spend all day at an auto show. Feeling like the nobody I knew I was, I had no clue that wearing my worn-out Bass Weejuns, a pair of Levi's, and some old shirt would be noticed by anyone. It wasn't. Except for the European editor of Automotive News in his wingtips, who would be reporting this meeting shortly to my father.

He never told.

Thingie and I have been friends ever since, and that would be twenty-four years now, give or take a month. He preceded me into the world of the motoring press by ten years, with career highlights that include being editor-in-chief of Autosport and What Car? and a move to Automotive News in Detroit, where he eventually became editor of AutoWeek until he "fell out" with its chief Leon Mandel, "as so many people did."

Feast returned to Europe as a freelancer, from whence his erudite take on the global car business can be found in the BBC's Top Gear, in Automotive News Europe, in the New York Times, and in Automobile Magazine. Feast has penned our report on the chaotic state of the auto industry ("Car Wars," page 74), a subject he finds "absolutely, endlessly fascinating." As we trust you will find his account. You might also like to read his award-winning 2003 book, Kidnap of the Flying Lady, about who did what to whom during the BMW and Volkswagen purchase of Rolls-Royce and Bentley. "A bloody good book, if I do say so myself," he does say. Himself.

Contributing to the bigger picture, our man on the Street, Joe Phillippi, is known far and wide as one of the tiny handful of auto analysts (among about two dozen in the United States) who actually likes cars. He began a long string of number-crunching jobs in the brokerage business right out of college in 1966, quickly moving into the role of senior analyst in the auto-and-parts sector, finally leaving the firm of Lehman Brothers in 2001 and starting his own AutoTrends Consulting. He has a Mazda Miata ("promised to my eight-year-old granddaughter"), an Audi A4 Avant, and a Jeep Grand Cherokee, but the best car he ever owned (other than the Triumph TR3 he bought for $800, sold for $850, and wishes he had back) was a '65 Corvair Turbo Spider to which he added a two-barrel truck carb, a finned oil pan, and John Fitch-style stainless-steel antiroll bars, fabricated by his father. "I sold it to a kid who wrecked it in a week." He still mourns.

And then there is the Uncle, Georg Kacher, the most important, most influential automotive journalist in the world, landing more scoop drives than any of his so-called peers. You get him thrice in this issue-once landing his usual first drive of the new Porsche Cayman, once in an exclusive (and overwrought) drive of the 691-hp Maybach Exelero coupe, and again in an equally deft spin on industry affairs.