2 posts tagged “l. j. k. setright”

This was a great find at Take Note in Lower Hutt today. Take Note is a post office and gift shop run by my friend Mandeep but I have never bought a book from there before. I was surprised to find it displayed prominently and being an automobiliac I paid the $40 for it.

   My cover differs slightly: the News Gothic-set headlines have been replaced by the same text in ITC Benguiat, while the lettering around the masthead is now Akzidenz-Grotesk. Inside, there are great Car articles from 1965 to 1974, covering the best of the first decade (I became a reader, thanks to Gary Hayvice, whose daughter was a classmate of mine, in 1981). I grew up with Llewellyn, Bishop, Setright and the rest; I remember Bulgin, and very briefly, wasn’t there a chap called James May? But some of the earlier talents appear in this compilation.
   Some articles are prescient—the warning that Honda could be a big player if it chose to build saloon cars, and the war for oil and how it might run out (from the first fuel crisis in the 1970s)—and others are less so, such as the warning that a Channel Tunnel would be a folly. Others are plain out of place in today’s politically correct world, namely the nude models that adorned cars at motor shows.
   There are even old advertisements, including one for women—flogging copies of Good Housekeeping. It was very sexist and the idea that cars were designed to pull birds was very much in evidence.
   It’s hardcover, so it should be a proud collection of 1960s’ and 1970s’ motoring journalism in my home.

Sad news for car nuts: automotive and technical writer Jeff Daniels has passed away, according to Keith Adams’ Austin Rover Online website. There’s a longer piece at Just-auto.com.
   There probably isn’t anyone of my generation who doesn’t recall the greats like L. J. K. Setright, Jeff Daniels, George Bishop, Phil Hill and Paul Frère.
   Jeff wrote a column called ‘Danspeak’ in Autocar for many years, and it is probably his style, more than anyone else’s, that informed me when I started my columns.
   I found him one of the more knowledgeable car writers out there and it is sad that much of this old style of journalism has given way to the Jeremy Clarksons of this world. Just as in television presenting, where the William Woollards gave way to the Jeremy Clarksons on Top Gear.
   While I love Clarkson’s style (since he could never get away with it without some actual research) and can be said to adopt elements myself, there is still room for the more technical, educated approach of Daniels et al.
   Jeff Daniels was 68 and continued working up to his death. He will be sorely missed.