The car magazine journalist who changed my life

P.J. O'Rourke remembered

While everyone else is talking about how they discovered P.J. O’Rourke in his old Harvard Lampoon days, through his political and travel pieces in Rolling Stone or via his books, I first came across his writing in Automobile magazine.

O’Rourke had a long history of writing in Car and Driver and then Automobile (which was founded by former C/D editor David E. Davis, Jr. and some other writers from that magazine’s glory days) despite knowing very little about how cars actually worked. Or maybe precisely because of that.

Some of his best and funniest articles were written for these publications, including his recounting of a trip through Mexico in a huge Lincoln Town Car with a beautiful Czech photographer. He was concerned that white gringos in a baroque luxury car might draw some unwanted attention, but instead the locals called the Lincoln “el car boss.” (I can’t remember the exact line, but he wrote something like, “this says a lot about the good nature of the Mexican people. I’m…