Our friend and legendary writer, editor, and storyteller Jean Jennings has passed away at the age of 70.
Trailblazing automotive writer and editor Jean Jennings died on December 16, 2024, in Jackson, Michigan, after a long and valiant struggle with Alzheimer’s Disease. She was 70. She is survived by her husband, Tim Jennings; her brothers Paul (Anita), Ted (Rosemarie), and Tom Lienert; niece Becky Lienert; and nephews Daniel and Phillip Lienert. She loved her dogs Jackie, Farley, and Ray the Stray, and they will mourn her loss. She will be deeply missed by her many friends, acquaintances, and readers and by a generation of writers inspired by her work and accomplishments.
Details for a memorial service and celebration of life will be announced soon.
Jean was the first woman to lead a major monthly national car magazine. After 29 years with the publication, she was promoted to editor-in-chief of Automobile in 2000. She added the title and duties of President in 2006. Under her leadership, Automobile was the first car magazine to win a National Magazine Award. Her long-running column, “Vile Gossip,” chronicled her adventures with race car drivers, auto industry executives, and celebrities and was a must-read for enthusiasts and general readers alike.
Jean was a towering figure with an even bigger personality and enhanced her presence with her signature hats. It was not unusual to see her at the racetrack wearing a custom French chapeau with shoulder-length feathers or at a global media event in a brightly colored felt hat that would be at home in the land of Dr. Seuss. She was a popular television guest, appearing on shows like The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Oprah, and others. She served as the automotive correspondent on ABC’s Good Morning America from 1994 to 2000, took the same role on the Oxygen network, and was an expert correspondent on numerous news and magazine shows. In 2014, she was a judge for the 10-episode Chevrolet-sponsored reality show Motor City Masters, highlighting car-based design challenges. She founded the website JeanKnowsCars in 2012, using her home base in Parma, Michigan, as the setting for her lively, insightful car reviews.
Automotive journalism ran in Jean’s family. Her late father, Robert M. Lienert, was the editor of Automotive News, and her brother Paul is a longtime Detroit auto writer—he eventually served as a columnist for Automobile alongside his sister. But like every aspect of her life, Jean blazed her own career path.
Jean was born on February 3, 1954, in Detroit. Her first dive into journalism was at Anchor Bay High School in New Baltimore, Michigan, where she edited an underground newspaper along with lifelong friend Kathleen Hamilton, who would eventually work as an editor at Automobile. Starting at 16, Jean studied at the University of Michigan for a year. She left school for other pursuits, which led to her owning and operating Yellow Cab in Ann Arbor. Soon, she joined the team at the Chrysler Proving Grounds in Chelsea, Michigan, working as a test driver, welder, and mechanic and editing the award-winning UAW newsletter. Her first official job as an auto journalist came at Car and Driver, and from there, she was off and running.
A long career as a writer and editor led to multiple awards, including the International Motor Press Association’s 2007 Ken Purdy Award to Jean Jennings for her June 2006 Automobile cover story entitled, “Veyron in the USA,” the New England Motor Press Association’s 2016 Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Motor Press Guild’s 2016 Dean Batchelor Award for Lifetime Achievement. She was inducted into the Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame in 2021. Susan Orlean wrote a profile of Jean for the New Yorker in 2001, an award in itself.
In a business that takes itself very seriously, Jean brought joy, laughter, and intelligent cynicism to her writing. As an editor, she nurtured talent in her writers and collaborators and was a fearless critic of falsehood and artifice. She did not suffer fools. She treasured her family and friends. Jean loved reading, cooking, and gardening—she was a master gardener who could identify plants by their Latin names. She was the best storyteller—and the best audience for a good story.
When asked about her proudest accomplishment, Jean spoke passionately about one of her projects: “I had a dream to put on a car show for Caden Bowles, a young patient at CS Mott Children’s Hospital in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Caden waited all summer for a heart transplant that never came, and he died on September 11 of his eleventh year. Aided by the staff at the hospital, by automotive journalists, by the greater car industry, by enthusiastic car owners, and by friends, we put on our fourth annual Caden’s Car Show starring the real Optimus Prime among 70-plus vintage and exotic cars in attendance. Hands down, my proudest achievement and still the best thing I do with my otherwise ridiculously privileged life.” You can read her article about Caden here.
In lieu of flowers, the family suggests memorial contributions be sent to the Arbor Day Foundation (https://www.arborday.org).
Remembrances of Jean
“The obituaries for Jean Jennings alternately trace her journalistic infancy to an award-winning union newsletter she founded at the Chrysler Proving Grounds in Chelsea, Michigan, or to the national stage at Car and Driver. But no. Before her crash-test days, before operating a taxi in Ann Arbor, there was the underground student newspaper at Anchor Bay High School, stealthily mimeographed at night on school machines and replete with naughty words and sentiments echoed from the Panthers (Black and White), Vietnam War protesters, and cries against The Administration.
Just how much copy Jean provided is lost now in my memory, but I can attest that Jean was one of the pair of roller derby babes who rolled across the hallways, plastering marketing slogans with tar atop the lockers (we were the Anchor Bay Tars, after all). Her mother, Audrey, ascended the heights next to the Virgin Mary when she vigorously defended her daughter against the vice principal’s claim that Jean had bit his hand while he tried to wrest copies from Jean’s grip. This early introduction to the rough-and-tumble media world no doubt set the stage for her eventual ascent to publisher of Automobile Magazine and the website Jean Knows Cars.”—Kathleen Hamilton
“I landed at Automobile in 1990 as a wide-eyed kid from rural Michigan and you can imagine what it was like to be in the midst of the place run by David E. Davis Jr., and Jean Lindamood. David E. holding court in our little kitchen, as only he could; Jean unfolding maps on our conference room table, planning her next adventure drive; manuscripts from P.J. O’Rourke and Phil Llewellin rolling off of the fax machine. I couldn’t believe my good luck. I was an editorial assistant, lowest of the low, but the first weekend I was there, Jean invited me to her house for a Super Bowl party. I brought a particularly good batch of my homemade guacamole, which was a hit, and I was part of the club. Before long, I was answering Jean’s mail, specializing in composing appropriate replies to her fans, many of whom happened to be prison inmates. Inmates are incredibly perverted.
Years later, I was copy chief, and I had the particularly plum assignment of attending the Geneva Motor Show. Jean and I were on the same flights, and on the KLM plane from Amsterdam to Geneva, we were seated across the aisle from each other. I will never forget when Jean shifted in her seat, turned to me, and told me that I had a natural writer’s voice, and she intended to make me a staff writer. I felt like I had been anointed by the queen. Which I had.
I worked for Jean for twenty-four and a half years and I owe my entire career to her generosity and guidance.”—Joe DeMatio
“I wouldn’t be in this business or know even half of what I do about it without Jean. I first met her in college, when I was working at a local shoe store just around the corner from the Automobile office in downtown Ann Arbor; Jean absolutely loved shoes and would pop in about once a month for a few new pairs. I subscribed to the magazine and of course recognized her right away. She’d tell the wildest and funniest stories I’d ever heard, chat about the publishing industry, and intently listen to whatever nonsense I had to say about the latest issue of Automobile, or the car industry at large. I just had to do what she did for a living. When I went to interview for a job at the magazine a couple years later, she barreled in with a couple of her beloved dogs in tow to see how it was going, and to say hello. I got the job. From slinging shoes her way and then working for her at Automobile to seeking her sage advice later in my career, Jean had a huge influence on the professional and person I am today. She was one of a kind, and she’s already sorely missed.”—Erik Johnson
“I remember reading “Vile Gossip” in Automobile as a schoolboy. In addition to the breezy, always hilarious prose, there was always a shot of Jean, mouth agape, in some wild leering smile, indicating she was having the time of her life. Years later, we’d become colleagues—me a senior editor on Motor Trend and her the EIC at Automobile. On a Mazdaspeed 3 trip to Germany, where the goal was to find the hot hatch’s 155-mph Vmax on the autobahn, I was with driving with Jean and did the unthinkable: passed a slower moving car that was in fast lane (passing on the right, mein gott). She annihilated me at dinner that evening, and would tsk-tsk me almost every time we crossed paths afterward, although the follow-ups were with a huge hug and a smile.”—Ed Loh
“Jean was one of the absolute giants of our industry, a trailblazer, an unstoppable force, a huge influence. You can go on and on. I had the honor of working with her and had an immense amount of respect for her and what she had accomplished. And as the successor to her as the editor-in-chief of Automobile, I felt it was my duty to carry on the incredible legacy she helped to forge there. She was an inspiration to so many automotive journalists both male and female alike, and her storied career and incredible life will continue to live on through the countless people she touched.”—Mike Floyd
“I hadn’t seen Jean for a few years, last meeting her and husband Tim at the Amelia Island Concours. And then she disappeared from view and I heard that she had Alzheimer’s and I was really too scared to see her that way, because the Jean I knew was a force of nature.
I first met her in the 1980s, at the launch of the Cadillac Allanté. Jean was there, asking Cadillac general manager John O. Grettenberger some softball question while the Goodyear blimp circled above. It was all a little surreal. I recall Jean was wearing a bandana and looked a bit of a hippy, and that she was front and center at the event.
We occasionally crossed paths in the intervening years, and I called her up in 1995 when I was looking to move my freelance agency business to the U.S. because I was running out of fancy old cars to review in the U.K. for one of my bigger clients. I asked where the best place to relocate would be—and she basically said, “Do you want a job?” That is literally how I ended up at Automobile Magazine and spent 10 years working for Jean (as well as David E. Davis Jr.). Legends, both.
As well as being a pioneer for women in this industry, Jean had a heart of gold, was a terrific writer and TV presenter, and was a lot of fun to be around—unless you pissed her off, when she could get very grumpy. I’ll never forget her going off at me and the late Phil Llewellin on a drive of forbidden fruit in England, because we had gone haring off across the Yorkshire countryside and left the American editors behind. We tempered our enthusiasm the next day …
She really was a people person and while her memory for the finer points of vehicle specs could get hazy, her ability to recall people’s partners and kids and what they were all doing was quite remarkable. I always thought she’d have made a great PR person because of her ability to tell a story and to be genuinely interested in most of the people she met.
I owe her a lot.”—Mark Gillies
“I never worked directly with or for Jean, but she did get me to buy a very expensive hat many years ago. Like many others I grew up reading Jean’s columns and, later, after landing a job at Car and Driver, I heard stories of her antics when she worked at the same magazine before her Automobile days. Her hat enthusiasm was also widely known.
So, it was like meeting a celebrity when I was sent on a Monterey Car Week press trip with Mazda that Jean also attended. Hoping to impress my plus-one, I asked Jean if she knew any place nearby where I could buy one of those casual-seeming but fancy-lookin’ straw hats the idle rich seem to wear in beachy environs. Jean immediately replied that she had a favorite haberdashery nearby. Of course, Jean probably has a nationwide network of hat stores she frequents! I went and picked out a hat, had it fitted, the whole deal—and so did my date—but at no point were prices ever discussed. When they were, just as I was handing over my credit card, I realized how badly I miscalculated (or failed to consider) how much a simple straw hat from Jean Jennings’ go-to spot in Monterey, California, might cost. To avoid looking like a total schmuck, I paid for two ridiculously expensive hats like I had meant to all along; my coworkers also at Pebble Beach that weekend set about making fun of me nearly instantly and I’ve found virtually no use for the thing since—except years later on my honeymoon in Cabo.”—Alexander Stoklosa
“I knew I had made it in this industry when I pulled up to the hotel at the L.A. Auto Show, and Jean walked up to my car, stuck her head in the passengers window, pointed at a full water bottle, and asked, “Hey! Are you gonna drink that? Thanks.” I figured, if Jean Jennings knows me well enough to filch my water, I must be a someone in this business.”—Aaron Gold
“On the occasion I did cross paths with Jean, usually at an auto show or on a press trip, she was always kind, friendly, and welcoming. She knew who I was, knew where I worked and on what team, and always treated me like I belonged there. Even though I was just some junior writer from a different title at the company and based 2,000 miles away.”—Scott Evans
