Premier’s blog writer has been writing about cars for four decades.
In summer 2015, I received an email from Premier Financial Services asking if I was available to write car profiles for the company’s blog. There was not much detail in the note, but a look at the PFS website intrigued me. And here I am in 2025, having written about 400 features for this beautifully designed blog since that call.
To quote lyrics from “Once in A Lifetime,” a favorite Talking Heads song, “Well, how did I get here?” and “Where does that highway go to?”
Here’s the story.
One Thing Leads to Another
I had never heard of Premier Financial Services before that email, but a company that leased high-end and classic cars sounded compelling to me. I called and was soon speaking to the marketing director, Alexis Chacchia. She explained that company founder and CEO Mitch Katz had seen the features I’d written for the Greenwich Concours d’Elegance official program. He suggested my style would match his vision for an improved company blog.
Greenwich Concours founder Bruce Wennerstrom had seen my byline elsewhere and asked me to write for his event. The following year, in addition to writing for the Concours, I also served as a judge.
PFS wanted me to provide client-focused perspective on a wide range of modern and classic high-end cars. The entirety of my experience in automotive writing and public relations/marketing communications had prepared me for that task, though the seeds had been planted decades before.
Fireball Jim
I loved cars when I was a kid, all cars. All my toys were cars. When I was about six or seven, I could identify nearly every current American car and most imports. I won some quarter bets naming cars not just correctly but also their model years, too. (And I taught skeptical friends how to verify by looking for model years embossed in cars’ taillights.)
When I saw a car I liked — and I liked a lot of cars at that age — I always had to get an up-close look examine the details. At the 1968 New York Auto Show, I snuck away from my father to get a better look at a Rolls-Royce — from underneath it. I looked inside every parked muscle car to see if it had an automatic or a stick. Some owners chased me away. In third grade, I had a subscription to Motor Trend.
Finding A Career with Cars
By high school, a penchant for creative writing had emerged, and for college, I decided to pursue advertising and public relations as a path into the auto industry. The school was Glassboro State College in southern New Jersey, a fact I mention mainly because the dean of the business school there was Leo Beebe. (The school became Rowan University in the 1990s.)
In my senior year, I had a nice talk with Mr. Beebe one afternoon in his office. Learning my interest in the auto industry, he asked if I was familiar with Ford’s GT40 race program for the 1966 24 Hours of Le Mans. He was impressed that I knew so much about Ford’s “Total Performance” era and its ties with Carrol Shelby. Then he very modestly mentioned he’d been head of the Le Mans program.
He showed me the “motivational” card that Henry Ford II had given to top people on the race program 20 years prior. Mr. Ford’s simple handwritten note stated: “You better win.” I was blown away. I thought, oh man, why couldn’t this guy have been one of my professors? (Beebe’s portrayal in the movie “Ford v. Ferrari” seemed unfairly negative. He was a very nice man, very well-liked and respected by students and faculty alike).
It was an enlightening talk, but I did not heed Mr. Beebe’s advice to augment my communications degree with a business degree. I knew that was not for me.
A Dream Job, Deferred
Right after graduation, I brazenly applied for a product public relations role that Mercedes-Benz North America had posted in The New York Times job classifieds. The company was looking for someone with 7+ years of experience, so, unsurprisingly, I did not get a call.
Not long afterward, a college friend connected me with a lead that got me an interview with a publisher of niche car magazines in northern New Jersey. At age 23, I became managing editor for Vette, MuscleCars, and a few other titles. It was a lot of fun. Somebody was paying me to write about cars! As much as I enjoyed that job, I eventually sensed the need to steer myself toward the auto business realm. I became editor for business newsletters for auto retailers and leasing companies for a few years, and the company also put me in charge of its newsletter for car collectors/investors.
The publisher sold the whole operation three years later, coincidentally just when a New Jersey public relations firm was looking for someone to manage its BMW of North America account. (Fun fact: the BMW and Mercedes headquarters were on opposite sides of the Garden State Parkway, less than a mile apart. I was getting closer.)
A Dream Job at Last
Perhaps not coincidentally, three years later, Mercedes was again looking to fill the job I tried to get 10 years before. It was my time. I was soon writing press kits and speeches, arranging photo shoots, talking to journalists from all over the country, helping edit the brand’s customer magazine, and much more. Somebody was paying me to write and talk about Mercedes-Benz. What wasn’t to like?
I loved that job, but after about four years, and with encouragement from my wife, I walked away from it. I realized that, despite studying PR in college and reaching that line of work for automotive, I found I only enjoyed the writing part, not the press junkets, events, and other aspects. Leaving Mercedes was the toughest career decision I’d ever made.
On My Own Road
I started my own my PR/marketing communications business, which I called Audamotive Communications after my wife, Christine Auda (pronounced “awe-dah”). Within two months, I’d lined up my first two clients, Porsche and Subaru. Others soon followed, and through the years I have produced all kinds of business and consumer writing for about a dozen luxury, performance, and niche auto brands, including my former employer, Mercedes. Working with Ferrari for a few years also seemed like a big catch.
I still do PR and “marcom” writing, but I also steered back to where it all began: feature writing. I write or have written for The New York Times, Hagerty Media, Hemmings, Performance Racing Industry Magazine, the BBC Autos page, History.com, Porsche Panorama, CapitalOne Auto Navigator, plus the Greenwich, Amelia Island, and Cincinnati Concours d’ Elegance official programs.
I have covered about as broad a spectrum of automotive topics as you could name, including business, culture, collecting, design, history, racing, people profiles, auctions, and technology. New, classic, future, internal combustion, EV, hybrid – I’ve covered them all.
And that, readers, is how I got here. That is where the highway has taken me. Thank you for coming along.
