Jean Jennings obit

Jean Jennings Has Died; Former Car and Driver Editor Was a Pioneering Auto Journalist

The legendary Jean (Lindamood) Jennings was part of what made the '80s unforgettable at Car and Driver, and she leaves behind legions of fans. 

She was not on the list.

Jean Marie Jennings, a former Car and Driver editor and a pioneering woman in automotive journalism, died on December 16, at age 70, after living with Alzheimer's disease.

Jennings was an editor at Car and Driver from 1980 to 1985, when her name was Jean Lindamood. In 1985 she left with editor-publisher David E. Davis Jr. and several other C/D staffers to found Automobile Magazine. There, she was executive editor, rising to become editor-in-chief in 2000. She remained with Automobile until 2014 and started a sister website called Jean Knows Cars, which she published until 2016.

Jean grew up in tiny New Baltimore, Michigan, the only girl in a family of six children. She learned to drive as a 14-year-old exchange student in Ecuador, at the wheel of a Toyota Land Cruiser in the Andes mountains. After graduating early from high school, she attended the University of Michigan but dropped out after a year. Jean then drove a cab (learning to wrench on it herself) before landing a job at Chrysler Proving Grounds, where she was a mechanic and did crash testing. Laid off in 1980, she applied for a job at Car and Driver at the urging of her brother, automotive journalist Paul Lienert (her father, Bob Lienert, was the editor of Automotive News). Her most significant writing at the time consisted of a local union newsletter she'd started (which won awards). As she later put it, "I was distinctly unqualified. I knew nothing about car magazines."

"I knew nothing about David E. Davis Jr. or that he did not like to be called Dave, which I called him the minute I met him." But Jean soon got him laughing telling some story, and as she put it, "He hired me to piss off the boys there."

Jean made her Car and Driver debut in the January 1981 issue and soon became a reader favorite. "We had a lot of great writers on board," recalled Davis years later, in a 2001 profile of Jean in The New Yorker. "But Jean just changed the nature of the readers' response to the magazine."

Aside from writing talent, though, Jean was special because of her madcap style and taste for adventure. She drove in a demolition derby. She rode in an off-road race with Walker Evans. She ran Brock Yates's One Lap of America three times, first in the inaugural year with Walker Evans and Parnelli Jones (in a beer-delivery van), next with Canadian WRC driver Nicole Ouimet, and lastly with Hurley Haywood.

Her magnetic personality attracted industry leaders—a trio of mammoth Rolodexes was a fixture of her office—and strangers alike. In the famously star-crossed Car and Driver road test "Greetings from Sunny Mexico," author Brock Yates described how Jean repeatedly extricated her C/D compatriots from scrapes with the federales. First, when Yates was arrested for public urination, Jennings, the only Spanish speaker in the group, denounces him as a pig, and the cops let him off with a 10-dollar fine. Later, after a police ambush in La Paz, Yates wrote, "Lindamood is brilliant as she aborts impending arrest by demonstrating the Datsun's idiotic synthesized voice to the awe-struck lawmen." Still later, Jean and technical editor Don Sherman are carted off with a federale for failing to report the Dodge's collision with a cow. But somehow, Jean ends up driving the patrol car and manicuring the cop's girlfriend's nails, and the incident nets a $50 fine.

Jean spent the bulk of her career at Automobile Magazine. Under Jean's leadership, Automobile Magazine columnist (and now C/D contributor) Jamie Kitman won a National Magazine Award. Jean herself won the Ken Purdy Award for excellence in automotive writing from the International Motor Press Association in 2007 as well as numerous other awards. She appeared as a guest on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, she got Jerry Seinfeld to write for Automobile, and she served as an automotive correspondent for Good Morning America, among many other television appearances.

In 2021, Jean was inducted into the Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame. In a letter supporting her nomination, Hearst Autos chief brand and content officer Eddie Alterman wrote: "The best automotive journalism is participatory and immersive, entertaining and thought-provoking. Few have ever done it better than Jean Jennings, and almost no one has done more to make the discipline more inclusive and more relatable."

It's hard to understate the impact a high-powered, high-visibility personality like Jennings had on women who aspired to be in what was an almost exclusively male industry.

Autoweek editor Natalie Neff recalls: "She's always been an incredible inspiration. It's hard to explain exactly what she meant to those of us who came after her. Even just knowing there was a woman of her rank at another car pub was always so . . . energizing. Validating. When I started in 1995, there were so few of us in the biz, but there was Jean, near the top of a masthead of a Very Important Magazine. Every female automotive journalist was and should have been proud of her. I always enjoyed crossing paths with her and having a chat. But maybe most of all, I appreciated when she appreciated my hat or shoes. It meant I was doing something right."

Car and Driver senior editor Elana Scherr adds: "When I first considered writing about cars as a career, wait, consider is too strong a word. When it first even came to my awareness that this was something people did and got paid for, there were two women in mainstream automotive journalism, Denise McCluggage and Jean Jennings. Between them they gave me hope there might be room for one more. And look where we are now! There are women hosting car shows, writing reviews, and racing in high-level motorsports.

"It's important to me to mention that she wasn't an inspiration simply by being female. Jean was a good writer. She was brave, she was funny, she had imagination and ambition. She wasn't afraid of fast cars or wild people. It's what gives her stories so much energy. She was excited to be there, doing things, and she made it seem possible for me, and many other writers, both men and women, to pursue a career in having adventures."

She was the automotive correspondent for Good Morning America (1994–2000) and the Oxygen network. She was later the Chairman, CEO and host of the self-branded automotive website and blog, Jean Knows Cars (2012–2016), has written articles for LinkedIn, and edited the book Road Trips, Head Trips, and Other Car-Crazed Writings. She continued to write the Vile Gossip column intermittently for Autoblog.com.

Jean leaves behind her husband, Tim Jennings; brothers Paul (Anita) Lienert, Ted (Rosemarie) Lienert and Tom Lienert; niece Becky Lienert; and nephews Daniel Lienert and Philip Lienert, along with legions of friends and fans.

A memorial service will be held at a date to be announced.