HOW TO BE AN AUTOMOTIVE JOURNALIST
STORY & PHOTOGRAPHY | VIJAY SANKAR ANIL
Arriving at Jason Cammisa’s garage in Northern California, I was greeted by the protagonist carefully tending to his laundry list of outstanding maintenance items for his beloved cars. It was fitting that the garage decor reflected his humorous on-screen persona, brimming with light-hearted paraphernalia, over-the-top lighting, and even a giant disco ball hanging from the ceiling. He often refers to his collection of cars as his children, and rightfully so given his obsessive care and the devoted relationship he’s built with each of them.
From his collection of cheerful sheet metal, we picked out the striking blue E30 Touring to spot light for this story. In a jiffy, we were blasting down the twisty road that is a staple of the Hagerty Revelations series produced by Jason, while casually exchanging thoughts on how to carve out a career in the automotive journalism space.
The witty and eccentric character you see on Hagerty’s award-winning media is the same one you encounter in person — he is a guy who rubs shoulders with Andreas Preuninger of the Porsche GT division, but also eagerly hangs out with you in an arbitrary parking lot chatting cheap-as-chips Kei cars, while learning from you as much as imparting knowledge. In 20 years of creating his own space in the automotive media world, Jason has amassed Webby, Telly, IMFA, and IAMA awards, and is the among the most respected voices in the industry.
He never takes himself self too seriously, as evident in his trademarked T-shirt quote (*Professional idiot on a closed course), but at the same time maintains the utmost level of journalistic integrity in his work.
Jason, the world knows you as an automotive journalist through various outlets over the years. But how would you describe yourself to the Avants magazine audience?
As an automotive journalist, first and foremost. But this field has changed a lot in the last 15 years or so. On my LinkedIn profile, it says, tongue-in cheek, “Never an influencer, more than just a journalist: I am a highly influential automotive journalist.” I think that’s most accurate descriptor.
Firstly, how did you get interested in cars? And who and what were your influences?
I was into cars and fascinated by all things me chanical before I could even talk, so I’m told. It was really cemented while I was away at Sleepaway Camp during the summer of 1987. I managed to read every car magazine I could get my hands on — Car and Driver, Road & Track, Automobile, and Motor Trend (which I quickly dismissed because of all the typos). When I came back home, one of my friends had done the same, and we bonded over that — cars gave us both a place to fit in. I was very nerdy and very unpopular, and my interest in cars made me part of a community. I’ve made a lot of friends because of that shared interest.
I did three years of undergrad in Mechanical Engineering, but if I’m honest, I couldn’t stand being around engineers. I’m not quite nerdy enough, and besides, I wasn’t that strong in math. I switched majors, in my senior year, to Psychology. I knew my parents were going to kill me, so I declared a second major — a self-designed program that combined International Business and German. I later went back and got my Masters in Law, which is the best preparation you could ever do for writing. Lawyers are the best writers in the business.
In your time working with car companies and media outlets, and testing over 3,000 cars, what have been your favorite things about being an automotive journalist? And what are the least favorite?
I think the idea that you can take a bunch of raw materials and turn it into something that has a personality is nothing short of a miracle — and my favorite thing is talking to the people who create these miracles. To have access to the people who are responsible for that, all of whom are orders of magnitude smarter than I am, is with out question the best part.
My least favorite part is that right now, there are so few interesting new cars on the market. Having been doing this for close to 20 years, I’m always questioning whether it’s the industry that’s changed for the worse, or if I’m just getting old and jaded. I think the answer is probably somewhere in the middle, though when I ask 20-somethings who do this for a living they all seem to agree that most modern cars suck. What’s really missing is that sense of optimism that the next the next car is going to be even better. So yeah, I may be getting older but the industry is changing, perhaps not in the right direction.
Is there ever a conflict between Jason, the enthusiast, and Jason, the journalist? How do you resolve it and become objective, while also being in the good books of manufacturers?
There’s a constant dissonance between Jason the person and Jason the journalist. It doesn’t matter whether I like a car or not, and that’s a really difficult thing to wrap your head around. It was beaten out of me at Automobile magazine by really strong editors who had no problem coming back to me and saying, “You egotistical little [redacted], this is not about you. Nobody cares whether you like it. You’re here to answer the question of whether the car fulfills its intended purpose.
And so it happens all the time that I give positive reviews to cars that I hate — and the other way around. The video I did on the Tesla Cybertruck is the best example of that, because I got panned left and right all through the industry for it being too positive. I created a journalistic piece spot lighting the engineering behind the car; all of which I genuinely think is amazing. But I don’t like the thing. I don’t particularly like the people who buy them, and I certainly don’t like that the truck seems to make a political statement. There’s a lot of stuff I don’t like: but none of that matters.
I have to look at it as a consumer product and acknowledge that Tesla did a lot of things that are consumer-focused. The engineering targets reflected those things, and Tesla did it well. Mostly. (I did actually get cut by one of its sharp edges.) But it’s not my place to say I think it’s ugly. Or, in the middle of a review, that I’d personally buy a Rivian. It’s not relevant.
How I stay in the good graces of the car companies? I don’t. I do often get myself into trouble, but the Golden Rule is “no cheap shots.” If I’m really hard on something, I have to back the criticism up with objective observations and quantifiable data.
Ironically, many my harshest reviews have gotten me phone calls from the people who work at those companies, thanking me. Often, they agree with the criticism — it’s based on things they’ve lost internal battles over and they’ll take the time to explain why the flaws made it through to production.
Your work always comes across as highly researched. What are your goals when presenting a story to your audience?
I’m neurotic. When we were kids in school, there was no scarier phrase than “this is going on your permanent record.” This was a made-up thing, but I am painfully aware that everything on YouTube is on my actual permanent record. Every mistake is a forever mistake and I feel the pressure of that with everything I do. Of course I make mistakes all the time, but luckily I have others around me, including and especially Anthony Esposito, my right-hand man, to help fix them before you all see the final product. Anyone can make a YouTube channel, so everyone has the same megaphone. My intention is not to scream louder, but to stand out by doing my job well, whether that’s the quality of the production, or the quality of the research and writing.
Would you say auto journalism is an exact science, or is it largely subjective?
I think it needs to be both. There’s the science of understanding how things work. I don’t think you could ever be a food critic without being a chef. Without understanding what it goes into making a delicacy, you can’t really appreciate what it took to get there. Then there’s the art — the entertainment side. I want to make the audience smile, laugh, and learn some thing along the way.
You do have to be a little bit subjective and say things like “this is not what I think this buyer wants,” or “this is not what I think this car brand needs.” But again, you have to back that up with facts. For example, BMW still says Ultimate Driving Machine on the window sticker, so I’m going to hold its cars to that standard. But if the company’s CEO comes out and says, “We don’t care about driving anymore, we are no longer a car company, but a mobility provider.” I’ll have to judge the cars by a different standard. But I can certainly go back and subjectively say the company is making a big mistake in doing so, because its customers expect otherwise.
On the topic of cars and road trips, what are your top three experiences so far?
The number one experience was shipping my Scirocco to Germany for our 15th anniversary. I realized that I had built all these increasingly powerful engines for it, but never got to max it out to its top speed. So, I shipped it to Germany. Just getting to drive your car on a foreign continent is completely wild. Even after 15 years of driving the car, the first thing I did was almost hit a curb trying to make a U-turn. I was suddenly on a different planet where everything is smaller. My very familiar car somehow felt completely… foreign.
Number two was driving that same car across the country, right after I left Motor Trend. It was a very difficult decision to quit that job, and I needed to clear my head, so I picked up and drove from California to Ohio to meet some friends at a Scirocco Cruise-In. I avoided all Interstates — it was just back roads, me, good seats, good stereo, and a great car. Five great days of bonding with the car — with lingering anxiety because I had just built the engine. It had less than 20 miles on it before I left and I knew it could blow up at any moment. Somehow, it didn’t.
The third one was a wild feature for Automobile Magazine in 2007–a drive from New York to New Orleans in a car that we had to buy for 300 bucks. We stupidly bought an ‘83 Cadillac stretch limo which should not have been legal to drive above parking lot speeds. But we did it. We broke down something like 42 times the first day. It left continu ally on the side of the road but it wound up being an unforgettable experience.
What’s with you and silly old Volkswagens? Do you have allegiances to brands or specific types of cars you want to own? And what purpose do the cars in your collection serve?
Ugh, I just spent a couple of days driving an early Volkswagen Beetle, and now I want one. But I will not have 40% of my collection be one make; I just can’t do that. It’s annoying to me that there is this air-cooled Beetle, which has not one part or philosophy in common with my two water-cooled Mk1 Volkswagens, which in turn have absolutely nothing in common with my electric Mk7 VW — and yet I love them all. This company keeps making things that speak to me, and that’s kind of irritating. I wish it wasn’t the case.
I’m always looking for an experience. I like cars that are vastly different from one an other in terms of how they drive, but almost always the engine is the centerpiece. What these cars do is allow me to put on a different outfit each day, and they also serve as palate cleansers for modern cars. For example, my Lotus Elise was the ultimate palate cleanser because in terms of its steering and chassis, it has no equal.
I can separate my journalist peers into those who spend time with old cars routinely and those who don’t. Their perspectives on modern stuff are vastly different. There is no better tool to teach you around a car than, like, a carbureted car that won’t accept full throttle and doesn’t want to start or run when it’s cold. Work around a flawed product, and the aggregate of all those experiences not only makes you a better driver, but also helps you recognize all the engineering problems modern cars have overcome.
How has the landscape of your profession changed since you started 20 years ago, how did you adapt and what were the challenges?
It has changed tremendously, and the biggest thing that is missing is a hierarchical structure of editors. When you work at a magazine — or any type of publication where there are people who have been on staff for decades — there’s an institutional knowledge base. They’ll beat your opinions out of you, and will beat you into understanding how to tell a story and how to review a car.
Sure, the medium has changed dramatically — for example, on video I no longer have to verbally describe an engine’s sound — I’ll just let you hear it, which is so easy and freeing. But the real difference is that most outlets are missing the institutional knowledge and the editors to guide the narrative. In today’s mainstream media, you have a lot of empty words being thrown around. They’re not necessarily wrong, but they’re also not telling you anything insightful.
What is your car buying advice to enthusiasts who are looking to not break the bank?
My advice is always the same, buy what you love. Buy what makes you happy. Because at the end of the day, if you lose money on a car, but it managed put a smile on your face, then you’ve won. Don’t chase the money, chase the smiles. Bonus points if it’s financially stable.
On that note, fun cars and cars in general are increasingly unaffordable to young enthusiasts entering the hobby. What do they do to cope with that?
I think life is increasingly unaffordable, more so than just cars. But I think you have to look a little bit deeper. When people say fun cars are less affordable? Yes, things like Porsche 911s are less affordable. But there are screaming-deal fun cars — BRZ is a perfect example; Miatas are still incredibly affordable; E36 3-series are among the most fun you can have in a sedan shape, and they’re dirt cheap. In all seriousness, $12,000 buys you the world’s best driving Ferrari sedan ever made, a beautiful condition Maserati Quattroporte V.
Finally, what is your advice to aspiring automotive journalists?
Don’t. That’s just creating more competition for me [laughs]. No, my advice is to learn and drive everything you can. You can spend your 10 years or 10,000 hours, but if you spend that all on one small thing, you’re not going to learn nearly as much as you will if you branch out and experience as many different things as you possibly can. And to be a journalist, I think you need to have an engineering background — whether that’s just self-taught understanding of how these things work, or a mechanical background by working on them.
You need to be a driver, and I think it’s important to go to a ton of HPDEs, track schools, winter driving schools, car control clinics, autocrosses, everything you can to learn your craft, and then go find people around you who are psychopaths about good driving and learn from them.
Working on cars is an essential part of being an automotive journalist. It teaches you things that you can’t possibly understand otherwise, and so if you’re not working on cars, and you don’t interact with old cars, then you’re not a journalist — I’m sorry.
Finally, go and learn storytelling. Learn how to entertain people within the confines of teaching them and reviewing a product. Give me a story with a beginning, middle, and an end
