Alterman’s
Wheelhouse
E
ddie Alterman is about as
sentimental as an accoun-
tant. So when he waxes
about the days when cars
were more than armored
“appliances” that safely
transport us from home to work and
back, he is calculating a challenge: how
to make safe sexy for a new generation of
auto enthusiasts.
As the latest editor of Car and Driver
— a magazine with a readership of 1.3
million — Alterman doesn’t need to save
a dying brand. As he sees it, his job is to
keep the content fresh and relevant and
to introduce a new generation to the joys
of the open road.
This 39-year-old Franklin resident,
who arguably heads the most influential
consumer magazine in its genre, is the
type of unassuming guy who could be
mistaken as a mid-level corporate man-
ager on a casual Friday.
Yet, his enthusiasm for his job runs
deep, and why wouldn’t it? He doesn’t
need to own a car because he drives a new
one almost daily. He’s been wined and
dined in Tokyo, Oman and Shanghai. He’s
gunned a million-dollar Bugatti Veyron
on the California coast and been behind
the wheel of nearly every other sick car
you and I have never heard of.
And yet, for all his taste making and
globetrotting, Alterman is most proud
when his actions are referred to as being
mentshlichkeit.
HOT WHEELS TO HOT RODS
On the road for his job nearly 15 weeks
a year, his home life could be under a lot
of strain. But Alterman says he and his
wife, Kari Alterman, the very busy direc-
tor of the Detroit chapter of the American
Jewish Committee, make it work, partly
because their parents are around to help
them with their two young daughters,
both students at Hillel Day School in
Farmington Hills.
“This is the greatest job ever. I can’t be-
lieve I get to do it. Just to be able to create
something is the highest satisfaction,”
Alterman says. He’s not the first Jewish
editor of Car and Driver — a guy named
Leon Mandel headed up the magazine for
a moment in the late 1960s — but he says
he’s the first “openly Jewish” one.
Growing up in Huntington Woods, he
remembers his dad and the other men
in the neighborhood spending weekends
www.redthreadmagazine.com
How a nice Jewish boy steered his way to
Car and Driver’s top pole.
By Julie Edgar
tooling under the hoods of their Jags and
Porsches, exotic and rarified things that
were rarely rolled out of the garage.
Alterman’s dad Mickey, a former car
salesman, shared with his son an appre-
ciation for automotive engineering that
clearly left its mark. Alterman avidly read
his dad’s copies of Car and Driver — even
if he didn’t understand everything. As a
kid, he already appreciated the literary
sophistication in its pages. It set him on a
course he followed into adulthood.
“I felt I was getting a glimpse into
the adult world,” he says. “The level of
writing in Car and Driver was extraor-
dinarily high.” One of the lauded writers
who graces the pages is P.J. O’Rourke,
a humorist and car lover who brings a
broader, sociological take on the car.
While he was a student at the Uni-
versity of Michigan in the early 1990s,
Alterman offered himself as a gopher
at Automobile magazine, washing and
gassing up the cars of its staffers and
eventually getting a shot at writing copy.
It was heaven: He could imagine himself
shaping the way people thought of the
automobile, the thing that truly shaped
the 20th century.
“I thought, ‘My God, I could one day
give my opinion about it,’” Alterman says.
In the meantime, other pursuits crowd-
ed out college. He became the drummer
for a grunge band called Slot, touring
in a horrible Dodge van and playing the
music-festival (Lollapalooza included)
and club circuit around the country.
“I found that the less I went to class,
the better I did,” Alterman laughs. “I
honed my bullshitting skills.”
Alterman somehow graduated with a
degree in English lit, briefly entertained
the idea of law school and then went back
to work at Automobile, this time as “king
of the gophers,” the guy who organized
cars for testing. He moved back into the
editorial ranks, becoming associate editor
and finally senior editor. Chaucer and
Shakespeare can pay off, apparently.
That horrible van? It wasn’t trashed too
badly during Slot’s final tour — the group
donated it to JARC.
THE ROAD TO QUALIFY
Alterman remained at Automobile
until 2004 when he and a few journalist
buddies launched a new magazine called
mph. Despite enjoying critical praise and
a loyal following among diehard gear-
heads, the book failed to gain traction.
In spring 2006, American Media,
publisher of the National Enquirer, Star
and Men’s Fitness, shuttered mph along
with two other titles. Alterman tried but
failed to extricate the rights to mph from
his former bosses. Subsequently, he be-
gan freelancing for various publications.
Then, in 2009, he heard that Car and
Driver, which has been based in Ann
Arbor since its inception as Sports Car
Illustrated in 1955, was looking for a
new editor. He shmoozed his way in and
ended up getting the job.
In his first year at the magazine —
known for its irreverence, wit and near
worship of esoteric cars — Alterman
and staff have modernized the look of
the book with kickier graphics and a less
stodgy typeface.
“If I can bring anything here, it’s a
spirit of collaboration and unleashing
all the incredible talent in this place,” he
says. Alterman manages an overwhelm-
ingly male staff of 24 full-timers who
range in age from 25 to 70.
Dressed this day in a plaid button-
down and newly minted jeans, the boss
informally walks around the cubicle
maze of his domain, chatting with staff-
ers who are casually texting and tapping
away on their Macs. “Save the Manuals”
buttons are stuck on filing cabinets and
on the T-shirt of a dummy sitting in the
office’s waiting area.
The campaign to promote the manual
gearbox (or stick shift, to the layperson)
is partly tongue in cheek, mostly serious.
Having to shift gears makes driving far
more entertaining, Alterman says, and
you can’t text when you’re driving.
The dangers of texting and driving,
incidentally, is an ongoing story Car and
Driver “broke” that landed the maga-
zine on an episode of Oprah last year. It
began with a real-world comparative test
of response times of drivers who texted
and drivers who were drunk (Alterman
tried both).
It turned out the texting drivers actu-
ally took longer to brake than the drunk
ones to avoid rear-ending the car in front
of them. Car and Driver re-created the
test for Oprah, who subsequently made
banning texting while driving one of her
pet causes.
Car and Driver tests nearly 300 cars
each year at Chrysler proving grounds in
Chelsea and in California. The staff has
more graduate engineers than any other
car magazine “so when we write some-
thing, it’s not from the hip,” Alterman
says.
“We have very smart readers, and they
might know or think they know more
about a car than we do so we have to
completely be on our toes,” he says. “One
of the hallmarks of this brand is its hon-
esty and ability to tell it like it is. If facts
aren’t right, it erodes our credibility.”
Car and Driver’s “Best Of 2011” is-
sue, a dense bible of fact, opinion and
analysis, reflects the magazine’s exacting
standards and intellectual honesty. Its
choices are both eclectic and surprising:
Alongside the Cadillac CTS-V and BMW
3-Series/M3 are the Ford Mustang GT
and the Chevy Volt, a car Alterman really
respects. None of the cars would’ve made
the cut if they couldn’t perform, he says.
He’s optimistic about the American
auto industry, calling the Ford Fusion a
“fantastic” car and admiring the stylish-
ness of the new Buicks.
Alterman says he’d like to expand the
definition of performance beyond ac-
celeration speed while he’s at the helm
of the magazine so concerns like gas
mileage become a ranking criterion. He
knows how to roll with the changes the
years have brought but at heart is just
a romantic: Car and Driver will always
reflect an enduring love for the automo-
bile.
“That we can get into a car and drive
wherever we want should be celebrated,”
he says. “That we have such freedom to
express ourselves in terms of where we
go and how we express ourselves is fan-
tastic. It’s the American dream.” RT
Red Thread | January 2011 19