Setright was one of the greats in motoring journalism although he was capable of being outspoken and opinionated just like many others. His technical knowledge set him apart from some though.
Instead of saying something like 'the braking on this car was so bad in the wet that it would need the length of the main runway at Edwards Air Force base to pull up', he'd say something about how the angling of the 'sipes' on the tyres was far from optimal for maximum water displacement.
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The late Setright is still a real pleasure to read - 'intelligent' motoring writers with a knowledge and appreciation of engineering are very few and far between. JC is more at the Sun/News of World "celebrity' end of the spectrum. I gather he boasts that he doesn't know how an engine works - can you imagine that of Setright ?
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I began to read Setright in my mid-teens when the idea of actually owning and driving a car was very much a dream.
He actually had something intelligent to say about driving and cars and wrote in very elegant prose. The subject of the article was always the car and not the writer!
The other name that sticks in the memory is Robert Glenton in the Sunday Express. He reviewed for a little bit more of a mass market but, again, when you'd finished the article you knew something about the car. The "will it fit your garage?" question always made me smile.
I suppose the thread title makes the point: we used to have motoring writers - now we don't.
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Anyone remember George Bishop, who wrote for Car magazine at the same time as LJK?
GB was incorrigible and often hilarious. He would attend expensive and lavish car launches, often without writing a single line about the model in question. Instead he would report on the food, the wines, the hotels, the travel. He might occasionally stretch to grudging praise such as, "seemed to go alright."
He gave the impression of being somewhat down at heel, his personal transport consisting of a battered old Alfa.
I fondly recall George resisting the lure of the press pack and reporting that some part of a new car, of which the manufacturer was particularly proud, was special because it was "made from something."
They don't make them like Bishop any more. I bumped into a couple of Car writers a few years ago in Val d'Isere, where they had taken a new Range Rover for testing and photography. I asked them if they knew what had become of old George. Alas they'd never even heard of him.
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A forum search for L J K Setright will, I'm sure, uncover loads of praise for this remarkable man from Backroom members, following his death a couple of years ago.
His last, autobiographical, work, 'Long Lane With Turnings', is well worth a read, for his style as much as for the information on his fascinating background. It's a shame he didn't live long enough to finish it - I'm sure he would have followed his praise of the Bristol marque with equal approbriation for the Honda Prelude, his preferred daily driver as it is mine.
As for George Bishop, well, what a man. He never let the threat of withdrawn advertising get in the way of his appreciation of good food and drink - mainly provided by motoring PR people who didn't know how to do the job properly. He, too, is now just a pleasant memory. I think he lived in retirement in Cornwall - or some such outlandish location - and ended his days driving something like a Citroen CX that substituted a stone behind the wheel for a parking brake.
Happy days.
If you want to know how the craft of motoring journalism has deteriorated since the likes of these two were at their best, look on Sniffpetrol.com - the parodies are hilarious until you actually pick up magazines from today's newsagent rack and realise it isn't a joke any more...
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By pure chance my bedtime reading is a June 1967 edition of CAR - his writing added a little gravitas to well written and presented magazine.
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As someone who spent a great deal of time with both L J Setright and George Bishop, I can vouch for the facts that have already been presented about them.
Setright was a fascinating companion at a dinner table and his careful, measured contributions to conversations always commanded respect.
Bishop was very similar to Patrick Menham of the Mirror in many areas, but both were equally compelling company in their own right. Incidentally, in company with another journalist, we once tried to keep up with George on the M50, but gave up when we reached 130mph.....
Another fine motoring correspondent was Michael Kemp, who served in the role for the Mail for nearly 38 years - his numerous motoring scoops were the stuff of legends and he was rightly rewarded financially by the paper for his work over those years.
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Anyone remember Russell Bulgin? Had a crisp style and attention to detail in the late-80s and 90s. Used to write for CAR when LJKS and Bishop were still there I think. RIP.
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Many years ago I owned an already elderly and tatty Bristol 400 and at some sort of owners meeting I encountered this very victorian looking gentleman dressed in a green courdroy suit, (might even have been knickerbocker trousers.) Altho' I had read some of his articles I didn't know who he was until I saw his photograph much later.
I used to look forward to reading his articles almost as much as those of the legendary DSJ of Motor Sport.
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Bulgin was a very, very good writer indeed.
His "Rain Stopped Play" piece on taking a Lotus Carlton to Germany to see if would do 176mph is a fantastic piece of writing (he only managed 167mph before the road surface got too wet).
Let's not forget Phil Llewelyn either, another regular contributor to Car when it was in its pomp
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Stuartli - you can't tantalise us (well, me) by saying you "spent a great deal of time with both LJKS and GB" without giving us a bit more insight into in what capacity!
Also, IIRC, Altea Ego does not like the writings of LJKS one little bit...
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I was a motoring correspondent for 15 years.
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I have a copy of LJK's book "The Designers". It is still a good read.
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Stuartli - For any august organ in particular?
Edited by tunacat on 24/10/2008 at 13:32
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Two I remember are Denis (Jenks) Jenkinson who wrote for Motor Sport for over 50 years and Brian Lecomber who wrote about Jaguars (like the XK120) and various aircraft (but can't rember where!).
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Two I remember are Denis (Jenks) Jenkinson
His superb piece on the Mille Miglia, where he pukes bananas all over the car, and loses his glasses, is a personal favourite.
For those unfamiliar with the story, he was the navigator in Sir Stirling Moss's Silver Arrow.
AND invented pace notes along the way.
All communications were in hand signals - and typical 50s jargon: This corner was known as 'a bit saucy'...
They'd scouted the route in a gullwing (I think?) a few weeks before, and made notes...
Obviously the racing beast was tad faster, so when Jenks said 'full steam ahead' and the Merc hit a level crossing... Moss looks at jenks in the middle of a LOOOOONG airborne trip and just raised an eyebrow...
Whoops!
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DSJ also described, perhaps in the same story, what it felt like driving through a long open bend at 160mph into a dense crowd of Italian spectators which parted magically to let the car through... He thought Moss's ability to know which way the road was going when it was covered with people verged on the superhuman.
Car enthusiasts are pretty mad, but racing drivers are madder.
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Also IIRC Altea Ego does not like the writings of LJKS one little bit...
AE (I think) finds Setright's prose style a bit over-egged, as indeed it quite often was, and also disagrees with him violently on the general desirability of Bristol cars.
Setright turned me down in my relative youth, before Car magazine even existed, for a technical writing job, office in Soho somewhere. He said I would find the work boring, and might have been right, but I was annoyed at the time. He was perfectly nice. Obviously he too found cars less boring than small engineering assemblies. Despite the overdone writing, though, he knew plenty and liked describing complex mechanisms in detail, which he did well. He also used to mention with quiet pride some quite startling cross-country average speeds, something that would fall foul of almost everyone these days. Like all writers though his product was of variable quality, and there came a time when I went off him, Car magazine and indeed car magazines in general.
My own motoring consciousness was most influenced by William Boddy and Denis Jenkinson of Motor Sport which I read through the fifties and sixties. They had mannerisms rather than a 'prose style', especially DSJ who wrote in a rough and ready fashion. But you always knew what he meant.
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I stopped reading the general motoring `comics` many years ago.
I remember at the time thinking some of the writers seemed like pompous toads, puffed up on their own peculiar lilly pads - attempting esoteric croaks to a minority readership in thrall to pseudo-techo-anything.
;)
Edited by oilrag on 24/10/2008 at 15:26
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I have read all of LJKS latter books and they were all revelations of sharp mind that could discuss any topic, let alone motoring.
I have not read CAR for several years - it is now a 'lads mag' with little to interest pseudo intellectuals like me. The loss of Bishop, Bulgin, Llewellyn and LJKS are keenly felt even though some have not written for many years. They have no current competitors.
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I don't think there is much I can add to the excellent comments of this thread. I started reading LJKS in my teens and have been a fan of his erudite writing ever since. Current motoring journalists are fixated with track performance and appearance; witness how often long term cars in Autocar are specced with larger wheels and tyres and then there are complaints about the ride. Setright understood the importance of point to point performance and lauded narrow cars, good tyres and handling over out and out speed. He could discuss the importance of fresnel patterns on headlight lenses and sidewall construction in tyres.
Currently the only motoring journalists I find interesting are Robert Cumberford, Martin Buckley, Stephen Bayley and on the rare occasions that he writes, Gordon Murray. They still have the forgotten ability to put cars in to context with society and practical use.
alfalfa
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So you don't like Troy Queef then?
*huge smiley - but Oh so true... "It was a b****. And I spanked it!"
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The sheer breadth and relevance of Honest John`s reviews, videos, answers and Forum rises head and shoulders above the old hero`s.
I wonder how many of them could have done that rather than trot out a monthly page of often tripe.
Lets hear it for Honest John then. Motoring and investigative Journalist extraordinaire. Saviour of the evening in and counter-point to Come Dancing.
Edited by oilrag on 24/10/2008 at 17:37
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Quite oilrag. HJ is on the motorist's side against the big battalions and is totally no-nonsense in his approach. But we don't want to be contenders for the OBN do we? We are all here after all, not somewhere else...
:o}
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"we don't want to be contenders for the OBN do we?"
I could never betray my Socialist roots and contribute to perpetuating the class system by accepting one of those Lud.
;)
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Ah, it's when you have retired in a cloud of self-satisfaction that those principles start to slip and a dung-truffler's gong begins to seem attractive...
:o]
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I used to come across Len Setright's articles in Car magazine as a youngster but it was all a bit too profound for me by then but I always had a go at reading them. He had a mystical and mysterious air to him with his cape, skull cap, cigarette holder and long flowing beard. He looked like a wizard or an old testament profit. As I got older though I began to really appreciate his insight and deep knowledge of engineering and just about everything else althoug the untranslated Greek and Latin tags used to annoy!
Drive on is one of the most enlightening books on the car ever written in my opinion and should be essential reading for everyone who loves cars. It was initially released by a specialist publisher at a mad price but was re-issued by Granta at an affordable price. This publisher has also launched "Long Lane with Turnings" which is Setright's uncompleted biography. It is short but enlightening and it is very sad that he didn't finishit because for the first time he actually writes honestly and humourously and without any of the higbrow learnedness for which he is known. I can heartily recommend any of his other books. Jenks is another legend and his book A Passsion for Porsches published by Haynes is one of the most thumbed in my collection. He relates his experience running a Porsche 356 for hundreds of thousands of miles throughout Europe as a Motorsort Correspondent and his enthusiasm is infectious. Other greats include the Phil Llewellin (try his book The Road to Muggle Flugga) and Paul Frere. Quite fankly modern writers like Clarkson, May pale into insignificance compared with these guys. All of them lost only recently but long may their memeory live on in their books. Go and dscover them NOW!
Edited by Mattbod on 24/10/2008 at 19:01
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P.S Paul Frere: My life full of Cars: another terrific compelation from a journalist of the old school. Paul died only a few months ago and was 90 odd but stll driving and evaluating performance cars well into his eighties.
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Setright's "Cogswapping" column (well actually it was usually a whole page) in "Bike" magazine was always required reading. He had an unashamed passion for the BMW R100RS, and praised the Honda 400-4 highly. Both bikes have become modern classics, and I personally can't fault his taste.
Some might have found his prose a bit archaic and laboured, but for me it was a pleasure to read.
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Just had a look at sniffpetrol.
'I caught it with a dab of oppo and off I went'
You're right, it's too close to the truth for comfort!
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