Auto News 5

Born in a cabin in Kentucky hill country with no electricity and no running water, David E. Davis, Jr., moved to greater Detroit as a young boy during the Depression, when his itinerant father landed steady work there as a woodworker. An erratic student and college dropout with a flair for writing, the young Davis went on -- in a life as rich with adventure and reward as it was with heartbreak and misfortune -- to redefine the American car magazine, ushering in standards of literary quality that had been sorely absent while in the process creating a larger-than-life persona for himself so distinct that it often obscured the man behind it. Respected by his peers, beloved by readers and many in the industry he helped cover in a new and important way, he was also feared -- and even loathed in some quarters -- by those who did not subscribe to his views, by those who saw him as arrogant, and sometimes even by those once closest to him.