December 14, 2023 • 51 mins
Long before his time as the Editor in Chief of Car and Driver, Eddie Alterman helmed a small startup magazine called MPH, the Maxim of car magazines. Imagine that.
In late 2004, when the highly anticipated Porsche 911 and Corvette C6 were on the verge of release, Eddie and his team scored a couple of specimens and decided that the best photo op would be in the middle of the night in front of Central Park, followed, naturally, by a head to head race in the park itself.
What could possibly go wrong?
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Max Chopovsky (00:02):
This is Moral of the Story Interest in people
telling their favorite shortstories and then breaking them
down to understand what makesthem so good.
I'm your host, Max Chopovsky.
Today's guest is Eddie Alterman, the chief brand officer of
Hearst Autos, which publishesCar and Driver, road and Track,
auto Week and other autopublications for auto
enthusiasts or, let's be honest,fanatics.
(00:24):
Eddie was born in HuntingtonWoods, michigan, a suburb of
Detroit that is, by proximityalone, deeply connected to cars
and the stories that come withthem.
As a young kid, eddie gained alove of cars from his father, a
diehard car enthusiast whotaught Eddie that a car isn't
just a car, it's a story, acollection of memories, like the
1950 Buick that reminds him ofthat heady time we call
(00:46):
adolescence, or the JaguarE-Type, full of stories about
his racing heroes and timelessdesign.
Eddie remembers their first car.
Eddie's was a 1988 VW Golf,Mine was a 1992 Toyota Corolla.
Incidentally, just like Eddie'sdad, we associate each of our
cars with the stage in our liveswhen we owned it.
(01:06):
The car is forever intertwinedwith the memories, the physical
with the spiritual.
Perhaps the most powerful carlesson Eddie's father imparted
was that, at the end of the day,more than anything else.
Cars are more than a pile ofmetal and leather.
They are the conduits to ourmemories and, as such, they are
deeply a part of our psyche.
(01:26):
Eddie would go on to absorb thislesson in a big way, while
outside of school, his happyplace was behind the wheel.
In school, he preferred the oldfashioned way of storytelling
with a pen and paper, and henurtured his love of both at the
University of Michigan,pursuing a BA in English while
working his first job atAutomobile Magazine, where he
began as a motor gopherresponsible for maintaining test
(01:49):
cars.
He continued to hone hisstorytelling skills as a copy
editor at Automobile Magazineand learned the power of great
editing at the New York Times,where he's been a frequent
contributor, penning gems withsuch fantastic titles as when
life hands you lemons, drivethem.
His platform grew in 2009 whenEddie was named editor-in-chief
(02:11):
at Car and Driver, the world'slargest automotive publication,
and 10 years later he waselevated to chief brand officer
of parent company Hearst Autos,responsible for the editorial
and business strategies of theentire portfolio.
But don't think that Eddiegrabbed that corner office down
to Blazer and hung up the keys.
Oh no, the self-described carfreak spends no less time on the
(02:31):
road, for most people a placeto tune out, but for him a place
to tune in All the way in Hisideal drive off into the sunset,
so to speak, is the coastalbeauty of a road trip from LA to
Big Sur.
Well, technically the sunsetwould be on your left, but you
get the point.
And although Eddie may still beadjusting to being an empty
nester, perhaps his silverlining is a bit more driveway
(02:55):
space for a few more automotivestory vehicles.
Eddie, welcome to the show man.
Eddie Alterman (03:01):
Thank you, max.
Great, great intro.
I mean I was tearing up there.
That was a great little drivedown memory lane.
There was one gap that I'd liketo exploit here, one career
phase you didn't hit on.
That is core to this story thatI'm about to tell.
Max Chopovsky (03:20):
I love it Well, hit on that gap, if you would,
sir.
Eddie Alterman (03:23):
Okay, so after Automobile Magazine, I left to
start a magazine with AmericanMedia which was owned by David
Pecker, and you might rememberhim from the Trump catch and
kill stories.
So he was the publisher of MPH,which was the sort of Ladmag
(03:45):
version of a car magazine thatwe started in 2004, and it had a
criminally short life.
But the story I'm about to tellmight give you some inclination
as to why.
So at the time there was reallythe internet, was very nascent
and it was all about carmagazines and we had just felt a
(04:08):
bunch of us who started MPH,guys from Car and Driver, guys
from Automobile we sort of feltlike the big major magazines
like Car and Driver and Road toTrack had gotten very ossified
and very stale and verycomplacent and so we were the
proverbial rocket up their ass.
We were like the maxim of carmagazines, a little bit of spy
(04:30):
magazine, if you remember that,a little bit of the irreverence
of 1960s Car and Driver.
But we were always looking totake the piss and it was really
the two most irresponsible yearsof my adult life.
It was really fun, it was great, it ended in tears but led to
some good things.
But car magazines and thechallenge that we had set for
(04:52):
ourselves at MPH was to dothings differently.
We didn't want to have theseven car comparison test in
Ohio with the boring picture ofthe five sensible sedans.
We wanted to mix it up, and tome great automotive writing is
sort of like great sportswriting.
(05:13):
The same thing happens over andover again One team wins, one
team loses.
You drive a car, you tellpeople how it is, the great
writers dramatize it in a wayand put the car in a context
that really reveals a lot aboutit.
So we were always trying to dooutrageous stuff and we had a
(05:37):
Subaru Justi.
Do you remember that car?
It sort of fell into ourpossession by extra legal means
and we would take that car andattempt every automotive myth on
it, like if you put baloney onthe paint, does it take it off?
If you put sugar in the gastank, what happens?
If you put in a tug of war withthe Hummer, what happens?
(05:58):
And that was ultimately whatled to its demise.
But we had done a lot of reallystupid things and I remember
when the Hummer H3 came out, wedid a story about off-roading in
the suburbs.
We would drive, findoff-roading opportunities in
suburban areas, and that meant,like you know, those areas in
(06:23):
off-ramps that are all wooded onthe highway.
We'd go in there.
We had a rock crawlingchallenge in the lumber yard, so
that was fun, but it was aboutputting the car in a hilarious,
cool context and doing it insort of an outrageous and
unexpected way.
And so the year is 2000, late2004.
(06:47):
And two of the most significantcars are about to hit the
market the 2005 Porsche 911, the997 series, and then the 2005
Corvette Chevrolet Corvettewhich was called the C6
internally and so these carshave been going up against each
(07:11):
other for 40 years.
They were kind of the dominantsports cars and it was rare that
their launches or new versionsof them happened at the same
time.
So we had to come up with anidea that really totally knocked
it out of the park and we werekind of scratching our heads
what do we do with these thingsthat hasn't been done before?
And then I remember my friend,al Okay, al, I'm not going to
(07:36):
say his last name, but Al was ahilarious guy, huge brain, very,
very easy player and lived alifestyle of leisure, a
privilege guy, and he lived inNew York City and he once told
me you know, because we weretalking about driving in New
(07:56):
York and how difficult it is andhow stressful it is he goes no,
no, no, no, no.
New York's the best city todrive in.
You just have to know where todo it and when to do it.
And then he proceeded to tellme about how he had just crashed
his father's SL, driving itthrough Central Park at 3am.
What?
And he was hauling ass aroundyou know that ring road around
(08:18):
Central Park, yeah, and allthose kind of interstitial roads
under the bridges.
Well, he had lost control ofthe SL and smacked into a bridge
abutment.
And his dad's reaction to himtaking the car out at 3am and
driving it around Central Parkwas no, no, no, al, that's what
the M6 is for, not the SL.
(08:40):
He was mad that he had chosenthe wrong car.
So Al is a hilarious, great,great guy and lived life to the
fullest, sucked the mirror oflife, and I thought well, this
is our venue, this is going tobe where we take these two cars
and drive them.
And there was no thought ofpermits, no thought of well,
(09:04):
maybe this isn't a good idea.
Maybe we should check with themagazine's legal department.
None of that.
We just called up our friendsin the PR departments of
Chevrolet and Porsche, pitchedthe idea to them and they're
like, when do you need the carthere?
And they love the idea.
So we actually kind of set itup and thought, well, this is
(09:25):
going to happen.
And Dan Pond, who worked withme at Car and Driver and now
works at Road and Track great,great guy.
We went to New York Food in NewYork, picked up the cars in
Manhattan garage and just sortof sat and waited until the city
died down.
It was, I don't think, aWednesday night.
We had gotten sort of a lastmeal at what's that great
(09:49):
Chinatown old Chinatownrestaurant, I can't remember the
name of it, it was just onbillions and we were just sort
of like waiting until we couldstrike, until our moment was
right, okay, and we were stayingup and staying up, and we had a
photographer with us and he wasnapping in preparation for the
shoot, and so it's about 2.30and we say, okay, yeah, let's
(10:13):
find our spot, and we drive thetwo cars to the gate or the
in-road to the park, I think at72nd and it would be fifth on
the east side.
Okay, and we're sort of settingup this shot of the two cars.
You know.
We wanted the shot to tell thestory, the opening shot of the
(10:35):
thing of the story, to sort ofrelay what was going on here.
So we set the two cars up, kindof pointed at each other, right
in front of these two NYPD bluesaw horses you know that were
marking off the entrance to thepark.
Like don't come in here, thepark is closed, right.
So we're sitting at the shot,we've got the shot done, we're
(10:56):
lighting it, we're trying to beas discreet as possible and
we're trying to not attract any,any attention.
And it's 2.30 in the morning.
We figure, okay, this is fine,this is like we're going to pull
this off.
And as we're done with the shotand we're getting ready to drive
through the park, I startpulling one of the saw horses
back and I hear whoop, whoop,whoop and I'm like oh, oh, shit.
(11:20):
So we spent all this money toget here.
We promised the PR guys at thecompanies that we were going to
do the story and now it'scollapsing like in milliseconds,
right.
And I'm like oh, shit, shit,shit.
Just just act.
Naturally, dan, just be cool.
Like just stain your car, don'tget out and I walk up to the
(11:42):
cops and the guy jumps out ofthe car with like incredible
ferocity.
I'm like I'm going to fuckingjail.
And he runs over to me, he goesIs that the new fucking van?
And I was like, why, yes, sir,why, yes, officer, this is would
you like to see it?
And he's like, oh, my God, thisis beautiful.
And I'm like, would you like toget in?
(12:03):
He's like, oh, this is thegreatest, I'm going to order one
of these.
And he's like he is so takenwith the car and what's
happening in that moment that hedoesn't realize, or he doesn't,
or he turns a blind eye, Ishould say, to what we're
actually doing.
And he is asking us questionsabout the car.
(12:27):
We're becoming friends.
We're telling him what's goingon, we're telling him what we're
doing, who we are and wherewe're from.
He doesn't ask for permits, hedoesn't ask for anything.
He's just like enjoy yourevening, gentlemen.
And then we were done and wegot the story done and I think
there's some, some morals here.
But I just I wanted to sharethat because it's one of my
(12:48):
favorite stories and at the veryleast it proves that if you
have a bad idea, sometimes youshould go for it, but that's not
the real moral.
Max Chopovsky (12:59):
Well, I have countless questions before we
get into those.
We just went to on a Disneycruise a few months ago and
there was a guy wearing a shirton the boat that I was like I
must acquire this shirt, nomatter where I'm going to get it
, no matter how I can get it.
His shirt was.
That's a terrible idea, whenand where.
(13:24):
That's what this was right.
I mean literally.
That's how so many greatstories start.
Eddie Alterman (13:30):
We were too stupid to know that we couldn't
do it.
You know, yeah, I mean so didyou end up actually driving?
Them through the park, Did thewhole thing and Al was right, it
was an incredible drive and weturned it into like a big 10
page print story that was calledMidnight Run and we documented
the whole thing.
Probably another dumb idea.
Max Chopovsky (13:51):
So that's also one of my questions Did the
people that gave you the greenlight at Chevy and Porsche keep
their jobs?
Because I don't see how theygreen light something like this
without even asking a singlequestion.
Eddie Alterman (14:04):
Oh my God.
Well, these were differenttimes, but they got in so much
trouble when we felt so bad.
And my buddy Joe over at GM's,like you know, you've gotten me
almost fired like four times andI was like, yeah, but like look
at all the stories we didtogether.
They were all great and thisone was like it turned out to be
a feather in his cap.
Max Chopovsky (14:22):
Oh, my God, this is the capstone that kind of
story is the capstone.
Totally so.
How much trouble did you getinto when the story went live?
Eddie Alterman (14:32):
Well they were concerned with other things.
I think we flew so under theradar with that magazine that
you know they didn't even noticeit.
I don't think anybody read it.
It was great, it was glorious.
We're in our own little bubbleof delusion.
Max Chopovsky (14:46):
I mean that is literally the definition of
glorious.
Explain this to me how Did youthink that you were not going to
get caught Like?
What was the rationale in yourminds around that?
Eddie Alterman (15:02):
I mean, I think I was nervous and I thought
maybe there's some plan B wherewe drive it someplace else or we
do something else.
But it wouldn't have been asgood of a story.
You know, I was sort ofstupidly overconfident in those
days and just was such an ardentbeliever in what we were doing.
You know how sometimes youcreate your own sort of reality
(15:24):
and your own truth because youbelieve so deeply in what you're
doing that people can tell youthat's not a good idea and you
don't believe them.
And that's sort of where I was,that's where my headspace was
at that time.
Max Chopovsky (15:39):
I mean, if I'm being honest, I think that a lot
of the greatest accomplishmentsin history across industries
happened because the peopleperpetrating those crimes, so to
speak, were just young and dumband they just didn't know any
better.
Like, being naive in thosecircumstances is actually a
(16:02):
strength, because if you talk tothose people and you say to
them, if you could do it again,would you?
They would say, oh hell, no,not knowing what I know now,
that shit was crazy.
Eddie Alterman (16:14):
Right, it was a moment that barometric pressure
was correct.
You know, your LDL cholesterolwas low.
There were a thousand thingsthat fed into it, the moment
being just right, you know, andthat was one of them.
How fast did you go through thepark?
You know what?
We got up to a pretty sickeningspeed.
(16:36):
That's a great road and it isthe best place to drive in
Manhattan.
I don't know what we were doingon this pedometer, but it was
dark, it was late at night, wewere driving through horseshit
and with the photographers headout of the sunroof, but at the
same time, it was just like youimagine that, the freedom of it.
You know, when you're in yourearly 30s and you've got two
(17:00):
sports cars that haven't comeout yet, the most hotly
anticipated sports cars in theworld, and they weren't a
dealer's guy and we had them,and we're driving around Central
Park for our job.
Critical distinction you aregetting paid to do this.
Yes, exactly, I shudder at thethought of it.
Max Chopovsky (17:21):
You're talking about the road that's inside the
park, that the horses go on thehorse carriages and people run
and ride their bikes.
Eddie Alterman (17:29):
Yeah, and bikes are there, there are taxis on
that road.
You know there's stop lights onthat road, which we obeyed.
By the way, we weren't going tobreak that law, we obeyed the
stop lights.
But no, it was really fun andwe saw.
You know, we went around thereservoir.
It wasn't very well lit, but itwas drivable and it was great
(17:50):
and we didn't crash.
We didn't smash a thing into abridge abutment like Al did.
Max Chopovsky (17:56):
Well, that's because you didn't get out the
M6.
Eddie Alterman (17:58):
That could have been the worst, we had the right
cars for it is the point wedidn't have, like you know, some
doddering SL, like some oldman's SL.
Max Chopovsky (18:08):
So in Chicago there's a highway known as the
Kennedy which runs from O'Hareto the Loop, and there are these
express lanes that changedirections, that run between the
regular eastbound and westboundlanes, and there is now there's
construction, but back when thelanes would actually sort of
(18:30):
switch between inbound andoutbound, I feel like there was
almost an art form around timingyour entrance to those lanes to
avoid all the traffic in themain lanes, and I went down so
many rabbit holes Googling ifthere's a schedule for these
lanes to open up or not, becauseI really wanted to get in those
lanes, not just because I hatetraffic but also because how
(18:55):
cool would it be to be in thoselanes when everyone around you
is stopped.
And, needless to say, none ofthat information is publicly
available.
If it were, then thosescheduled open times or switch
times would be complete parkinglots and it's.
It got so bad with peoplecutting into the express lane
entrance right before theentrance that they started to
(19:17):
post state troopers there,because people would get out of
their cars.
They get into fights becausethey're the left lane of the
inbound Kennedy gets backed upfor a mile beforehand Right.
So I used to drive a G35 coupe.
Eddie Alterman (19:33):
It was a six speed V6, great car, infinity
G35 S was an.
Max Chopovsky (19:41):
S.
I don't think there was an Sdesignation at the time.
It was just I know what you'retalking about the next
generation of the car, when itgot a lot curvier.
Yeah, yes, correct.
So this is, this was the G35.
This is 2005.
And I love that car and you'reright, it was a nice little six
cylinder engine it was.
(20:02):
You know, it had just enoughkind of get up and go to for you
to have some fun, and we livedin the city at the time and so I
didn't, you know, have a lot ofchances to actually experience
the wonderful acceleration, thatall of that torque and I say
that with sarcasm that all ofthat torque, the engine, the
torque that it provided One timeI was coming into the city and
(20:24):
the way that the express laneswork is.
There's a sign that shows thatthe express lanes are open or
closed, and then there are thesemultiple sort of arms and
obstacles that they just sort ofremove these little gates that
automatically get moved as thelanes are opening and traffic
was terrible coming into thecity and as I was coming in,
right as I was going past theclosed entrance, I saw the gates
(20:49):
start to open.
So I swerved into the entrance,just barely missing those big
yellow tanks filled with sand.
And I took off and I got up toit had to be over a hundred in
those express lanes because Iknew for a fact for a fact.
(21:11):
There was nobody in front of me, like it was completely open.
And there is a part where, oncethey straighten out, they sort
of stay straight for a couple ofmiles.
And that's where I gunned it.
And I looked to my right I justglanced to my right briefly it
was a parking lot.
I looked to my left and it wasa parking lot and I opened all
the windows and the sunroof andI turned up the music and I was
(21:33):
like this may never happen againand because of that I'm gonna
push the envelope a little bit.
It's one of my favorite drivingmemories because that's one of
those things that, like you knowto your point, the barometer
was right, the LDL was justright and I was like this is
incredible.
I'll never forget it.
Eddie Alterman (21:51):
And I haven't those moments of just pure
freedom where you're in command,there's no autonomous anything,
there's no lane keeping,there's no advanced driver
safety, it's just you in the car, driving it to its peak as fast
as situations will allow, asfast as circumstances will allow
(22:14):
.
There's something justbeautiful and free about that,
and everybody should experienceit that once in their life.
Once in their life, yeah, atleast once, if not every week or
every day.
Max Chopovsky (22:28):
Well, most people don't get paid to do crazy shit
like that.
Eddie Alterman (22:31):
Right, right, I've calmed down quite a bit.
You know this was at adifferent company.
As I said, two mostirresponsible years of my life,
mph.
We had, you know, we had amascot.
We had a pet monkey that livedat the next door office but
would come over occasionally andit was an animal house
(22:51):
atmosphere and we may havegotten away from ourselves Like
an actual pet monkey.
Yeah, there was a pet monkeywho's very, very cute and he was
on the masthead of the magazine.
I don't remember his name.
All monkeys are named bubbles,right?
Max Chopovsky (23:07):
I feel like that's about right, or, george?
Eddie Alterman (23:10):
I feel like George, right, george, something
like that Dan will remember.
But I have this great pictureof or Dan actually has a Dan pun
has this great picture of heand I that night sitting on the
hood of the 9-11, smoking, andyou know the youthful joy
(23:33):
permeates.
It was fun.
Max Chopovsky (23:37):
Yeah, it's the freedom, even when you don't
realize it.
The freedom of your youth issomething that is so precious
and so fleeting, and it'ssomething that's really hard to
recreate when you're older,because you have
responsibilities, but alsobecause you're kind of more
jaded, and it's really hard tosort of let go right.
So when you're young and youcan mash the pedal, so to speak,
(24:02):
without really thinking throughall the ramifications, there's
something so intoxicating aboutthat.
Eddie Alterman (24:09):
Yeah, when you're older, you know all the
consequences.
You know how bad it can go.
You think in three dimensions.
When you're younger, you'relike oh man this is the best.
I'm just gonna pursue thefeeling.
I'm just going after thefeeling, Totally that's exactly
right.
Max Chopovsky (24:27):
I mean to your point.
There is something so magicalabout being out there with a car
and, all of a sudden, justseeing the road open up, like
you've ever been in the leftlane and all the people in front
of you just merge to the middlelane and you're like thank you,
God.
Eddie Alterman (24:45):
Or you find yourself on a twisty two-lane
mountain road and there's nobodythere and the road is perfect
and the day is clear, and I justlive for those moments.
The right car, the right roadphenomenal.
The right car, the right road.
Max Chopovsky (25:02):
Oh my God, yeah.
So, as you think about thatcrazy ass story that you told,
what are some of the morals thatcome to mind?
Eddie Alterman (25:12):
Okay, the first one is that there is a
difference between the illegaland the immoral, and what we
were doing was illegal.
I mean, we had a copsanctioning it, so maybe that
was a permit in and of itself.
Cop told us, to resolve theevening for its best tidings.
Max Chopovsky (25:35):
Is that how you rationalize what just happened?
Because I feel like that wasn'tan actual sanction.
That was just him being happythat you let him sit in an
unreleased car and then goingand then looking the other way.
Eddie Alterman (25:45):
He was being super cool and, yes, we were
committing an illegal act.
I checked the statute oflimitations on something like
that and we're well clear of it,so we're fine.
But it was not an immoral act.
It was two professionalsengaged in the faithful service
(26:07):
of their job, trying to get agreat story for the readers.
Okay, and I think there is amorality in that.
There's a morality in pushingthe bounds of legality for
something that is ethical andpure and true.
And that's what we were doingand that's my rationalization.
Max Chopovsky (26:29):
Your justification is market leading.
Also, I don't disagree.
Eddie Alterman (26:35):
Okay, so right.
So you know there's adifference between what the laws
are and what human morality isand human ethics are.
And we were sacrificing ourlicenses, our reputations, our
jobs for the reader, and I thinkthat's the noblest pursuit in
journalism.
Disagree if you will, butthat's one takeaway.
(26:58):
That's one moral of the story.
The other is cars bring peopletogether.
I was an adversary to the cop,the cop was an adversary to me.
We were positioned against eachother in this game, but the
corvette broke that down.
(27:18):
The corvette allowed us to sharean experience.
It was the first corvette thisguy had ever seen, first new one
he'd ever seen, and he got tosit in it, yeah, and he got to
ask questions about it frompeople who knew what it was
about.
And the fact that we had thosecars there that nobody had ever
(27:39):
seen, I think, gave us a sort ofcredibility with him.
You know, these guys must beokay if they've got access to
this stuff.
Right.
They can't be completemiscreants, they can't be total
criminals.
It has to be something torecommend them, the fact that
they got access to this.
(27:59):
So that access gave us a lot ofpull, but the car did all the
work.
The car broke down, this guy'sdefenses and I think if somebody
had a Honda Accord trying to dothe same thing he would have
spent the night in jail.
But the corvette saved us, the911 saved us and, you know, it
(28:22):
was only through the kind of thefullness of time that I
realized what a powerful momentthat was and just how important
the bonds are between car people.
Max Chopovsky (28:31):
As a plus, this was before the era of body cams,
so he had plausible deniability.
Eddie Alterman (28:39):
Exactly.
It was for somebody else tofind us and haul us in.
Max Chopovsky (28:43):
Yeah, he'd be like you know.
Eddie Alterman (28:45):
I didn't see those guys.
Max Chopovsky (28:47):
Yeah, I don't know what you're talking about.
Oh, that's smell of newChevrolet Corvette leather.
Oh, my clothes.
Eddie Alterman (28:53):
Oh, no, no.
Max Chopovsky (28:54):
Exactly?
What was your take on the twocars?
Which one were you a bigger fanof?
Eddie Alterman (29:01):
Well, it was sort of a great era for both of
those cars.
The 2005 911 was the secondwatercooled generation of that
car and the first watercooledgeneration so-called 996, was a
really, really good car and itwas better than the one that
(29:21):
preceded it in a lot of ways,but it sort of didn't feel like
a 911.
It was bigger inside, it,didn't?
It felt like sort of a new carBecause the 911 had the same
doors and same greenhouse sinceits inception up until 2000 when
that 996 came out.
(29:41):
So that 996 felt like asubstantially different
proposition, right.
But when the 997 came out in2005, it was like they had
stuffed some more 911 back intoit and they had made it feel
less feel and sound more like anolder 911, yet it was a newer
(30:02):
car and I felt like they hadmade a nice sort of correction
to the 996.
Now you drive a 996 now andthey're great.
You drive a 997 now and it'seven better.
But there was a lot of backlashagainst the 996 as not a true
911, more of a GT, and the 997addressed that, I think, in a
(30:23):
really, really positive way.
So I love that car.
The C6 Corvette was incredibletoo and it was really the second
generation of a big reinventionon that car as well.
But it was small, it was tidy,it was very sort of European
handling.
Compared to the C5, corvetteswere sort of lightly engineered,
(30:45):
big motors sort of spat out ofthe factory.
The C6 felt crafted, it feltlike it was really highly
engineered and it was great andthat became the basis for some
really excellent highperformance variants like the
Z06.
So those cars were.
(31:06):
They were pretty evenly matchedin a lot of ways and they
delivered a ton of satisfactionfor the enthusiasts.
But they were fundamentallydifferent too, like the Corvette
, front engine V8, the 911, rearengine flat six, and so they
were kind of as different ascould be in terms of layout but
(31:28):
evenly matched in terms of thekind of joy they delivered and I
loved them both.
I thought that the 911 wasfractionally better, sharper
handling.
I like the sounds, I like thefact that the engine was hung
out over the back axle.
I love the fact that they hadtried to make that water cooled
(31:48):
six sound, air cooled so youcould drive it without the you
know on sound and nowhere toshift on sound.
Those cars are like you don'tneed to put the radio on.
You just listen to them.
So I'm kind of a 911 guy asopposed to a Corvette guy.
But that Corvette was sweet andI could see the.
(32:09):
You know the love in the in thecop size.
Max Chopovsky (32:13):
Well, and the Corvette is phenomenal value
when compared to the Porsche.
Eddie Alterman (32:18):
Oh totally Totally.
It was like I don't know asequipped it was maybe
three-eighths of the price, no,five-eighths of the price, and
it's just always been such anincredible value.
But by the time the Corvettegot to the C5 and the C6, it was
a really, really great vehiclein its own right and I like both
of them.
It's hard to say.
(32:39):
I still remember how they feelthe 911, because it was steel
not fiberglass and some I thinkthere were maybe some SMC like
sheet molded compound panels onthat car, if I'm remembering
correctly.
But the 911 felt a littlestouter, felt more like you know
, this is an Autobahn cruiser,this thing can sit happily at
(32:59):
180 MPH all day, whereas the C6was like, yeah, maybe some parts
are going to fall off, but forour purposes in that sort of
relatively low-speed environmenton that course they were both
great.
They just they turneddifferently, they steered
differently.
But at the end of the day, youknow, you get that beautiful
(33:22):
singing V8 up front in theCorvette versus that churning,
whirring flat six in the 911,and two really, really great
ribs versus fillet Totally.
Max Chopovsky (33:36):
Totally.
That's actually a great analogy.
So when I turned 40, my wifegot me one of those, you know,
tickets to go race a few exoticsaround the track, and I think I
was telling you this.
It was it might have been likea Mercedes-Benz Cielago and then
a 488 GTB and then a GT3 RS.
And the GT3 RS there was onlyone or two of them, and so
(33:58):
everybody raced everything else.
And then there was this massiveline for this Porsche and they
started going down the line andoffering people two rides in one
of the other cars instead ofthe one ride they had remaining
in this Porsche, and the vastmajority of people declined that
.
Nope, because everybody right,they wanted to drive it.
And so the Porsche was my lastone that I drove around the
(34:19):
track, and so by then I startedto get a little bit more
familiar with it.
It's the Milwaukee mile raceway, but you kind of go through the
middle of it, so there's sometwists and turns there, and I
got a little bit morecomfortable with the raceway,
with the track, and so when Ifinally got into the Porsche and
I took it out, I felt like Iwasn't even close to reaching
(34:40):
its capabilities, like thisthing would hold on to the
corners.
Probably, you know, notsubstantially more than you know
the Lambo, the Ferrari, but itjust felt like it was so
different, so solidly attachedto the track, that I could do no
wrong.
It's incredible.
Eddie Alterman (34:57):
They are amazing in having the majority of the
weight over the driven wheels.
Max Chopovsky (35:02):
Yeah, of course.
Eddie Alterman (35:02):
Rear wheels.
That really helps the physicsof the whole thing.
But you know, 911s have alwaysbeen cars that you can drive to
the track.
Drive for a day on the track,correct, then replace the brakes
and tires and drive home andmaybe you don't even need to
replace the brakes the brakesare so good.
But there always has been thisreally, really strong linkage
(35:23):
between the track and the streetfor 911s and you know it's a
legacy of their sports carracing heritage.
And you know, when you get intoa machine like the GT3RS, it's
like it's beyond the racingversion in some ways.
You know, this new GT3RS thatthey've got has in-car
(35:46):
adjustability for the dampersthat the race car doesn't have.
Like, the technology is almosta step above the race car.
And you know they're incredible, incredible machines and very
much race honed and there's adegree of sensitivity.
To me, like sports cars are allabout sensitivity and how they
make you feel and the feedbackthey give you.
And the Porsche gives you adegree of feedback that you
(36:08):
really don't get anywhere else,not even a Ferrari, not even a
Lamborghini.
It's certainly not aLamborghini.
You know Lamborghini's aregreat for driving into walls and
stuff, but the Porsche isreally like a scalpel and the
body control is so phenomenal.
The transitional behavior is sogood and that's honed on a lot
of race weekends.
(36:28):
They're really, really great,great vehicles.
Max Chopovsky (36:32):
And I think that that extends maybe not as much
but certainly to an extent toall German cars, or at least
let's just take like Audi andBMW, like the one so I used to
have.
I used to only have Japanesecars, and then I ended up
getting a Q7 and then I ended upgetting an SQ7.
And like to your point the waythat that V8 sings.
(36:54):
I literally went down a rabbithole trying to figure out how to
turn off the valves, becausewhen you turn on the car the
valves are open and then theyclose, and so the best I could
find was you literally have toget a computer, like a piece of
hardware that plugs in to Idon't know if it's like the OBD
and it allows you to controlthose valves.
(37:16):
And there's something so crazyabout having a car that has a
third row that has like a 3.4second zero to 60.
Eddie Alterman (37:27):
I know it's a vehicle you can really drive
hard right and it shrinks downTotally.
Max Chopovsky (37:32):
We went to Wisconsin with the family and we
were close to Road America.
You know the track.
Eddie Alterman (37:37):
Great, great course.
We went up to that course,totally.
Max Chopovsky (37:41):
And I was like I would love to drive my car
around this course.
And I told them what kind ofcar I have and they were like oh
, it's an SUV.
They were like does it have athird row?
I was like yes, yeah.
I mean it's for infantsbasically is the size of that
third row.
They're like, I'm sorry, wecan't allow it because that is a
(38:01):
third row.
I'm like it's got a twin turboV8.
That is legendary and it putsout over 500 pound-feet of
torque.
I'm like, all right, there's athird row.
It's like really you kidding me?
Eddie Alterman (38:11):
Yeah, I mean, cars are products of their
environments, right, and youknow, the autobahn system is a
high-speed environment and theAlps are a high-speed
environment.
We do not have a mountain rangerunning through our country
laterally the way Europe does,right?
So the cars are just set up alittle bit differently.
(38:31):
And you know, yes, of course wehave the Appalachians and the
Rockies, but that doesn'tdominate the country the way
that the Alps dominate Europe.
And so the cars, you know,they're built for cruising here
and for long straight highways.
And it's rare that you get asports car like the Corvette
that truly is capable of supercar feats and has such
(38:54):
incredible handling and suchincredible control.
It's just sort of a differentenvironment.
And so, like, our three rowSUVs are not SQ7s, they're not
built for the Alps.
Max Chopovsky (39:07):
Has your opinion of the Corvette's capabilities
changed since the most recentmodel, the mid-engine one?
Eddie Alterman (39:13):
Oh, I mean, I've only kind of grown in my
respect for what they've done.
You know the current Corvettewhich switch from front engine
to mid-engine and they call thatthe C8, that is a legitimate
supercar and it's it's everydaydrivable.
This is the feat that they'veachieved, like they've really
created sort of an Americanversion of the McLaren 720S that
(39:36):
is comfortable every day butreally really hotheaded when you
, when you hammer on it.
And they've only done, you know, like the Z06.
And then there's, and the e-rayeven, and the coming ZR1 are
only going to get more extreme.
But the base car it's aneveryday supercar and that's
what it should be.
(39:56):
It's not trying to give you thekind of the 30 mile an hour
thrill that, like, a Ferrariwill give you and it doesn't
have the same sort of sing-songyflat-plane crank engine in the
base car but the Z06 has.
The Z06 is very much a Ferrarifighter Very, very strong,
(40:17):
incredible track car.
And it's amazing what GeneralMotors has done with that thing
and turned it into a legitimateworld power on the supercar
stage and it's just come a long,long way.
For sure it has.
Max Chopovsky (40:31):
Yeah, I mean that when I saw that in the Z8, you
can every time you know how youcan lower and raise the car
because it's so low to theground that if you go over a
speed bump you'll raise it andthen it tracks, using the GPS
coordinates, the part, the spotwhere you raised it, and then
it'll automatically raise itnext time.
Eddie Alterman (40:50):
It's so incredibly sophisticated in a
thousand different ways and youknow that small block V8 in the
base car is still going strongsince 1955, but they put a
totally different engine, anincredible dual overhead cam
engine in the Z06 that justscreams and it's flat-plane
crank like the European cars andit just sounds amazing.
(41:12):
And the Z06 is another level ofCorvette that we've really
never seen.
Max Chopovsky (41:19):
Yeah, totally.
You know.
I have to be honest, I wasnervous when we started this
episode that we would spend notime at all in the story and
instead go off on varioustangents about cars, and it has
fully lived up to that so far.
So, let's talk about the storyfor a minute.
So there's this other side toyou that is as talented as the
(41:42):
side that can discuss theintricacies of the various
generations of Corvettes, andthat's the side that is a
storyteller, a writer.
So you've written some reallycaptivating and engaging stories
in your day.
So what, in your mind, doreally good stories have in
(42:04):
common?
Eddie Alterman (42:06):
They involve the reader, they put the reader in
the action, and that's what wealways tried to do at automobile
, at MPH, at current drivers,put their butts in the seat,
bring the car to life in a coolway.
Don't ignore the sounds, thesmells, the stuff you're driving
(42:27):
by.
Ignore the errant thoughts thatcreep into your mind while
you're driving, because that'salmost the best time to think
about stuff is when you'redriving and you're your.
Your non conscious mind is sortof just driving the car and
your higher brain is free tothink about weird shit.
We put that all in.
(42:48):
Put in your crazy cockamamietheories, you know.
Humanize this thing and talkabout the benefit to the driver,
not just the features.
Create a story.
Pull people in Car journalism aspracticed by the greats like my
former boss and mentor, davidDavis Jr, and Brock Yates and
(43:11):
John Phillips, who I think ismaybe the best to ever do it.
You know these are newjournalism values.
Like before Tom Wolf, there wasDavid E Davis Jr doing the
thing, living the thing.
Before George Clinton wrotepaper lion, there was David E
Davis driving the car andtelling you a story, and that,
(43:32):
to me, is still my North Starand it's about connecting with
people and making something thatis rare and and special and
only you get to douniversalizing it, making it
something that other people canshare in because, look, cars
have two seats.
For a reason, you want to sharethat experience with somebody
(43:54):
and that's what we're soprivileged to do as automotive
writers is bring those storiesback.
It's not just a car, it's anexperience and for, as you said,
you know you're so bonded toyour cars, max.
You know they're the placeswhere you do your living and we
get to bring those to people andthat's a privilege and got to
(44:15):
take it seriously.
So that's always been what'sgot in me.
I always thought of cars asgreat human stories, great
conduits for travel, great.
You know, david E, my mentor,used to say we take interesting
cars to interesting places andtalk to interesting people when
we get there, and that's prettymuch as good as it gets in terms
(44:39):
of an ethos.
Max Chopovsky (44:42):
Totally, that's pristine, I will say not all
cars have two seats.
There is a certain McLaren thathas one seat, right in the
center, and that is anexperience you're destined to
have by yourself.
Eddie Alterman (44:54):
That one has to the speed tail you're talking
about.
I don't remember which month.
Max Chopovsky (44:59):
I think the F1.
Eddie Alterman (45:00):
The F1 you're, you're in the center position,
but there are two outboard seats.
But there's a great line.
My friend, johnny Lieberman I'msure you've heard of him if
you're into cars, because he's abig personality he was talking
about that single seat Ferrarithat just came out and he said
you know, I've got one seat,don't you?
I said no because because ifyou're rich enough to afford
(45:21):
this thing, you have no friends.
Max Chopovsky (45:27):
But there to be shared.
Eddie Alterman (45:28):
There to be shared, Of course always.
Max Chopovsky (45:31):
So you gave me a couple of morals for your story
that you've told, but do youthink that every story has to
have a moral?
And if it doesn't, is it stilla story worth telling?
Eddie Alterman (45:43):
Absolutely, absolutely, yeah.
Morals, no morals, stories arethe things that allow us to make
sense of the world, and that'show we, our brains, are
organized.
You know, narrative and storiesare everywhere and they're
great.
Max Chopovsky (46:00):
Totally.
It's funny how that's how weused to pass knowledge on from
generation to generation andsort of the fallacy of
storytelling which is memoriesaren't perfect and stories
evolve over time.
I feel like it's almostbecoming its strength because
since the stories evolve overtime, they can morph and become
(46:21):
even more engaging.
Eddie Alterman (46:22):
if if more truthful, In a way right More
true Like the details becomemore false, but the point of it
becomes stronger and more truein the telling.
Max Chopovsky (46:33):
Oh, that's interesting.
Yeah, you just focus on thesort of takeaway and you know if
you have to embellish it alittle bit to really make it hit
that much harder.
Exactly, it's the value.
I mean, maybe over time, whenyou keep telling that story that
you told there could be morethan one cop, maybe at some
point it'll evolve into a chase.
Yeah, that's the best of myrecollection.
Eddie Alterman (46:52):
What I told.
I don't know if it's 100% trueDan will fact check me on it but
that's how I remember it,that's how I like to remember it
and that's what makes me feelgood when I tell it.
But you know, we got away withmurder.
Max Chopovsky (47:07):
You kind of did Now.
You talked about what makes fora good story, what makes for a
good storyteller.
Eddie Alterman (47:14):
I think it is an eye for detail, even if the
details are wrong.
I think it's.
You know, a great storytellerhas an innate charisma and it
extends to more than juststorytelling and you know an
idea for structure and how tokeep people engaged and choice
of words.
All these.
This is the great thing aboutstories is that the great ones
(47:36):
have so many elements and pacingand twists and turns.
And the great storytellers Iwill guarantee you they're good
at other things, not just goodat storytelling.
They're great at life usuallyand I was listening to the
Broken Record podcast with RickRubin and Malcolm Gladwell when
they were interviewing RobbieRobertson the late Robbie
(47:59):
Robertson of the band and he'ssuch a powerful, incredible
storyteller and his nuance andhis details and his word choice
are just so great.
You're like this is just aspecial human being, like he's
good at everything he does.
You know, and I think thatcomes out when you hear a great
story, there's usually a reallyfascinating person behind it.
Max Chopovsky (48:25):
Speaking of great storytellers, Malcolm Gladwell
being an obvious one, so is.
Rick Rubin Incredible.
He's one of his stories andhe's a.
He would be the kind ofinterview subject that wouldn't
let you get away with shit.
Like Mark Marin interviewedRick Rubin on his podcast and
Rick Rubin just had his way withhim because Marin would try to
say something that you know wasmaybe a little bit of a stretch
(48:46):
or trying to identify with RubinRubin's like no, like that's
not actually correct and I waslike damn.
Eddie Alterman (48:52):
And Malcolm is, is very agreeable, but Rick is
not.
Rick is, you know, these are mythoughts and tastes and ideas
and that's all I've got, whereas, you know, malcolm is a true
journalist whose ideas changewhen new facts come in.
And Rick is not that way.
But I don't know.
Rick.
Personally, I just know howlateral of a thinker Malcolm is
(49:15):
and how exceptional his brain is.
Yeah, he's one of a kind.
Max Chopovsky (49:19):
It's rare, so tell me this what is one of your
favorite books that just nailsthe art of storytelling?
Eddie Alterman (49:28):
You know Gatsby.
Gatsby is the, to me, theultimate 20th century novel.
Everything is in there, All thelonging, and it's only like
10,000 words long.
It's like a novella or a longmagazine piece, but it's got so
much in there and I just, youknow, I read it for the first
(49:51):
time when I was probably 12.
I read it occasionally.
I just think it's so economicaland so beautifully told and,
and you know I, there are a lotof people go, oh, that book
shitty, I just don't see it.
I think it's incredible and Ilove it and I love it.
I love it, Maybe irrationally,you know, like I'm a sucker for
Stanley Kubrick movies, butthose aren't exactly.
(50:13):
You know feeds of economicstorytelling, but you like what
you like.
You know what I mean.
Max Chopovsky (50:19):
Yes, the great Gatsby, which is 10,000 words
divided into 20 sentences.
Eddie Alterman (50:29):
That's right, but I mean it's the whole human
condition as we experience ittoday.
To me, and that's what's soremarkable about it I don't have
any obscure title to land you.
No management book I thinkGatsby is is contains multitudes
.
Max Chopovsky (50:46):
Yeah, and what's crazy is how much it stands the
test of time.
Eddie Alterman (50:52):
Yeah, a jazz age novel, but it's really kind of
timeless.
Max Chopovsky (50:57):
Totally Because the human condition right, I
mean the world can change, butthat doesn't change the things
that we struggle with and thinkabout.
Exactly, man, this was so muchfun.
This was so much fun.
Eddie Alterman (51:10):
Great talking to you, Max.
Thank you for indulging me.
Max Chopovsky (51:13):
You too, man Eddie Alterman, car fiend and
wizard of penmanship.
Thank you for being on the show.
Thank you, my friend, For shownotes and more.
Head over to Mosspodorg.
Find us on Apple Podcasts,Spotify, wherever you get your
podcast on.
This was Moral of the Story.
(51:34):
I'm Max Tropowski.
Thank you for listening.
Talk to you next time.
This is Moral of the Story Interest in people
telling their favorite shortstories and then breaking them
down to understand what makesthem so good.
I'm your host, Max Chopovsky.
Today's guest is Eddie Alterman, the chief brand officer of
Hearst Autos, which publishesCar and Driver, road and Track,
auto Week and other autopublications for auto
enthusiasts or, let's be honest,fanatics.
(00:24):
Eddie was born in HuntingtonWoods, michigan, a suburb of
Detroit that is, by proximityalone, deeply connected to cars
and the stories that come withthem.
As a young kid, eddie gained alove of cars from his father, a
diehard car enthusiast whotaught Eddie that a car isn't
just a car, it's a story, acollection of memories, like the
1950 Buick that reminds him ofthat heady time we call
(00:46):
adolescence, or the JaguarE-Type, full of stories about
his racing heroes and timelessdesign.
Eddie remembers their first car.
Eddie's was a 1988 VW Golf,Mine was a 1992 Toyota Corolla.
Incidentally, just like Eddie'sdad, we associate each of our
cars with the stage in our liveswhen we owned it.
(01:06):
The car is forever intertwinedwith the memories, the physical
with the spiritual.
Perhaps the most powerful carlesson Eddie's father imparted
was that, at the end of the day,more than anything else.
Cars are more than a pile ofmetal and leather.
They are the conduits to ourmemories and, as such, they are
deeply a part of our psyche.
(01:26):
Eddie would go on to absorb thislesson in a big way, while
outside of school, his happyplace was behind the wheel.
In school, he preferred the oldfashioned way of storytelling
with a pen and paper, and henurtured his love of both at the
University of Michigan,pursuing a BA in English while
working his first job atAutomobile Magazine, where he
began as a motor gopherresponsible for maintaining test
(01:49):
cars.
He continued to hone hisstorytelling skills as a copy
editor at Automobile Magazineand learned the power of great
editing at the New York Times,where he's been a frequent
contributor, penning gems withsuch fantastic titles as when
life hands you lemons, drivethem.
His platform grew in 2009 whenEddie was named editor-in-chief
(02:11):
at Car and Driver, the world'slargest automotive publication,
and 10 years later he waselevated to chief brand officer
of parent company Hearst Autos,responsible for the editorial
and business strategies of theentire portfolio.
But don't think that Eddiegrabbed that corner office down
to Blazer and hung up the keys.
Oh no, the self-described carfreak spends no less time on the
(02:31):
road, for most people a placeto tune out, but for him a place
to tune in All the way in Hisideal drive off into the sunset,
so to speak, is the coastalbeauty of a road trip from LA to
Big Sur.
Well, technically the sunsetwould be on your left, but you
get the point.
And although Eddie may still beadjusting to being an empty
nester, perhaps his silverlining is a bit more driveway
(02:55):
space for a few more automotivestory vehicles.
Eddie, welcome to the show man.
Eddie Alterman (03:01):
Thank you, max.
Great, great intro.
I mean I was tearing up there.
That was a great little drivedown memory lane.
There was one gap that I'd liketo exploit here, one career
phase you didn't hit on.
That is core to this story thatI'm about to tell.
Max Chopovsky (03:20):
I love it Well, hit on that gap, if you would,
sir.
Eddie Alterman (03:23):
Okay, so after Automobile Magazine, I left to
start a magazine with AmericanMedia which was owned by David
Pecker, and you might rememberhim from the Trump catch and
kill stories.
So he was the publisher of MPH,which was the sort of Ladmag
(03:45):
version of a car magazine thatwe started in 2004, and it had a
criminally short life.
But the story I'm about to tellmight give you some inclination
as to why.
So at the time there was reallythe internet, was very nascent
and it was all about carmagazines and we had just felt a
(04:08):
bunch of us who started MPH,guys from Car and Driver, guys
from Automobile we sort of feltlike the big major magazines
like Car and Driver and Road toTrack had gotten very ossified
and very stale and verycomplacent and so we were the
proverbial rocket up their ass.
We were like the maxim of carmagazines, a little bit of spy
(04:30):
magazine, if you remember that,a little bit of the irreverence
of 1960s Car and Driver.
But we were always looking totake the piss and it was really
the two most irresponsible yearsof my adult life.
It was really fun, it was great, it ended in tears but led to
some good things.
But car magazines and thechallenge that we had set for
(04:52):
ourselves at MPH was to dothings differently.
We didn't want to have theseven car comparison test in
Ohio with the boring picture ofthe five sensible sedans.
We wanted to mix it up, and tome great automotive writing is
sort of like great sportswriting.
(05:13):
The same thing happens over andover again One team wins, one
team loses.
You drive a car, you tellpeople how it is, the great
writers dramatize it in a wayand put the car in a context
that really reveals a lot aboutit.
So we were always trying to dooutrageous stuff and we had a
(05:37):
Subaru Justi.
Do you remember that car?
It sort of fell into ourpossession by extra legal means
and we would take that car andattempt every automotive myth on
it, like if you put baloney onthe paint, does it take it off?
If you put sugar in the gastank, what happens?
If you put in a tug of war withthe Hummer, what happens?
(05:58):
And that was ultimately whatled to its demise.
But we had done a lot of reallystupid things and I remember
when the Hummer H3 came out, wedid a story about off-roading in
the suburbs.
We would drive, findoff-roading opportunities in
suburban areas, and that meant,like you know, those areas in
(06:23):
off-ramps that are all wooded onthe highway.
We'd go in there.
We had a rock crawlingchallenge in the lumber yard, so
that was fun, but it was aboutputting the car in a hilarious,
cool context and doing it insort of an outrageous and
unexpected way.
And so the year is 2000, late2004.
(06:47):
And two of the most significantcars are about to hit the
market the 2005 Porsche 911, the997 series, and then the 2005
Corvette Chevrolet Corvettewhich was called the C6
internally and so these carshave been going up against each
(07:11):
other for 40 years.
They were kind of the dominantsports cars and it was rare that
their launches or new versionsof them happened at the same
time.
So we had to come up with anidea that really totally knocked
it out of the park and we werekind of scratching our heads
what do we do with these thingsthat hasn't been done before?
And then I remember my friend,al Okay, al, I'm not going to
(07:36):
say his last name, but Al was ahilarious guy, huge brain, very,
very easy player and lived alifestyle of leisure, a
privilege guy, and he lived inNew York City and he once told
me you know, because we weretalking about driving in New
(07:56):
York and how difficult it is andhow stressful it is he goes no,
no, no, no, no.
New York's the best city todrive in.
You just have to know where todo it and when to do it.
And then he proceeded to tellme about how he had just crashed
his father's SL, driving itthrough Central Park at 3am.
What?
And he was hauling ass aroundyou know that ring road around
(08:18):
Central Park, yeah, and allthose kind of interstitial roads
under the bridges.
Well, he had lost control ofthe SL and smacked into a bridge
abutment.
And his dad's reaction to himtaking the car out at 3am and
driving it around Central Parkwas no, no, no, al, that's what
the M6 is for, not the SL.
(08:40):
He was mad that he had chosenthe wrong car.
So Al is a hilarious, great,great guy and lived life to the
fullest, sucked the mirror oflife, and I thought well, this
is our venue, this is going tobe where we take these two cars
and drive them.
And there was no thought ofpermits, no thought of well,
(09:04):
maybe this isn't a good idea.
Maybe we should check with themagazine's legal department.
None of that.
We just called up our friendsin the PR departments of
Chevrolet and Porsche, pitchedthe idea to them and they're
like, when do you need the carthere?
And they love the idea.
So we actually kind of set itup and thought, well, this is
(09:25):
going to happen.
And Dan Pond, who worked withme at Car and Driver and now
works at Road and Track great,great guy.
We went to New York Food in NewYork, picked up the cars in
Manhattan garage and just sortof sat and waited until the city
died down.
It was, I don't think, aWednesday night.
We had gotten sort of a lastmeal at what's that great
(09:49):
Chinatown old Chinatownrestaurant, I can't remember the
name of it, it was just onbillions and we were just sort
of like waiting until we couldstrike, until our moment was
right, okay, and we were stayingup and staying up, and we had a
photographer with us and he wasnapping in preparation for the
shoot, and so it's about 2.30and we say, okay, yeah, let's
(10:13):
find our spot, and we drive thetwo cars to the gate or the
in-road to the park, I think at72nd and it would be fifth on
the east side.
Okay, and we're sort of settingup this shot of the two cars.
You know.
We wanted the shot to tell thestory, the opening shot of the
(10:35):
thing of the story, to sort ofrelay what was going on here.
So we set the two cars up, kindof pointed at each other, right
in front of these two NYPD bluesaw horses you know that were
marking off the entrance to thepark.
Like don't come in here, thepark is closed, right.
So we're sitting at the shot,we've got the shot done, we're
(10:56):
lighting it, we're trying to beas discreet as possible and
we're trying to not attract any,any attention.
And it's 2.30 in the morning.
We figure, okay, this is fine,this is like we're going to pull
this off.
And as we're done with the shotand we're getting ready to drive
through the park, I startpulling one of the saw horses
back and I hear whoop, whoop,whoop and I'm like oh, oh, shit.
(11:20):
So we spent all this money toget here.
We promised the PR guys at thecompanies that we were going to
do the story and now it'scollapsing like in milliseconds,
right.
And I'm like oh, shit, shit,shit.
Just just act.
Naturally, dan, just be cool.
Like just stain your car, don'tget out and I walk up to the
(11:42):
cops and the guy jumps out ofthe car with like incredible
ferocity.
I'm like I'm going to fuckingjail.
And he runs over to me, he goesIs that the new fucking van?
And I was like, why, yes, sir,why, yes, officer, this is would
you like to see it?
And he's like, oh, my God, thisis beautiful.
And I'm like, would you like toget in?
(12:03):
He's like, oh, this is thegreatest, I'm going to order one
of these.
And he's like he is so takenwith the car and what's
happening in that moment that hedoesn't realize, or he doesn't,
or he turns a blind eye, Ishould say, to what we're
actually doing.
And he is asking us questionsabout the car.
(12:27):
We're becoming friends.
We're telling him what's goingon, we're telling him what we're
doing, who we are and wherewe're from.
He doesn't ask for permits, hedoesn't ask for anything.
He's just like enjoy yourevening, gentlemen.
And then we were done and wegot the story done and I think
there's some, some morals here.
But I just I wanted to sharethat because it's one of my
(12:48):
favorite stories and at the veryleast it proves that if you
have a bad idea, sometimes youshould go for it, but that's not
the real moral.
Max Chopovsky (12:59):
Well, I have countless questions before we
get into those.
We just went to on a Disneycruise a few months ago and
there was a guy wearing a shirton the boat that I was like I
must acquire this shirt, nomatter where I'm going to get it
, no matter how I can get it.
His shirt was.
That's a terrible idea, whenand where.
(13:24):
That's what this was right.
I mean literally.
That's how so many greatstories start.
Eddie Alterman (13:30):
We were too stupid to know that we couldn't
do it.
You know, yeah, I mean so didyou end up actually driving?
Them through the park, Did thewhole thing and Al was right, it
was an incredible drive and weturned it into like a big 10
page print story that was calledMidnight Run and we documented
the whole thing.
Probably another dumb idea.
Max Chopovsky (13:51):
So that's also one of my questions Did the
people that gave you the greenlight at Chevy and Porsche keep
their jobs?
Because I don't see how theygreen light something like this
without even asking a singlequestion.
Eddie Alterman (14:04):
Oh my God.
Well, these were differenttimes, but they got in so much
trouble when we felt so bad.
And my buddy Joe over at GM's,like you know, you've gotten me
almost fired like four times andI was like, yeah, but like look
at all the stories we didtogether.
They were all great and thisone was like it turned out to be
a feather in his cap.
Max Chopovsky (14:22):
Oh, my God, this is the capstone that kind of
story is the capstone.
Totally so.
How much trouble did you getinto when the story went live?
Eddie Alterman (14:32):
Well they were concerned with other things.
I think we flew so under theradar with that magazine that
you know they didn't even noticeit.
I don't think anybody read it.
It was great, it was glorious.
We're in our own little bubbleof delusion.
Max Chopovsky (14:46):
I mean that is literally the definition of
glorious.
Explain this to me how Did youthink that you were not going to
get caught Like?
What was the rationale in yourminds around that?
Eddie Alterman (15:02):
I mean, I think I was nervous and I thought
maybe there's some plan B wherewe drive it someplace else or we
do something else.
But it wouldn't have been asgood of a story.
You know, I was sort ofstupidly overconfident in those
days and just was such an ardentbeliever in what we were doing.
You know how sometimes youcreate your own sort of reality
(15:24):
and your own truth because youbelieve so deeply in what you're
doing that people can tell youthat's not a good idea and you
don't believe them.
And that's sort of where I was,that's where my headspace was
at that time.
Max Chopovsky (15:39):
I mean, if I'm being honest, I think that a lot
of the greatest accomplishmentsin history across industries
happened because the peopleperpetrating those crimes, so to
speak, were just young and dumband they just didn't know any
better.
Like, being naive in thosecircumstances is actually a
(16:02):
strength, because if you talk tothose people and you say to
them, if you could do it again,would you?
They would say, oh hell, no,not knowing what I know now,
that shit was crazy.
Eddie Alterman (16:14):
Right, it was a moment that barometric pressure
was correct.
You know, your LDL cholesterolwas low.
There were a thousand thingsthat fed into it, the moment
being just right, you know, andthat was one of them.
How fast did you go through thepark?
You know what?
We got up to a pretty sickeningspeed.
(16:36):
That's a great road and it isthe best place to drive in
Manhattan.
I don't know what we were doingon this pedometer, but it was
dark, it was late at night, wewere driving through horseshit
and with the photographers headout of the sunroof, but at the
same time, it was just like youimagine that, the freedom of it.
You know, when you're in yourearly 30s and you've got two
(17:00):
sports cars that haven't comeout yet, the most hotly
anticipated sports cars in theworld, and they weren't a
dealer's guy and we had them,and we're driving around Central
Park for our job.
Critical distinction you aregetting paid to do this.
Yes, exactly, I shudder at thethought of it.
Max Chopovsky (17:21):
You're talking about the road that's inside the
park, that the horses go on thehorse carriages and people run
and ride their bikes.
Eddie Alterman (17:29):
Yeah, and bikes are there, there are taxis on
that road.
You know there's stop lights onthat road, which we obeyed.
By the way, we weren't going tobreak that law, we obeyed the
stop lights.
But no, it was really fun andwe saw.
You know, we went around thereservoir.
It wasn't very well lit, but itwas drivable and it was great
(17:50):
and we didn't crash.
We didn't smash a thing into abridge abutment like Al did.
Max Chopovsky (17:56):
Well, that's because you didn't get out the
M6.
Eddie Alterman (17:58):
That could have been the worst, we had the right
cars for it is the point wedidn't have, like you know, some
doddering SL, like some oldman's SL.
Max Chopovsky (18:08):
So in Chicago there's a highway known as the
Kennedy which runs from O'Hareto the Loop, and there are these
express lanes that changedirections, that run between the
regular eastbound and westboundlanes, and there is now there's
construction, but back when thelanes would actually sort of
(18:30):
switch between inbound andoutbound, I feel like there was
almost an art form around timingyour entrance to those lanes to
avoid all the traffic in themain lanes, and I went down so
many rabbit holes Googling ifthere's a schedule for these
lanes to open up or not, becauseI really wanted to get in those
lanes, not just because I hatetraffic but also because how
(18:55):
cool would it be to be in thoselanes when everyone around you
is stopped.
And, needless to say, none ofthat information is publicly
available.
If it were, then thosescheduled open times or switch
times would be complete parkinglots and it's.
It got so bad with peoplecutting into the express lane
entrance right before theentrance that they started to
(19:17):
post state troopers there,because people would get out of
their cars.
They get into fights becausethey're the left lane of the
inbound Kennedy gets backed upfor a mile beforehand Right.
So I used to drive a G35 coupe.
Eddie Alterman (19:33):
It was a six speed V6, great car, infinity
G35 S was an.
Max Chopovsky (19:41):
S.
I don't think there was an Sdesignation at the time.
It was just I know what you'retalking about the next
generation of the car, when itgot a lot curvier.
Yeah, yes, correct.
So this is, this was the G35.
This is 2005.
And I love that car and you'reright, it was a nice little six
cylinder engine it was.
(20:02):
You know, it had just enoughkind of get up and go to for you
to have some fun, and we livedin the city at the time and so I
didn't, you know, have a lot ofchances to actually experience
the wonderful acceleration, thatall of that torque and I say
that with sarcasm that all ofthat torque, the engine, the
torque that it provided One timeI was coming into the city and
(20:24):
the way that the express laneswork is.
There's a sign that shows thatthe express lanes are open or
closed, and then there are thesemultiple sort of arms and
obstacles that they just sort ofremove these little gates that
automatically get moved as thelanes are opening and traffic
was terrible coming into thecity and as I was coming in,
right as I was going past theclosed entrance, I saw the gates
(20:49):
start to open.
So I swerved into the entrance,just barely missing those big
yellow tanks filled with sand.
And I took off and I got up toit had to be over a hundred in
those express lanes because Iknew for a fact for a fact.
(21:11):
There was nobody in front of me, like it was completely open.
And there is a part where, oncethey straighten out, they sort
of stay straight for a couple ofmiles.
And that's where I gunned it.
And I looked to my right I justglanced to my right briefly it
was a parking lot.
I looked to my left and it wasa parking lot and I opened all
the windows and the sunroof andI turned up the music and I was
(21:33):
like this may never happen againand because of that I'm gonna
push the envelope a little bit.
It's one of my favorite drivingmemories because that's one of
those things that, like you knowto your point, the barometer
was right, the LDL was justright and I was like this is
incredible.
I'll never forget it.
Eddie Alterman (21:51):
And I haven't those moments of just pure
freedom where you're in command,there's no autonomous anything,
there's no lane keeping,there's no advanced driver
safety, it's just you in the car, driving it to its peak as fast
as situations will allow, asfast as circumstances will allow
(22:14):
.
There's something justbeautiful and free about that,
and everybody should experienceit that once in their life.
Once in their life, yeah, atleast once, if not every week or
every day.
Max Chopovsky (22:28):
Well, most people don't get paid to do crazy shit
like that.
Eddie Alterman (22:31):
Right, right, I've calmed down quite a bit.
You know this was at adifferent company.
As I said, two mostirresponsible years of my life,
mph.
We had, you know, we had amascot.
We had a pet monkey that livedat the next door office but
would come over occasionally andit was an animal house
(22:51):
atmosphere and we may havegotten away from ourselves Like
an actual pet monkey.
Yeah, there was a pet monkeywho's very, very cute and he was
on the masthead of the magazine.
I don't remember his name.
All monkeys are named bubbles,right?
Max Chopovsky (23:07):
I feel like that's about right, or, george?
Eddie Alterman (23:10):
I feel like George, right, george, something
like that Dan will remember.
But I have this great pictureof or Dan actually has a Dan pun
has this great picture of heand I that night sitting on the
hood of the 9-11, smoking, andyou know the youthful joy
(23:33):
permeates.
It was fun.
Max Chopovsky (23:37):
Yeah, it's the freedom, even when you don't
realize it.
The freedom of your youth issomething that is so precious
and so fleeting, and it'ssomething that's really hard to
recreate when you're older,because you have
responsibilities, but alsobecause you're kind of more
jaded, and it's really hard tosort of let go right.
So when you're young and youcan mash the pedal, so to speak,
(24:02):
without really thinking throughall the ramifications, there's
something so intoxicating aboutthat.
Eddie Alterman (24:09):
Yeah, when you're older, you know all the
consequences.
You know how bad it can go.
You think in three dimensions.
When you're younger, you'relike oh man this is the best.
I'm just gonna pursue thefeeling.
I'm just going after thefeeling, Totally that's exactly
right.
Max Chopovsky (24:27):
I mean to your point.
There is something so magicalabout being out there with a car
and, all of a sudden, justseeing the road open up, like
you've ever been in the leftlane and all the people in front
of you just merge to the middlelane and you're like thank you,
God.
Eddie Alterman (24:45):
Or you find yourself on a twisty two-lane
mountain road and there's nobodythere and the road is perfect
and the day is clear, and I justlive for those moments.
The right car, the right roadphenomenal.
The right car, the right road.
Max Chopovsky (25:02):
Oh my God, yeah.
So, as you think about thatcrazy ass story that you told,
what are some of the morals thatcome to mind?
Eddie Alterman (25:12):
Okay, the first one is that there is a
difference between the illegaland the immoral, and what we
were doing was illegal.
I mean, we had a copsanctioning it, so maybe that
was a permit in and of itself.
Cop told us, to resolve theevening for its best tidings.
Max Chopovsky (25:35):
Is that how you rationalize what just happened?
Because I feel like that wasn'tan actual sanction.
That was just him being happythat you let him sit in an
unreleased car and then goingand then looking the other way.
Eddie Alterman (25:45):
He was being super cool and, yes, we were
committing an illegal act.
I checked the statute oflimitations on something like
that and we're well clear of it,so we're fine.
But it was not an immoral act.
It was two professionalsengaged in the faithful service
(26:07):
of their job, trying to get agreat story for the readers.
Okay, and I think there is amorality in that.
There's a morality in pushingthe bounds of legality for
something that is ethical andpure and true.
And that's what we were doingand that's my rationalization.
Max Chopovsky (26:29):
Your justification is market leading.
Also, I don't disagree.
Eddie Alterman (26:35):
Okay, so right.
So you know there's adifference between what the laws
are and what human morality isand human ethics are.
And we were sacrificing ourlicenses, our reputations, our
jobs for the reader, and I thinkthat's the noblest pursuit in
journalism.
Disagree if you will, butthat's one takeaway.
(26:58):
That's one moral of the story.
The other is cars bring peopletogether.
I was an adversary to the cop,the cop was an adversary to me.
We were positioned against eachother in this game, but the
corvette broke that down.
(27:18):
The corvette allowed us to sharean experience.
It was the first corvette thisguy had ever seen, first new one
he'd ever seen, and he got tosit in it, yeah, and he got to
ask questions about it frompeople who knew what it was
about.
And the fact that we had thosecars there that nobody had ever
(27:39):
seen, I think, gave us a sort ofcredibility with him.
You know, these guys must beokay if they've got access to
this stuff.
Right.
They can't be completemiscreants, they can't be total
criminals.
It has to be something torecommend them, the fact that
they got access to this.
(27:59):
So that access gave us a lot ofpull, but the car did all the
work.
The car broke down, this guy'sdefenses and I think if somebody
had a Honda Accord trying to dothe same thing he would have
spent the night in jail.
But the corvette saved us, the911 saved us and, you know, it
(28:22):
was only through the kind of thefullness of time that I
realized what a powerful momentthat was and just how important
the bonds are between car people.
Max Chopovsky (28:31):
As a plus, this was before the era of body cams,
so he had plausible deniability.
Eddie Alterman (28:39):
Exactly.
It was for somebody else tofind us and haul us in.
Max Chopovsky (28:43):
Yeah, he'd be like you know.
Eddie Alterman (28:45):
I didn't see those guys.
Max Chopovsky (28:47):
Yeah, I don't know what you're talking about.
Oh, that's smell of newChevrolet Corvette leather.
Oh, my clothes.
Eddie Alterman (28:53):
Oh, no, no.
Max Chopovsky (28:54):
Exactly?
What was your take on the twocars?
Which one were you a bigger fanof?
Eddie Alterman (29:01):
Well, it was sort of a great era for both of
those cars.
The 2005 911 was the secondwatercooled generation of that
car and the first watercooledgeneration so-called 996, was a
really, really good car and itwas better than the one that
(29:21):
preceded it in a lot of ways,but it sort of didn't feel like
a 911.
It was bigger inside, it,didn't?
It felt like sort of a new carBecause the 911 had the same
doors and same greenhouse sinceits inception up until 2000 when
that 996 came out.
(29:41):
So that 996 felt like asubstantially different
proposition, right.
But when the 997 came out in2005, it was like they had
stuffed some more 911 back intoit and they had made it feel
less feel and sound more like anolder 911, yet it was a newer
(30:02):
car and I felt like they hadmade a nice sort of correction
to the 996.
Now you drive a 996 now andthey're great.
You drive a 997 now and it'seven better.
But there was a lot of backlashagainst the 996 as not a true
911, more of a GT, and the 997addressed that, I think, in a
(30:23):
really, really positive way.
So I love that car.
The C6 Corvette was incredibletoo and it was really the second
generation of a big reinventionon that car as well.
But it was small, it was tidy,it was very sort of European
handling.
Compared to the C5, corvetteswere sort of lightly engineered,
(30:45):
big motors sort of spat out ofthe factory.
The C6 felt crafted, it feltlike it was really highly
engineered and it was great andthat became the basis for some
really excellent highperformance variants like the
Z06.
So those cars were.
(31:06):
They were pretty evenly matchedin a lot of ways and they
delivered a ton of satisfactionfor the enthusiasts.
But they were fundamentallydifferent too, like the Corvette
, front engine V8, the 911, rearengine flat six, and so they
were kind of as different ascould be in terms of layout but
(31:28):
evenly matched in terms of thekind of joy they delivered and I
loved them both.
I thought that the 911 wasfractionally better, sharper
handling.
I like the sounds, I like thefact that the engine was hung
out over the back axle.
I love the fact that they hadtried to make that water cooled
(31:48):
six sound, air cooled so youcould drive it without the you
know on sound and nowhere toshift on sound.
Those cars are like you don'tneed to put the radio on.
You just listen to them.
So I'm kind of a 911 guy asopposed to a Corvette guy.
But that Corvette was sweet andI could see the.
(32:09):
You know the love in the in thecop size.
Max Chopovsky (32:13):
Well, and the Corvette is phenomenal value
when compared to the Porsche.
Eddie Alterman (32:18):
Oh totally Totally.
It was like I don't know asequipped it was maybe
three-eighths of the price, no,five-eighths of the price, and
it's just always been such anincredible value.
But by the time the Corvettegot to the C5 and the C6, it was
a really, really great vehiclein its own right and I like both
of them.
It's hard to say.
(32:39):
I still remember how they feelthe 911, because it was steel
not fiberglass and some I thinkthere were maybe some SMC like
sheet molded compound panels onthat car, if I'm remembering
correctly.
But the 911 felt a littlestouter, felt more like you know
, this is an Autobahn cruiser,this thing can sit happily at
(32:59):
180 MPH all day, whereas the C6was like, yeah, maybe some parts
are going to fall off, but forour purposes in that sort of
relatively low-speed environmenton that course they were both
great.
They just they turneddifferently, they steered
differently.
But at the end of the day, youknow, you get that beautiful
(33:22):
singing V8 up front in theCorvette versus that churning,
whirring flat six in the 911,and two really, really great
ribs versus fillet Totally.
Max Chopovsky (33:36):
Totally.
That's actually a great analogy.
So when I turned 40, my wifegot me one of those, you know,
tickets to go race a few exoticsaround the track, and I think I
was telling you this.
It was it might have been likea Mercedes-Benz Cielago and then
a 488 GTB and then a GT3 RS.
And the GT3 RS there was onlyone or two of them, and so
(33:58):
everybody raced everything else.
And then there was this massiveline for this Porsche and they
started going down the line andoffering people two rides in one
of the other cars instead ofthe one ride they had remaining
in this Porsche, and the vastmajority of people declined that
.
Nope, because everybody right,they wanted to drive it.
And so the Porsche was my lastone that I drove around the
(34:19):
track, and so by then I startedto get a little bit more
familiar with it.
It's the Milwaukee mile raceway, but you kind of go through the
middle of it, so there's sometwists and turns there, and I
got a little bit morecomfortable with the raceway,
with the track, and so when Ifinally got into the Porsche and
I took it out, I felt like Iwasn't even close to reaching
(34:40):
its capabilities, like thisthing would hold on to the
corners.
Probably, you know, notsubstantially more than you know
the Lambo, the Ferrari, but itjust felt like it was so
different, so solidly attachedto the track, that I could do no
wrong.
It's incredible.
Eddie Alterman (34:57):
They are amazing in having the majority of the
weight over the driven wheels.
Max Chopovsky (35:02):
Yeah, of course.
Eddie Alterman (35:02):
Rear wheels.
That really helps the physicsof the whole thing.
But you know, 911s have alwaysbeen cars that you can drive to
the track.
Drive for a day on the track,correct, then replace the brakes
and tires and drive home andmaybe you don't even need to
replace the brakes the brakesare so good.
But there always has been thisreally, really strong linkage
(35:23):
between the track and the streetfor 911s and you know it's a
legacy of their sports carracing heritage.
And you know, when you get intoa machine like the GT3RS, it's
like it's beyond the racingversion in some ways.
You know, this new GT3RS thatthey've got has in-car
(35:46):
adjustability for the dampersthat the race car doesn't have.
Like, the technology is almosta step above the race car.
And you know they're incredible, incredible machines and very
much race honed and there's adegree of sensitivity.
To me, like sports cars are allabout sensitivity and how they
make you feel and the feedbackthey give you.
And the Porsche gives you adegree of feedback that you
(36:08):
really don't get anywhere else,not even a Ferrari, not even a
Lamborghini.
It's certainly not aLamborghini.
You know Lamborghini's aregreat for driving into walls and
stuff, but the Porsche isreally like a scalpel and the
body control is so phenomenal.
The transitional behavior is sogood and that's honed on a lot
of race weekends.
(36:28):
They're really, really great,great vehicles.
Max Chopovsky (36:32):
And I think that that extends maybe not as much
but certainly to an extent toall German cars, or at least
let's just take like Audi andBMW, like the one so I used to
have.
I used to only have Japanesecars, and then I ended up
getting a Q7 and then I ended upgetting an SQ7.
And like to your point the waythat that V8 sings.
(36:54):
I literally went down a rabbithole trying to figure out how to
turn off the valves, becausewhen you turn on the car the
valves are open and then theyclose, and so the best I could
find was you literally have toget a computer, like a piece of
hardware that plugs in to Idon't know if it's like the OBD
and it allows you to controlthose valves.
(37:16):
And there's something so crazyabout having a car that has a
third row that has like a 3.4second zero to 60.
Eddie Alterman (37:27):
I know it's a vehicle you can really drive
hard right and it shrinks downTotally.
Max Chopovsky (37:32):
We went to Wisconsin with the family and we
were close to Road America.
You know the track.
Eddie Alterman (37:37):
Great, great course.
We went up to that course,totally.
Max Chopovsky (37:41):
And I was like I would love to drive my car
around this course.
And I told them what kind ofcar I have and they were like oh
, it's an SUV.
They were like does it have athird row?
I was like yes, yeah.
I mean it's for infantsbasically is the size of that
third row.
They're like, I'm sorry, wecan't allow it because that is a
(38:01):
third row.
I'm like it's got a twin turboV8.
That is legendary and it putsout over 500 pound-feet of
torque.
I'm like, all right, there's athird row.
It's like really you kidding me?
Eddie Alterman (38:11):
Yeah, I mean, cars are products of their
environments, right, and youknow, the autobahn system is a
high-speed environment and theAlps are a high-speed
environment.
We do not have a mountain rangerunning through our country
laterally the way Europe does,right?
So the cars are just set up alittle bit differently.
(38:31):
And you know, yes, of course wehave the Appalachians and the
Rockies, but that doesn'tdominate the country the way
that the Alps dominate Europe.
And so the cars, you know,they're built for cruising here
and for long straight highways.
And it's rare that you get asports car like the Corvette
that truly is capable of supercar feats and has such
(38:54):
incredible handling and suchincredible control.
It's just sort of a differentenvironment.
And so, like, our three rowSUVs are not SQ7s, they're not
built for the Alps.
Max Chopovsky (39:07):
Has your opinion of the Corvette's capabilities
changed since the most recentmodel, the mid-engine one?
Eddie Alterman (39:13):
Oh, I mean, I've only kind of grown in my
respect for what they've done.
You know the current Corvettewhich switch from front engine
to mid-engine and they call thatthe C8, that is a legitimate
supercar and it's it's everydaydrivable.
This is the feat that they'veachieved, like they've really
created sort of an Americanversion of the McLaren 720S that
(39:36):
is comfortable every day butreally really hotheaded when you
, when you hammer on it.
And they've only done, you know, like the Z06.
And then there's, and the e-rayeven, and the coming ZR1 are
only going to get more extreme.
But the base car it's aneveryday supercar and that's
what it should be.
(39:56):
It's not trying to give you thekind of the 30 mile an hour
thrill that, like, a Ferrariwill give you and it doesn't
have the same sort of sing-songyflat-plane crank engine in the
base car but the Z06 has.
The Z06 is very much a Ferrarifighter Very, very strong,
(40:17):
incredible track car.
And it's amazing what GeneralMotors has done with that thing
and turned it into a legitimateworld power on the supercar
stage and it's just come a long,long way.
For sure it has.
Max Chopovsky (40:31):
Yeah, I mean that when I saw that in the Z8, you
can every time you know how youcan lower and raise the car
because it's so low to theground that if you go over a
speed bump you'll raise it andthen it tracks, using the GPS
coordinates, the part, the spotwhere you raised it, and then
it'll automatically raise itnext time.
Eddie Alterman (40:50):
It's so incredibly sophisticated in a
thousand different ways and youknow that small block V8 in the
base car is still going strongsince 1955, but they put a
totally different engine, anincredible dual overhead cam
engine in the Z06 that justscreams and it's flat-plane
crank like the European cars andit just sounds amazing.
(41:12):
And the Z06 is another level ofCorvette that we've really
never seen.
Max Chopovsky (41:19):
Yeah, totally.
You know.
I have to be honest, I wasnervous when we started this
episode that we would spend notime at all in the story and
instead go off on varioustangents about cars, and it has
fully lived up to that so far.
So, let's talk about the storyfor a minute.
So there's this other side toyou that is as talented as the
(41:42):
side that can discuss theintricacies of the various
generations of Corvettes, andthat's the side that is a
storyteller, a writer.
So you've written some reallycaptivating and engaging stories
in your day.
So what, in your mind, doreally good stories have in
(42:04):
common?
Eddie Alterman (42:06):
They involve the reader, they put the reader in
the action, and that's what wealways tried to do at automobile
, at MPH, at current drivers,put their butts in the seat,
bring the car to life in a coolway.
Don't ignore the sounds, thesmells, the stuff you're driving
(42:27):
by.
Ignore the errant thoughts thatcreep into your mind while
you're driving, because that'salmost the best time to think
about stuff is when you'redriving and you're your.
Your non conscious mind is sortof just driving the car and
your higher brain is free tothink about weird shit.
We put that all in.
(42:48):
Put in your crazy cockamamietheories, you know.
Humanize this thing and talkabout the benefit to the driver,
not just the features.
Create a story.
Pull people in Car journalism aspracticed by the greats like my
former boss and mentor, davidDavis Jr, and Brock Yates and
(43:11):
John Phillips, who I think ismaybe the best to ever do it.
You know these are newjournalism values.
Like before Tom Wolf, there wasDavid E Davis Jr doing the
thing, living the thing.
Before George Clinton wrotepaper lion, there was David E
Davis driving the car andtelling you a story, and that,
(43:32):
to me, is still my North Starand it's about connecting with
people and making something thatis rare and and special and
only you get to douniversalizing it, making it
something that other people canshare in because, look, cars
have two seats.
For a reason, you want to sharethat experience with somebody
(43:54):
and that's what we're soprivileged to do as automotive
writers is bring those storiesback.
It's not just a car, it's anexperience and for, as you said,
you know you're so bonded toyour cars, max.
You know they're the placeswhere you do your living and we
get to bring those to people andthat's a privilege and got to
(44:15):
take it seriously.
So that's always been what'sgot in me.
I always thought of cars asgreat human stories, great
conduits for travel, great.
You know, david E, my mentor,used to say we take interesting
cars to interesting places andtalk to interesting people when
we get there, and that's prettymuch as good as it gets in terms
(44:39):
of an ethos.
Max Chopovsky (44:42):
Totally, that's pristine, I will say not all
cars have two seats.
There is a certain McLaren thathas one seat, right in the
center, and that is anexperience you're destined to
have by yourself.
Eddie Alterman (44:54):
That one has to the speed tail you're talking
about.
I don't remember which month.
Max Chopovsky (44:59):
I think the F1.
Eddie Alterman (45:00):
The F1 you're, you're in the center position,
but there are two outboard seats.
But there's a great line.
My friend, johnny Lieberman I'msure you've heard of him if
you're into cars, because he's abig personality he was talking
about that single seat Ferrarithat just came out and he said
you know, I've got one seat,don't you?
I said no because because ifyou're rich enough to afford
(45:21):
this thing, you have no friends.
Max Chopovsky (45:27):
But there to be shared.
Eddie Alterman (45:28):
There to be shared, Of course always.
Max Chopovsky (45:31):
So you gave me a couple of morals for your story
that you've told, but do youthink that every story has to
have a moral?
And if it doesn't, is it stilla story worth telling?
Eddie Alterman (45:43):
Absolutely, absolutely, yeah.
Morals, no morals, stories arethe things that allow us to make
sense of the world, and that'show we, our brains, are
organized.
You know, narrative and storiesare everywhere and they're
great.
Max Chopovsky (46:00):
Totally.
It's funny how that's how weused to pass knowledge on from
generation to generation andsort of the fallacy of
storytelling which is memoriesaren't perfect and stories
evolve over time.
I feel like it's almostbecoming its strength because
since the stories evolve overtime, they can morph and become
(46:21):
even more engaging.
Eddie Alterman (46:22):
if if more truthful, In a way right More
true Like the details becomemore false, but the point of it
becomes stronger and more truein the telling.
Max Chopovsky (46:33):
Oh, that's interesting.
Yeah, you just focus on thesort of takeaway and you know if
you have to embellish it alittle bit to really make it hit
that much harder.
Exactly, it's the value.
I mean, maybe over time, whenyou keep telling that story that
you told there could be morethan one cop, maybe at some
point it'll evolve into a chase.
Yeah, that's the best of myrecollection.
Eddie Alterman (46:52):
What I told.
I don't know if it's 100% trueDan will fact check me on it but
that's how I remember it,that's how I like to remember it
and that's what makes me feelgood when I tell it.
But you know, we got away withmurder.
Max Chopovsky (47:07):
You kind of did Now.
You talked about what makes fora good story, what makes for a
good storyteller.
Eddie Alterman (47:14):
I think it is an eye for detail, even if the
details are wrong.
I think it's.
You know, a great storytellerhas an innate charisma and it
extends to more than juststorytelling and you know an
idea for structure and how tokeep people engaged and choice
of words.
All these.
This is the great thing aboutstories is that the great ones
(47:36):
have so many elements and pacingand twists and turns.
And the great storytellers Iwill guarantee you they're good
at other things, not just goodat storytelling.
They're great at life usuallyand I was listening to the
Broken Record podcast with RickRubin and Malcolm Gladwell when
they were interviewing RobbieRobertson the late Robbie
(47:59):
Robertson of the band and he'ssuch a powerful, incredible
storyteller and his nuance andhis details and his word choice
are just so great.
You're like this is just aspecial human being, like he's
good at everything he does.
You know, and I think thatcomes out when you hear a great
story, there's usually a reallyfascinating person behind it.
Max Chopovsky (48:25):
Speaking of great storytellers, Malcolm Gladwell
being an obvious one, so is.
Rick Rubin Incredible.
He's one of his stories andhe's a.
He would be the kind ofinterview subject that wouldn't
let you get away with shit.
Like Mark Marin interviewedRick Rubin on his podcast and
Rick Rubin just had his way withhim because Marin would try to
say something that you know wasmaybe a little bit of a stretch
(48:46):
or trying to identify with RubinRubin's like no, like that's
not actually correct and I waslike damn.
Eddie Alterman (48:52):
And Malcolm is, is very agreeable, but Rick is
not.
Rick is, you know, these are mythoughts and tastes and ideas
and that's all I've got, whereas, you know, malcolm is a true
journalist whose ideas changewhen new facts come in.
And Rick is not that way.
But I don't know.
Rick.
Personally, I just know howlateral of a thinker Malcolm is
(49:15):
and how exceptional his brain is.
Yeah, he's one of a kind.
Max Chopovsky (49:19):
It's rare, so tell me this what is one of your
favorite books that just nailsthe art of storytelling?
Eddie Alterman (49:28):
You know Gatsby.
Gatsby is the, to me, theultimate 20th century novel.
Everything is in there, All thelonging, and it's only like
10,000 words long.
It's like a novella or a longmagazine piece, but it's got so
much in there and I just, youknow, I read it for the first
(49:51):
time when I was probably 12.
I read it occasionally.
I just think it's so economicaland so beautifully told and,
and you know I, there are a lotof people go, oh, that book
shitty, I just don't see it.
I think it's incredible and Ilove it and I love it.
I love it, Maybe irrationally,you know, like I'm a sucker for
Stanley Kubrick movies, butthose aren't exactly.
(50:13):
You know feeds of economicstorytelling, but you like what
you like.
You know what I mean.
Max Chopovsky (50:19):
Yes, the great Gatsby, which is 10,000 words
divided into 20 sentences.
Eddie Alterman (50:29):
That's right, but I mean it's the whole human
condition as we experience ittoday.
To me, and that's what's soremarkable about it I don't have
any obscure title to land you.
No management book I thinkGatsby is is contains multitudes
.
Max Chopovsky (50:46):
Yeah, and what's crazy is how much it stands the
test of time.
Eddie Alterman (50:52):
Yeah, a jazz age novel, but it's really kind of
timeless.
Max Chopovsky (50:57):
Totally Because the human condition right, I
mean the world can change, butthat doesn't change the things
that we struggle with and thinkabout.
Exactly, man, this was so muchfun.
This was so much fun.
Eddie Alterman (51:10):
Great talking to you, Max.
Thank you for indulging me.
Max Chopovsky (51:13):
You too, man Eddie Alterman, car fiend and
wizard of penmanship.
Thank you for being on the show.
Thank you, my friend, For shownotes and more.
Head over to Mosspodorg.
Find us on Apple Podcasts,Spotify, wherever you get your
podcast on.
This was Moral of the Story.
(51:34):
I'm Max Tropowski.
Thank you for listening.
Talk to you next time.
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