VIDEO: NBC Nightly News Monday (3/15) on Jim "Runaway Prius" Sikes

After a week of media hyperventilation, it's nice to see solid reporting that prioritizes the salient facts.

NBC Nightly News' coverage of Monday's Toyota news conference played up the most telling fact...that instead of braking as hard as he could, the evidence suggests Jim Sikes may have been riding the brakes on his Prius...off and on the gas and brakes as much as 250 times during his alleged unintended acceleration incident a week ago.

And, they actually interviewed someone who knows something about cars and drivers...former Car and Driver editor-in-chief Csaba Csere.

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ABC has grasped the significance of the 250 applications of the brake pedal, too...CBS makes no mention of it.

Why You Should Want To Review Cars

For 26 years, my favorite piece of automotive journalism has been Brock Yates' "Escape From Baja" in the July 1983 Car and Driver (you can download it as a full-color .pdf here...and you really should...scroll to the bottom of the linked page and click on the image).

I mean, really...what could be more fun than 9 frequently inebriated American writers and a photographer driving 8 midsize sedans through inhospitable territory, Biblical weather and (in the case of one of the cars) halfway through a cow before abandoning the trip...and more than $100,000 worth of loaned press vehicles...south of the border (where current press loan documents specifically forbid taking testers)?

Well, it's been a heck of a run, but Brock and the gang (including David E. Davis, Jr, Don Sherman, Jean Lindamood (Jennings),  Rich Ceppos, Larry Griffin, Csaba Csere and P.J. O'Rourke) have slipped to #2.

Not having BBC America, I missed Jeremy Clarkson's Top Gear review of the Ford Fiesta until Jalopnik posted it today. If you haven't seen it, trust me...it's worth the 11 minutes it will take to watch it...and the hour you'll spend watching it again with friends. It's epic automotive journalism and great TV.

David E. Davis Jr. Rejoins Car And Driver

Car and Driver's new editor-in-chief Eddie Alterman is on issue number two of his tenure...and he's continuing to hit all the right notes.

At his invitation, David E. Davis, Jr., who held that office twice in the 60s, 70s and 80s (both tenures widely considered to be the golden years of C/D) has returned as a columnist.

Davis is the father of modern automotive journalism, a true giant whose talents and instincts not only propelled Car and Driver to the top while he was at the helm, but provided sufficient momentum to keep C/D there for the 23 years since his departure to launch Automobile. His most recent venture was the online magazine Winding Road.

If you took everything Davis ever wrote in his life and put it in one volume, I'd read it all (most of it for the second or third time) and then urge you to do the same.

Davis says he's rejoining Car and Driver because it is the one car magazine with the ingredients needed to succeed.

Alterman's second issue (July, 2009) is yet another big step forward in putting Car and Driver back in gear, from a thought-provoking editor's column, to continued refinements in content and artwork (including the cleanest-looking cover in years).

Last month's appearance by former editor-in-chief Csaba Csere, kicking off a series on Certified Pre-Owned vehicles, appears to have been a one-shot...Tony Swan writes installment number two (on Porsche 911's)

DED, Jr.'s first column is in there, too...a brilliant piece on former General Motors chief Rick Wagoner and what might soon be the former General Motors. Go buy a copy. Then subscribe. This is going to be very good...at a time when we car folks need it most.

Car and Driver May 1964 (Vol 9 No 11)
Automobile, December 1988, Vol. 3, No. 9.

A New Day Dawns at Car and Driver

(Graphic originally created and posted by Jalopnik.)

Do you know this man? You will. It will be on his watch, most likely, that America's best car magazine (and once upon a time...say 1982-1985...I'd argue, America's best magazine, period) will either fade away or enter a new golden era.

I'm betting on the latter.

His name is Eddie Alterman. Never met him, never exchanged a single phone call or e-mail...but I've read his stuff over the years (MPG, Jalopnik) and he's good. Really good. He's the new editor-in-chief at Car and Driver, replacing Csaba Csere after a very long run.

It wasn't Csaba's fault, but a tremendous amount of decline occurred in the last few years. Cost-cutting as the general malaise in print hit Car and Driver resulted in some bad decisions (parting ways with the legendary Brock Yates, a highly-questionable re-design, an at least temporary dumbing down of the once brilliant writing that was a hallmark of C/D) that only accelerated the attrition of the faithful.

The June 2009 issue is Alterman's first, and while it's too early to tell much, there are some encouraging signs: The art and graphics are cleaning up, the brilliant and hilarious John Phillips has four pieces in this issue (after months where he was so low-profile that I was checking the masthead in fear that he'd been Yates'd) and Csaba himself is on-board with the first in a series on Certified Pre-Owned vehicles (apparently he no longer has access to the C/D press fleet).

But most encouraging is the tone Alterman himself sets in his introductory column. The two worst things that could have happened to this magazine would have been to hire someone with no sense of the history of Car and Driver or to hire someone who treated it like a museum...with blinders on as to where magazines (or whatever might replace magazines) are heading and a plan to get there first.

Alterman, in his late 30s, has hands-on experience with the web (which is no walk in the park...Winding Road has gone to a subscription model for its innovative .pdf edition, which rarely works for something that's been free for years, and The Truth About Cars has suggested recently that it's going to need to see some money from readers to stay afloat), but was raised by a father who read C/D religiously. Alterman not only knows who David E. Davis, Jr. is, he interned for him at Automobile. And he also knows from Leon Mandel, Don Sherman, William Jeanes and Karl Ludvigsen.

With archrivals Motor Trend and Automobile in trouble (parent company Source Interlink has filed for bankruptcy protection), Car and Driver has a unique opportunity to get very far out in front.

Go read Eddie's column online...then go down to Barnes & Noble and get one of the subscription cards out of the magazine and mail it in. A 2-year sub is 75 cents an issue (newstand price is $4.99). I'm betting you'll be renewing in 2011.