Aaron Severson (2025) recently criticized a number of automotive writers for attacking emissions regulations. This got me thinking about how we should view these writers — who are often considered some of the leading lights of the automotive media.
On Ate Up With Motor’s Patreon website, Severson (2025) wrote that his respect for scribes such as Brock Yates, Dick Langworth, Roger Huntington, Paul Frère and Eric Dahlquist “has really eroded” because they engaged in “obfuscation and evasion” in attacking emissions regulations.
This includes engaging in “whataboutism.” That is, arguing that “regulators have just arbitrarily picked on cars and motor vehicles out of some kind of ill-founded prejudice. They say, ‘But what about factories? What about backyard incinerators? What about people who smoke too much? Why doesn’t the government pick on THOSE and leave our cars alone?'”
Bad-faith arguments undercut public health
Most of Severson’s (2025) column presents data that shows the value of emissions controls. Along the way he debunks specific arguments, such as that “it was unfair for regulators to keep ‘moving the goalposts’ with tighter emissions controls.”
This is an important essay because it is an all-too-rare example of holding automotive journalists accountable. However, in doing so Severson (2025) doesn’t put himself on a pedestal. “I try — not always successfully, it must be said — not to hold it against people for being mistaken or ignorant. I make mistakes all the time, and there are many things I don’t know. However, I can’t abide bad faith, and that’s what this emissions whataboutism really is.”
Why should we care? Severson doesn’t say it, but I would argue that in their prime, these automotive writers tended to have real clout. When they attacked regulations, a whole bunch of people listened to them. That inevitably had consequences, such as in helping to elect anti-regulation politicians.
Severson (2025) quite rightly noted that what “burns me is the sheer contempt for public health and public welfare. Reducing emissions is not about trying to hit arbitrary numbers for no reason, as Lee Vinsel asserted about the Muskie act limits. Both smog and carbon monoxide emissions were real threats to public health, and in the ’50s and ’60s, those threats were both obvious and really dire.”
When is an automotive journalist a ‘hack’?
The main thing that gave me pause about Severson’s (2025) column was when he referred to “buff book hacks like the late Brock Yates or reactionaries like Dick Langworth.” To be clear, I wouldn’t classify either of them as in the same league as, say, a David Halberstam (1986). And as a group, I have never really considered automotive writers to be “real” journalists because they have tended to function more as a public relations arms of the industry rather than independent analysts.
Yates is a good example of the former. He had a penchant for playing the rabid attack dog against government regulations, particularly later in his career. Meanwhile, Langworth tended to toe the industry line on topics such as anti-trust policy — and he seemed to do it more as he aged.
Also see ‘The downside of auto historians writing about their friends’
That said, I am not inclined to be as dismissive of either as Severson appears to be. I thought Yates’ (1983) Decline and Fall of the American Automobile Industry offered unusually strong criticism of Detroit for an automotive writer of that era. And although Langworth could come off as conservative, he didn’t strike me as reactionary on automotive matters — and he wrote some decent car books. For example, Kaiser-Frazer: The Last Onslaught on Detroit (1975), may owe more to business journalism than scholarly historical analysis, but it is a far more substantive read than recent confections such as Patrick Foster and Tom Glatch’s The Complete Book of AMC Cars: American Motors Corporation 1954-1988 (2024).
In other words, Yates and Langworth were among the better automotive writers of their era. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be criticized — to the contrary. However, I think it is only fair to also acknowledge what they did reasonably well.
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RE:SOURCES
- Foster, Patrick R. and Tom Glatch; 2024. The Complete Book of AMC Cars: American Motors Corporation 1954-1988. Motorbooks, Beverly MA.
- Halberstam, David; 1986. The Reckoning. William Morrow & Co., New York, NY.
- Langworth, Richard M.; 1975. Kaiser-Frazer: The Last Onslaught on Detroit. Princeton Publishing, Princeton, NJ.
- Severson, Aaron; 2025. “Obfuscation and Evasion.” Ate Up With Motor (Patreon site). Posted Oct. 26.
- Yates, Brock; 1983. The Decline and Fall of the American Automobile Industry. Empire Books, New York, NY.
ADVERTISING & BROCHURES
- oldcaradvertising.com: Ford Motor Co. (1972); General Motors (1961)
Obviously OT, but from that GM ad I noticed for the first time how much sheet metal the BOP compacts shared. I didn’t notice that as a kid when they came out.
As an aside, I am a survivor of the 60s and remember the real smog problems, carbon monoxide, and lead emissions. I remember snow turning black, and the diesel stench.
I grew up in southern California during the 1960s. I don’t remember having health problems because of the air pollution, but I did find it depressing to see that thick blanket of smog when my parents were driving back into the L.A. basin from the nearby mountains.