Mike in Portland, Oregon, 1957. His 1955 VW, Gregor Samsa, stands patiently in the background. It’s the only picture he has of the car. Text and photos copyright Michael Lamm 2012
My parents fled Hitler in 1937. They weren’t allowed to take cash out of Germany, but both did bring their medical degrees. They settled in the very southern tip of Texas, and they chose that area basically for three reasons.
First, Texas was one of the few states that granted medical licenses to foreign graduates. Second, the Lower Rio Grande Valley struck my dad as exotic and romantic – citrus groves, cotton fields, hibiscus, bougainvillea, all very tropical. And third, the little town where they put down roots, La Feria, needed a doctor… actually two doctors, because my mother began practicing medicine after my sister and I became old enough to fend for ourselves.
Growing up, I assumed I’d follow in my parents’ footsteps. Everyone assumed that. My father, especially, made no secret of his wish that I would become a doctor.
When I finished high school in 1954, my dad packed me off to Reed, a small liberal-arts college in Portland, Oregon. He chose Reed because he believed it would give me the next-best thing to a classical European education – the sort that he and my mother had gotten in Germany between the wars.
I’d breezed through high school, so it came as a considerable shock when I had to struggle at Reed, especially in chemistry and math. La Feria hadn’t at all prepared me for those subjects. For example, I’d never so much as seen a periodic table, never read a passage from The Odyssey, didn’t know Cellini from Kandinsky. Those bits of knowledge were totally missing from the La Feria curriculum.
And while I now love science and have no problem with math, that wasn’t at all the case in my freshman and sophomore years at Reed. So in my junior year, I took the easy way out and switched majors, from pre-med to literature. My parents were crushed, and I felt terrible. I’d failed.
I did all right academically in my junior year, although all right is a relative term. That summer I met a girl from New York, followed her home (I’m leaving out a lot) and finished college at Columbia with a degree in English lit.
So why am I telling you all this, and what does it have to do with cars? Well, Reed didn’t issue parking permits to freshmen and sophomores, so in my first two years there, I had no car at all. In retrospect, being carless became crucial to my future career and the rest of my life, as you’ll see in a moment.
During those four semesters when I couldn’t own a car, I did a tremendous amount of reading about cars – everything I could lay my hands on. I subscribed to most of that day’s American auto magazines: Motor Trend, Road & Track, Motor Life, Hot Rod, Car Craft, Sports Cars Illustrated, Motorsport, etc., etc. And I read books by Ken Purdy, Griff Borgeson, Dan Post and Floyd Clymer… about all there was at the time.
Today, I’m sure that the profession I really wanted to go into was not medicine. My secret desire, unknown and unadmitted even to myself during those three years at Reed, was to somehow slip into automotive journalism. What I craved in my heart of hearts was to work for a car magazine.
Throughout high school and college, my literary idols weren’t Shakespeare or Joyce; they were Walt Woron and Bob Gottlieb. Woron was the founding editor of Motor Trend, and Gottlieb penned a monthly column in MT called “Classic Comments.” I once wrote to Walt Woron from Reed, suggesting that he hire me as a summer intern. I told him I’d gladly work for free. He didn’t answer.
As it turned out, and by a series of bizarre coincidences, I became managing editor of Motor Trend in late 1961 and held that position through 1965. I eventually met Walt Woron, and we became good friends. Walt is now in his 90s, lives in Southern California, and we still talk on the phone. He’s one of my most enduring heroes – a man of great inspiration, vision and abilities.
I also met Bob Gottlieb while I worked at Motor Trend. Bob was the company lawyer. He owned a stable of lovely antique and classic cars. Through “Classic Comments,” Bob pioneered and became instrumental in legitimizing the hobby of collecting and restoring cars. Both men had a very positive effect on the history of automobiles and, clearly, on me.
The Road to Vee Dubya Land
But back to Reed. There were a number of notable cars on campus in the mid 1950s. A fellow student, Morris Bol, who did become a doctor and professor of medicine, owned a like-new 1934 Ford cabriolet. Other interesting cars at Reed included a 1936 Cord 810, 1935 Packard dual-cowl phaeton, 1941 Lincoln Continental coupe with a flathead Cadillac V-8, and a mid-1920s Maxwell touring car that was owned by a female student who took cars seriously. In addition to the Maxwell, she drove an early Volkswagen – one of the few in the United States at that time. I studied the VW carefully and very much came to admire its simplicity, engineering, light weight and craftsmanship.
In 1956, at the beginning of my junior year at Reed, when I could finally have a parking permit, I lobbied my parents to let me buy a 1955 Volkswagen that I’d found on a Portland used car lot. New and used VWs were in short supply in 1956. If someone wanted a new one, he put down a deposit and waited six months. Used VWs were more readily available, but they cost nearly as much as new ones. I paid $1,300 for my 1955 Beetle (versus $1,600 for a new one) and was glad to get it. As it turned out, though, this particular VW had been wrecked and then expertly repaired, but I wouldn’t find that out until the next summer.
I loved my Beetle, partly because it was so totally different from anything I’d owned before: air-cooled aluminum engine in the rear, four-speed transaxle, all-independent torsion suspension, quick steering, responsive handling, good gas mileage, and what I really admired was how well it was put together. Build quality was every bit as good as Cadillac’s, this at a time when Cadillac really was the standard of the world. Okay, so the Veedub had only 36 horsepower, but it was so willing and maneuverable that it actually felt peppy. I named my car Gregor Samsa, after the large bug in Kafka’s The Metamorphosis (see how literary I’d become?).
Another thing that appealed to me was that the VW radiated the Reedian sort of anti-establishment counterculture. One thing Reed tried to pour into our spongy brains was not to accept the status quo; to question authority and society and to come to our own conclusions – not a bad pursuit even today.
Driving a VW in the late 1950s meant you were countercultural at best and a hippie degenerate at worst, and yet we owners observed a certain etiquette. For example, we’d wave to each other out on the road, a symbolic gesture that acknowledged a fellow counterculturalist. By waving, we were also congratulating ourselves for being, we thought, ahead of the curve – trendy, smart, cool, correct in our choice of automobiles and going a bit against the establishment grain. We were a cult, a self-selected select group, and being part of that group made us feel superior… I think there’s no other word for it.
That was part of the VW mystique at the time, and I very much bought into it. Keep in mind that I was 19 years old.
That summer, my best friend at Reed, Lowell Weitkamp, and I decided to pack my VW, drive up British Columbia to the Alcan Highway and take it as far north as we could go. Before we left, Lowell and I worked in the Yakima Valley for three weeks, thinning apples and picking cherries, and we made enough money to last the rest of the summer. We headed up British Columbia and camped by the side of the road, usually in lovely, totally deserted wilderness.
Canadian highways leading north at that time weren’t paved. Most had washboard gravel surfaces that turned out to be very hard on Gregor Samsa’s suspension. A thousand miles north of Yakima, near Dawson Creek, B.C., the lower front-suspension tube suddenly broke loose from the floorpan, and I had to get it welded back on. That’s when I found out about my VW’s previous wreck, and that’s when Lowell and I decided to turn around and cautiously make our way back to Portland. The Alcan Highway would have to wait.
The next summer, I drove Gregor down to Mexico City, and that’s where I met the girl from New York. I enrolled at Columbia University and, as a result, drove between Portland and Manhattan twice, shuttling my accumulated college stuff. I could make 750 miles a day in a VW with a top speed was 65 MPH, at a time when interstates didn’t exist, so you can judge how smitten I was.
At Columbia, I had an English professor who freelanced for Colliers. I asked him how I might go about getting articles about my VW published in a car magazine, and he explained how to write and submit an article query. I followed his advice and asked the editor of a small VW magazine, Foreign Car Guide, whether he might be interested in three short photo articles I had in mind. The editor said yes, so I delivered the three finished pieces to him in person.
Meanwhile, my New York girlfriend had dumped me, but a few weeks later I got invited to a party near the Columbia campus. Word had it that Theodore Bikel, the folksinger and actor, would drop by. The party, which took place in a basement, was going strong when I arrived at around nine in the evening.
From the top of the basement stairs, I looked down and saw this pretty girl sitting on the floor in the center of a circle of people. I looked at her, she looked back, and I knew immediately that I was going to spend the rest of my life with her. If you don’t happen to believe in love at first sight, that’s too bad, because it happened in that instant and that instance. JoAnne and I have been married for 52 years now, and Theodore Bikel never did show up.
Two weeks before I graduated, the editor of FCG phoned and asked if I’d like to come to work there. The company had an opening for a pasteup assistant in the art department. I said most emphatically yes!
Then, as things transpired, I graduated from Columbia on a Friday, married Jo on Saturday and started working at a real car magazine on Monday. So boom, boom, boom, in three days I’d gone from student to husband to working man.
In large measure, I had Gregor Samsa to thank for my job. If I hadn’t spun those three articles out of my VW experience, I definitely wouldn’t have gone to work for FCG. And if I hadn’t worked at FCG, I wouldn’t have gone on to Motor Trend and the truly fun career I’ve enjoyed since then. So that’s why those two carless years at Reed were important; I don’t believe I’d have bought a VW if I’d owned other cars in the interim.
Mike’s bride, JoAnne, poses in the Renault Dauphine for an FCG cover shot. The photographer who took this picture also got Mike fired. No hard feelings.
My Son the Editor
As pasteup assistant for FCG, I began to sample the ins and outs of magazine publishing. Three weeks after I got there, the editor who’d hired me left to join Volkswagen of America, whereupon our publisher asked me if I’d like to take the editorship. Are you kidding? From pasteup assistant to editor of FCG in three weeks? Plus a $10 a week raise? Wow!
Jo and I moved out to Queens, and I traded Gregor in on a nearly new, low-mileage 1958 Beetle, black with red upholstery. We christened him Gregor II. Terrific car and very handy for my job.
That’s Mike’s black 1958 VW, Gregor II, with the photographer’s girlfriend as model.
At FCG, we hired a new photographer, a fellow who’d been with The Saturday Evening Post when it died. He was infinitely more sophisticated than I, especially in matters financial, so one day at lunch he asked me how much money I was making. When I told him $60 a week, he snickered and said, “An editor should be making twice that.” He convinced me, and on a cold, blustery winter morning, I walked into the publisher’s office and asked for a raise.
“How much are you making now?” he asked.
“Sixty dollars a week.”
“And how much do you think you ought to be making?”
“Twice that: $120 a week.”
The publisher looked me in the eye and said simply, “You’re not worth $120 a week.”
Insulted, I shot back, “Either you pay me $120 a week or I quit!”
And without a moment’s hesitation, the publisher quietly replied, “So quit.”
So I quit.
Things do work out. Jo and I wended our way back to Texas and the comforts of my parents’ home. She and I went through a lean and trying eight months in La Feria, during which time I sent out about 300 resumes and cover letters.
One day my dad came to me and said, “Mike, I’ve had this 1954 Hudson Hornet for six years now, and it’s starting to show its age. Since Hudson doesn’t make cars anymore, what do you think I should get?”
I let him drive Gregor II, and he liked the car. I said, “Why don’t you buy a new Volkswagen? They’re cheap and economical and well made, and you’re even more counterculture than I am, so I think you’ll enjoy driving it.”
My dad thought a moment and then replied, “Yes, but the Volkswagen was developed by the Nazis. I can’t buy a Nazi car. The Nazis kicked me out of Germany. I can’t even buy a German car, much less a Nazi car.”
I answered, “I think I understand your feelings, but how long can you hold that grudge? The war’s over. Sooner or later you’re going to have to either forgive or forget. Maybe it’s time to move on and buy a VW. It’s a good car.” He did.
Mike’s dad, Heinrich Lamm, was hesitant about buying a “Nazi” car but eventually did. He’s shown here with Mike’s mom, Annie. Both were MDs and expected Mike to be the same.
California Calling
Then, in August 1960, I got a call from Erv Rosen, editor of Motor Life magazine in Los Angeles. Motor Life was Motor Trend‘s little brother. Erv had gotten my resume, and he now asked me if I’d like a job as managing editor of Motor Life. Did I? I’d have walked to L.A. barefoot.
I enjoyed working at Motor Life more than I can say. Erv was the best editor I’ve ever known. Then, a year or so later, when Motor Life got melded into Motor Trend, I was temporarily assigned to Rod & Custom. After a few months at R&C, I got kicked upstairs to Motor Trend. I’d finally arrived, and for most of my tenure at MT I was having a great time – working hard but loving it.
So why did I leave the job I’d dreamt about all those years? Number of reasons. First and foremost, MT changed editors in 1965, and he and I didn’t get along. He’s long gone now and not fondly remembered, but that was only one reason I left.
Another had to do with our babies, Robert and Charlie, approaching school age. The only schools in our neighborhood didn’t have a blade of grass on campus. I couldn’t see my kids going to schools with asphalt playgrounds.
But the primary reason, I believe, was that I yearned to get back to a smaller, more agricultural community, more like the one I’d grown up in. When an academic position came along here in the Central Valley of California, I took it. I became director of publications for the University of the Pacific in Stockton.
I left the university less than a year later, but we’ve stayed in Stockton ever since, with absolutely no regrets. Our kids grew up here, our good friends live here, and because Stockton is cheap and easy (and a lot of other things), I’ve been able to own and play with any number of cars I’d have had no place to keep or work on in New York or Los Angeles.
All of which proves that life and cars can take you to strange places and have odd ways of getting you there.
Michael Lamm grew up in South Texas. He’s always loved cars and, after graduating from Columbia University in New York in 1959, took a job as editor of Foreign Car Guide, a magazine about VWs. In the mid 1960s, Mike became managing editor of Motor Trend and, in 1970, he co-founded Special-Interest Autos magazine in partnership with Hemmings Motor News. In 1978, Mike began to publish his own line of automotive books. For more information, go to www.LammMorada.com.