LUNCH WITH … DONN ANDERSON TOP MOTORING WRITER TALKS
MEET THE MAN WHO HAS SEEN EVERYTHING, MET ALL OUR MOTORING HEROES, AND DRIVEN THE BEST AND WORST CARS EVER BUILT
During my recent lunch with Bill Gavin, covered in previous issues, I told Bill that I’d been given a copy of his book The Jim Clark Story for my 10th birthday by my parents. I then recalled that my aunt had given me a subscription to Motorman magazine, meaning that I have been reading the words of Donn Anderson since shortly after I started reading. It was time to sit down with the guy who has seen everything, met all our heroes, and performed road tests on both the best and worst cars ever made.
Donn was typically modest at my suggestion that we meet for lunch. “Who’d be interested?” he asked.
To which I responded, “I am” — and he eventually warmed to the idea.
Bored stiff
On a miserable July day, we lunch at Aubergine in Takapuna, where Donn and his wife Lynne have now lived for many years. I’ve always assumed, incorrectly, as it turns out, that, given Donn’s career path, and the fact that his brother Rodger was such a leading light in small-to-medium-sized saloon cars back in the day, their father must have been a real car enthusiast.
“Dad used to drag us all out to Ardmore. We were there for the first Grand Prix in 1954, and I hated it — a long, hot day; you had to walk for miles and I was bored stiff,” Donn says. This was somewhat in contrast to his brother.
“Rodger is four years older than me and was more enthusiastic. Eventually, that started to rub off on me but, bizarrely, the moment we both started showing genuine
interest, Dad immediately became anti motor racing. You know, all those years when Rodger was doing a lot of winning — races and championships — Dad never saw him race, and would say, ‘It’s stupid and dangerous and people get killed’. It was strange — he was of Scottish ancestry, so perhaps he thought it was a waste of money.” In contrast, their mum was a loyal supporter. “She encouraged both of us,” says Donn. “She’d drive herself out to Pukekohe occasionally to watch her eldest son in action.”
Writing at nine, publishing at 12
Donn started writing at an age when most kids are still learning the alphabet.
“I must have had journalistic instincts very early on. I was about eight or nine when I started writing Sunbeams — it was mainly for my friends. I started Motorman when I was 12, and one of my first readers was Bruce Mclaren. We were on holiday at Muriwai, not far from the Mclaren holiday bach, so I finished it and then dropped a copy in their letterbox. Bruce was hugely supportive. That would have been early 1958 — certainly before he left for the Driver to Europe.”
As well as writing his magazine, Donn was also illustrating it with drawings. He would then cycle from the family home in Epsom to the stock cars at Alexandra Park on a Saturday night to push his wares on a public that would hardly have imagined they’d be reading his words their entire lives.
“I sent a copy of Motorman to the Grand Prix office and was contacted by secretary and manager Buzz Perkins to go and see him,” Donn recalls. “He told me I could use their Gestetner printing machine and ‘We’ll pay for the paper’. I was cycling to the monthly Northern Sports Car Club and Auckland Car Club evenings, where the clubs kindly allowed me to sell my magazine at the door. I was also going to the newsroom of the Auckland Star during school holidays from Mount Roskill Grammar and was offered a job both there and at The New Zealand Herald as a cadet reporter. I chose the Herald because the hours were better; it meant I could still work on Motorman in mornings before commencing my shift at 2pm each day.”
Prior to leaving school, Donn was offered a reward by his parents for passing School Certificate: “That was January 1962, and I got the airfare to Christchurch for the Lady Wigram Trophy. I was already thinking of leaving school, but when I visited The Christchurch Star offices to meet Peter Greenslade [then the doyen of local motoring writers], he told me to go back to school. It was good advice. From Christchurch, I took the train to Teretonga, so I was pretty hooked by then!”
Passion leads to profession
Donn met Jack Inwood in 1963, and he and the burly, bearded photographer became a formidable duo in the ever-improving Motorman.
“Michael Coupe became the publisher and retained me as editor. Life at the
Herald was very formal,” Donn says. “We weren’t allowed to walk down Queen Street without a tie. I was doing general reporting but some motoring assignments as well. I recall that crash involving Rod Coppins at Pukekohe in 1963, when a marshal and an ambulance officer were fatally hit. I had to be discreet, but it was important that I was also reporting the news.”
Donn stayed with the Herald for about 18 months. “The magazine was growing, but by 1968 we were already onto our third publisher.”
By then, Donn had joined the small band of journalists following the entire Tasman Series. “I’d been covering all the New Zealand races for a few years but my first trip to the Australian rounds was in 1966. In addition to Motorman, I was soon covering the Tasman races for Motoring News in Britain, as well as the Associated Press in London, and that had its challenges,” he says. “It would have been easy these days but there weren’t even fax machines then, so, to meet their very tight deadlines, I would have to phone England while at the meetings and spell ‘Rodríguez’ or ‘Rindt’ to someone not the least bit interested at four in the morning.”
To England and back
Despite starting Motorman at 12 and being its editor for 16 years, Donn had long since relinquished ownership of the magazine, and that made it easier to pursue a long-held goal: “I’d always been an Anglophile, and I could hardly wait to get to England. Up until then, I’d written most of every issue of Motorman, and the arrangement I had with the publisher was to continue to send back material. As I was packing my bags for the trip, word came through that Jimmy [Clark] had been killed. Rodger had been seriously considering making a move into openwheelers from Minis but immediately abandoned the idea, saying, ‘If that can happen to him ….’ I’ve always been a bit of a worrier, and, back then, I was a real stress merchant, especially before the start of an open-wheeler race. I actually had a real sense of relief when the chequered flag dropped at the end and everyone was safe.”
No surprise then that Donn’s own racing career was in saloons: “I bought the ex– Jim Mullins Mini Cooper. Dad had done his best to discourage me and made it clear: ‘You’re not wired that way,’ and, ‘If you crash, you’re not parking it at home’. In my first race, I got rear-ended; the back was all smashed in and I had to leave it out on the street until it was fixed.”
For Donn, England was everything he imagined it would be.
“The Motorman association carried weight and I would get to test cars, so there was no need to buy one during my six-month stay.”
Donn was also fulfilling his desire of getting around the European circuits, but at that point there were no thoughts of staying.
“I was contracted to come back and cover the Tasman Cup for Motoring News,” he says. “There was plenty of work back in New Zealand, and it was reasonably lucrative, but I was working bloody hard. By the time Lynne and I were married, I’d head off to work in the morning, and then come home and write at night. It was pretty tough for her.”
“I’ve always been a bit of a worrier, and, back then, I was a real stress merchant, especially before the start of an open-wheeler race. I actually had a real sense of relief when the chequered flag dropped at the end and everyone was safe”
England calls again
By 1973, Donn and Lynne were ready for a change, and, not surprisingly, England was the attraction.
“Universal Business Directories had taken over Motorman but weren’t doing much with it,” he says. “I told them I was
heading to Europe and that I wasn’t sure for how long. By then we’d become close friends with Eoin Young and his wife Sandra, so we stayed with them initially while I tried to break into the British motoring clique. I ended up as a press officer for the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders [SMMT] in London, which was a great way to learn the motor industry and work with the car companies. However, I well remember the first event I was officially invited to: the British launch of Austin Allegro. I walked in and then it hit me — all these people and I didn’t know a single soul. I’ve never been a pushy sort of person, and I thought, what are you going to do now? There was one other person by himself, but he was standing facing a wall with his face almost hard against the wallpaper. It was, of course, the eccentric LJK Setright, one of the world’s most famous motoring writers.”
In early 1974, Donn had an offer he couldn’t refuse: “Eoin Young said, ‘I’ve got too much work.’ He was hugely supportive, so I started doing some of his syndicated writing assignments in addition to my own work. I used to ghostwrite some of Denny Hulme’s columns for Autosport and syndicated media. Most people would be unaware that some of Eoin’s articles in those days were actually written by me. Many were for the Continental, South African, and US magazines.
“Eoin also had me involved with some of the PR [public relations] work he was doing for the Tyrrell Formula 1 team, and with their sponsors Elf and Ford. That meant part-time working with highly professional people like Jackie Stewart, while meeting with drivers Jody Scheckter and Patrick Depailler. It was great being involved in motor racing again. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed it.”
Move into PR
The Andersons returned to New Zealand in late 1975, and Donn admits to “not knowing exactly what to do”. But, he says, “I took a job with Nissan as their national sales manager that later rolled in a public relations and advertising role. In later years, several of the New Zealand motor-vehicle franchises commissioned me to compose press releases relating to new-product launches”.
This led to an unforeseen issue with the New Zealand Motoring Writers’ Guild. Although little was said, the guild was not entirely happy, as members reasoned that Anderson could have a conflict of interest. However, the harsh reality was that freelance motoring writing in New Zealand was simply not paying enough to provide a reasonable income. Donn left the guild to avoid any backlash, but, years later, he was made an honorary life member.
In 1978, now with son Jamie, the Andersons went back to Britain and Donn returned to the SMMT at its grand offices in London’s plush Belgravia, just behind Buckingham Palace.
“It was a similar press-relations role to what I’d been doing last time around, before taking a job at British Leyland to write their Unipart magazine — I’d had a medical, they’d offered to pay for us to relocate from Surrey to Oxford, and there was an Austin Princess company car as part of the package. I may hold the record for the shortest tenure of employment at Leyland: one day! Clearly, the actual job was not for me, and my immediate boss was less than happy with me bailing out. I felt bad about the situation but the employment chap said, ‘Not to worry; simply hand back the keys to the company car and here is 20 quid for the day spent with British Leyland’. Next day I was back at the SMMT.”
Peripatetic lifestyle
Donn was far from falling out of love with England — “I just love soaking up the atmosphere. I still do!” he enthuses. Donn and Lynne continued their annual ‘busman’s holiday’ working trips to the UK until 2014. They were back here in the late ’70s, by which time Donn’s focus had become much more oriented to new cars rather than the motor racing that had originally fired his motoring passion.
“I was doing motoring writing for newspapers and magazines, Mazda were sending me up to Japan to look at new models, which I really enjoyed, and I was doing PR work for Suzuki at the same time,” he says. “I was then approached to be editor of the newly launched New Zealand Car in 1986, and continued doing that for 10 years. Then came the motoring supplement for the Herald, so, by then, I’d gone full circle.”
Passion takes Donn in a new direction
Donn’s passion for anything to do with motoring led him into the world of the economy run.
“People say, ‘Don’t you get bored?’ but you don’t, because you’re working so hard to hone your driving with smoothness and anticipation in the quest to save fuel,” he tells me.
He became a member of the team that established fuel-economy records in both Britain and New Zealand, including two coastline drives around both countries for Honda and Peugeot.
Along the way have come accolades, as you’d expect for one of the longestrunning motoring writers not only in New Zealand but in the world. Donn won
They were back here in the late ’70s, by which time Donn’s focus had become much more oriented to new cars
nine Henry Ford Awards for journalism between 1994 and 2005, while Motorsport New Zealand (MSNZ) recognized him in both 2014 and 2015 with awards for feature journalist.
In all his years of motoring, Donn’s only had one accident: “When the Isuzu Bellet was launched here in the ’60s, Motorman had one to test. Jack [Inwood] and I headed off to Wellington very early — it was certainly still dark — and, just north of Huntly, we were T-boned by a Morris 1100. The driver had fallen asleep and hit the car on Jack’s side. There was wreckage all over State Highway 1. We were OK but a bit battered and bruised. We went to the 1100 but couldn’t find the driver, until we looked in the back. Somehow, in the impact, that’s where he’d ended up — almost under the rear of the front seats. He was just waking up by then. Fortunately, he had suffered no injuries.”
Donn wonders if the anxiety that he had for the welfare of drivers in motor sport was connected to him being present at Teretonga in 1966 when friend Bill Caldwell was fatally injured.
“I think I was a born stress ball,” he admits. “I’d worry over small things that were probably never going to happen, and that probably contributed to a massive heart attack in England in 2008.”
That year did, however, get better for Donn when he was selected from the visiting international journalists present for the Goodwood Festival of Speed to take lunch with Charles Lennox, the 10th Duke of Richmond: “His father set up Goodwood and his son, Lord March, has made Goodwood what it is, but the old boy I had lunch with had no interest whatsoever.”
For such a conventional bloke, Donn has excelled in an unconventional career.
“I consider myself extraordinarily fortunate, being on the outside but looking into motor racing and the motor industry. Add to that, I’ve had the privilege of being driven by three world champions — Jim Clark, Jackie Stewart, and Denny Hulme — and also by Bruce Mclaren and Chris Amon.”
As for the motor industry, Donn has worked for most New Zealand franchises and has relished the opportunity to attend car launches all over the planet, including in Alaska, Egypt, the US, Japan, Scandinavia, the Andes, Rio de Janeiro, and most of Europe.
And yet another
These days, Donn’s motoring passion is far more focused on driver education and safety than on Formula 1; although, “Rodger’s still an addict,” he adds.
“We’ve been poorly served by successive governments and councils. How do they justify the low level of fine for texting and hand-held phoning as compared with the much harsher punishment for accidentally straying into a bus or transit lane in Auckland? We need a huge effort on driver education — I’m right behind what Greg Murphy is trying to promote,” he says.
I know Donn has always loved Minis, and has owned numerous versions of both the original and the modern versions, but what about a classic car?
“Well, my son Jamie and I went halves in Denny’s old Range Rover several years ago — I was with him when he bought it, so we’re just the second owners.”
Jamie has inherited his dad’s motoring passion and has been a regular competitor with a BMW in 2Kcup racing. Donn now describes himself as “semi-retired” and says that, “while I still love writing about cars, I’ve certainly tailed off”.
It’s axiomatic to describe Donn Anderson as being massively respected in motoring circles throughout New Zealand, and I will be just one of many Kiwis who has eagerly anticipated his next instalment for more than 50 years.