Tales From the Beat Episode 134: Auto Journalist Matt DeLorenzo

TTAC Creator Ed Garsten hosts ” Tales from the Beat,” a podcast about the automotive and media worlds. A veteran reporter and public relations operative, Garsten worked for CNN, The Associated Press, The Detroit News, Chrysler’s PR department and Franco Public Relations. He is currently a senior contributor for Forbes.

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A transcript, cleaned up by AI and edited by a staffer is below.

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Transcript:

Hi everyone, I’m Ed Garsten, and welcome to Episode 134 of Tales from the Beat, where we look at news and PR from both sides of the scrimmage line.

I’ve got a great guest who’s kind of lurking in the box next to me: longtime, respected automotive journalist Matt DeLorenzo. He’s a former editor of Road & Track and AutoWeek magazines, a freelance writer, author, and editor-in-chief of the really cool website TightwadGarage.com. He also recently published a book on AMG, the high-performance subsidiary of Mercedes-Benz.

Hey Matt, thanks for being with us.

Thanks, Ed. It’s really great to be here.

You bet. Where are you talking to us from today?

California. I live in Lake Forest, next to Irvine, and I’m loving the weather.

Oh yeah, I bet you are. It’s looking pretty sad out here right now in suburban Detroit. The clouds are crying big time.

I remember that. I was in Detroit for 19 years. I loved it—it was a great place to live—but this time of year was always tough on me. So I’m happy to be where it’s sunny.

Yeah, I hear you. I love the Irvine area too. I’ve been there many times.

Well, let’s get right into it. Let’s talk about the book first because it’s a cool subject—AMG power and performance.

Oh, there it is.

Oh, how convenient. I was going to put a picture up, but you’ve done my work for me.

It’s kind of a coffee-table book. It’s basically the history of AMG and how it grew from a couple of engineers who left Mercedes and decided to hot-rod Mercedes cars at a time when Mercedes’ attitude was basically, “Our cars are perfect. They don’t need to be tuned.”

But they wanted to go racing, and this was at a time when Mercedes wasn’t involved in racing.

In 1971 they built a 300 SEL with a V8 engine and finished second at the 24 Hours of Spa. This big, honking limousine became known as the “Red Pig.” It put AMG on the map and started them on the road to building not only race cars but road cars.

Mercedes kept a bit of an arm’s-length relationship with AMG for many years until the 1980s. Eventually AMG started running Mercedes in the German Touring Car Championship, DTM, and they won. That really got upper management’s attention.

In 1990 Mercedes began selling AMG cars through its factory network. In 1999 they acquired half of the company, and in 2005 they bought AMG outright and turned it into their official performance division.

Ironically, while a lot of people compare AMG to BMW M, the real competition they see today is right down the road in Stuttgart—Porsche. Porsche got into SUVs and sedans, and if you look at the AMG GT, they’re really targeting the 911 with that car.

So it’s an interesting story. I really enjoyed writing the book, and Mercedes was fantastic. They opened up their archives and there are some incredible photos in there of really cool stuff.

What led you to write the book at this particular time?

I was looking around for a project to do, and I’ve had a relationship with Motorbooks over the years. I talked to my editor there, Zach Miller. They had done a BMW M book that had been quite successful, and he said they were interested in AMG because there wasn’t much out there about it.

I knew about AMG, but I didn’t really get granular with it until I started writing the book. It turned out to be a really compelling story.

Hans-Werner Aufrecht and Erhard Melcher were two engineers who started the company. At first they didn’t really get along. Aufrecht was more of a bench-test engineer, while Melcher was the mechanical engineering genius. They had different ideas about things, but eventually Aufrecht recognized Melcher’s talent and they formed a company that produced some pretty amazing cars.

Those cars are awesome. I remember seeing one when I was working for Chrysler over in Stuttgart and visiting the Mercedes Museum. They have a great display about AMG there.

Given where things are today—with so much discussion around EVs, hybrids, and other electrified vehicles—how prominent are performance vehicles now? Do they still have the same importance in the market?

I think they do. Last year AMG sold over 140,000 cars, which is a significant number. A lot of them are higher-performance versions of regular Mercedes models, but they also have dedicated AMG models like the GT and the GT four-door coupe.

The G-Wagon is actually one of their biggest AMG sellers. So performance is still very prominent.

They are also moving toward electrification. They have an all-electric performance car coming out later this year, essentially a replacement for the GT four-door sedan.

At the same time, they’re changing their engine strategy. They had experimented with four-cylinder engines, but they’re moving back toward V8s and six-cylinder engines. They’re even converting the facility that was producing the four-cylinder engines into more V8 production.

So they’re adapting to the times. They’ll offer EVs where it makes sense and gasoline vehicles where the market still wants them.

That’s interesting, especially when you look at what happened with Dodge and the Charger. The initial plan was for it to go all-electric, but the market pushed back.

Right. I think the market should ultimately decide. If you want an electric car, you should be able to buy one. If you want a gas car, you should be able to buy that too.

Right now there’s a big debate over plug-in hybrids. Some critics say they’re pointless because people don’t plug them in. But I own one, and I do plug it in. Why should that option disappear?

I’ve always believed in an “all of the above” approach. There’s room in the market for multiple technologies.

That actually leads nicely into something we were discussing this week at the Automotive Press Association with Scout Motors. They’re developing extended-range electric vehicles, sometimes called EREVs. It seems like every few months the industry conversation shifts—first EVs, then hybrids, now extended-range EVs.

How do you see them fitting into the bigger picture?

Manufacturers want to be successful. Originally Scout planned to be all-electric, but policies at the time were pushing the industry heavily in that direction.

There is consumer interest in EVs, but it’s not overwhelming. Once the policy environment changed and mandates eased, manufacturers began facing the reality that this isn’t a push market—it’s a pull market.

By that I mean it’s driven by what consumers actually want to buy. You can tell manufacturers all day long what they should build, but if customers don’t want it, the business model doesn’t work.

That’s why we’ve seen billions of dollars written off across the industry. The scale simply hasn’t materialized yet.

That reminds me of something Bob Lutz used to say about fuel-economy mandates—comparing them to telling the textile industry to make only small clothing sizes to fight obesity.

Exactly. There are often unintended consequences.

Back in the 1970s we had CAFE regulations that effectively ended body-on-frame V8 sedans and wagons. But what replaced them? Trucks and SUVs. That’s what people wanted to buy.

Ultimately, products have to meet consumer needs and offer economic advantages like competitive pricing. That’s the big challenge with EVs right now: batteries are still expensive.

Five years ago we were told EVs would reach price parity by now, but that hasn’t happened. Compare something like a Hyundai Kona gas model with the Kona Electric and the price difference is still substantial.

That’s actually a good point to mention that you also wrote a book about EVs.

Yes. That came out of my Tightwad Garage project. After I left Kelley Blue Book, I needed a car. I’d always driven press vehicles before.

I decided to buy the cheapest EV I could find—a 2022 Nissan Leaf with a 149-mile range. I wrote a book called How to Buy an Affordable Electric Car: A Tightwad Guide to EV Ownership.

At the time, the car cost around $30,000. With the $7,500 federal tax credit and a $2,500 California incentive, I ended up paying about $20,000 for a brand-new car. It also came with carpool lane stickers.

Now fast forward four years: the tax credits are gone, the California incentive is gone, and the carpool sticker program has expired.

That highlights the challenge for EVs. They need a compelling case—good range and a competitive price—and they’re still generally more expensive than comparable gas cars.

That’s actually a perfect segue to the focus of this podcast: how stories are covered and the relationship between journalists and PR.

Looking at the EV story over the years, has the media done a good job helping the public understand the pros and cons?

Unfortunately, I’d say no. It’s not due to a lack of coverage—there’s been a lot of coverage—but it’s been very polarized. You’re either completely pro-EV or completely anti-EV.

There hasn’t been much middle ground. I’ve always written that the answer is probably “all of the above.” EVs won’t replace every vehicle, but they’re also not some great evil that needs to be banned.

There needs to be more balanced voices explaining that EVs work well for some people, but not everyone. If you live in a rural area or an apartment without charging, a gas or hybrid car might be the better choice.

That perspective hasn’t been represented enough.

I completely agree. Sometimes it feels like parts of the media treat EVs as the only acceptable answer.

Exactly. And there’s also some economic illiteracy in the conversation. Banning gas-powered cars wouldn’t magically eliminate them. People would just keep driving the ones they already have—like in Cuba.

There are around 250 million cars on U.S. roads today. If you ban new gas cars, people will simply keep their existing ones longer instead of replacing them with newer, cleaner models.

The absolutist thinking on both sides is the real problem.

The other side of that discussion is the role of automakers and their PR departments. How much responsibility do they bear for explaining these technologies clearly?

I think they could have done a better job educating the public and delivering a more consistent message.

Take the Chevy Volt. I thought it was a fantastic vehicle with about 50 miles of electric range, yet it was discontinued. No other plug-in hybrid has really matched that concept since.

There’s been a lot of inconsistency in messaging, and now we’re seeing huge write-offs after billions were spent chasing EV investments.

At the same time, manufacturers need to stay in business. They employ people and support entire industries.

There’s also the global competition angle. People often point to China’s cheaper EVs, but many of them are heavily subsidized by the government.

So the messaging has often been oversimplified or even a little dishonest. A few years ago, Mary Barra said that if people simply sat in an EV, they’d love it so much they’d buy one. That’s not really a complete answer.

But that’s also the reality of PR. When a car launches, it’s always presented as the greatest thing ever. A few years later, when it doesn’t succeed, the honesty finally comes out.

That’s something journalists have to navigate. Automakers have products to sell, so they won’t criticize their own vehicles.

You’ve also seen the PR side firsthand, working at Chrysler for many years.

Yes, and it was eye-opening. As journalists we often assume these companies have incredibly sophisticated PR operations.

But when I got there, I was surprised by how little some PR people understood about how the news process actually works. Many came straight out of school into PR without having worked in journalism.

At the same time, the media landscape was changing. PR teams were suddenly dealing with bloggers and influencers instead of traditional journalists.

The whole ecosystem shifted.

And that leads to the last question: what is the public losing as traditional automotive journalism declines?

I think the biggest loss is context. There’s no shortage of opinions or car reviews online, but there’s less coverage of the bigger trends shaping the industry.

Consumers end up getting whipsawed between headlines—first everything is going electric, then suddenly it’s not.

There’s less long-form journalism explaining why these shifts happen, or putting them in historical perspective. That kind of institutional knowledge used to come from beat writers and industry veterans.

Without it, we lose depth and understanding.

So where do you go for automotive information today?

I sample everything. The traditional “buff books” like Car and Driver and Motor Trend still have good websites.

I read Autoblog and The Truth About Cars. I think Tim Healey does a great job there. I also check Automotive News and occasionally AutoWeek.

It’s basically a smorgasbord. I just try to take in a little bit of everything.

We should also note that The Truth About Cars carries this podcast, which we appreciate.

Absolutely. It’s a good site, and there are a few places that still provide thoughtful analysis.

One print publication I still read occasionally is Sports Car Market. Keith Martin does a great job covering classic cars and the auction scene, and it’s a good way to learn some automotive history.

Matt DeLorenzo, thank you so much for joining us. Let’s mention the book again—Mercedes-AMG Race Performance. How can people get it?

You can find it on Amazon or BarnesandNoble.com. It may show up in some bookstores as well, but Amazon is probably the easiest place.

Great. I can’t wait to read it. Matt DeLorenzo, thanks again.

And that’s this edition of Tales from the Beat. I’m Ed Garsten.

Thanks for joining us. Please comment, share, and subscribe, and we’ll be back soon with more stories. Take care.