At the Texas Truck Rodeo, picking America’s best pickup between the horns

About a year ago, I was at a swank hotel in Santa Monica on an automaker junket when one of my colleagues from the Texas Auto Writers Association approached me. He was there for the same reasons we all were: The free food, free drinks, test-driving a new convertible and to attend the L.A. Auto Show.

“Can I talk to you for a minute?" We stepped aside. "A lot of us at TAWA are really upset about that thing you wrote,” he said.

I knew what he was referring to. A few weeks earlier, I’d gone to the Texas Truck Rodeo, TAWA’s big annual event, because I thought it would be fun to go off-roading in a bunch of trucks. And it was. Really fun. But it was also strange. At one point, someone from TAWA had pulled me aside, just like now, and told me that I should probably vote for Ram's new pickup in the annual balloting because it was “their year.”

Now, Ram did have the best trucks, or close enough, and I was probably going to vote for them anyway, but I was a little disturbed by the soft persuasion. I put that scene in my write-up. TAWA didn’t like that. So at the next opportunity, they approached again.

“I know you were just kidding about that piece,” said my fellow TAWA member.

“I mean, not really,” I said.

“Still, I’d really appreciate it if you would write the TAWA board a letter letting them know that it was all a joke.”

The last thing I needed was to spend a year catching flak from the administration of my regional automotive press group. So as soon as I could, I went back to my room and sent off a short apologetic email that said, “I was just having a little fun with the piece, which was meant to be satirical in tone.”

That, I figured, was enough. After all, was TAWA really any more venal than the automotive journalism racket at large, where hundreds of people, mostly men, are flown all over the world on automakers’ dimes, treated to first-class accommodations and luxury driving experiences? Not particularly. At least with the Texas Truck Rodeo, journalists were footing the bill for the boodle.

Yet my modest apology email wasn’t enough. A few weeks later, I got a call from another TAWA board member, who was equally upset. He demanded a retraction, which I refused to write. “You shouldn’t have said all that,” he said. “We’re really working hard to change things at TAWA.”

We talked for an hour, a conversation I didn’t want to have. Did I really care that TAWA was trying to change? This car journalism thing was just a temporary affliction for me anyway.

But the months moved along, and I kept writing about cars. I went on regional press drives, got to know my fellow TAWA members, and learned the fuller story. For years, TAWA had been the provenance of a small coeterie of white middle-aged men who took their auto-journalist fiefdom overly seriously. They wore archetypally big belt buckles to manufacturer events and semi-intimidated automakers because they could. The carmakers desperately wanted to win the “Truck Of Texas” award given out every year at the Truck Rodeo. So TAWA had a little power over them.

But slowly, TAWA was changing. Women had joined, and quite a few members of the regional Latino press. Also, the Internet had encroached, bringing with a younger set of writers with different mores. The good ol’ boys may or may not have meant no harm, but they were slowly becoming the minority regardless.