Jean Marie Jennings was an American journalist, publisher and television personality covering the automotive industry.
21 Facts About Jean Jennings
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Jean Jennings was widely known for her unabashed, enthusiastic and outspoken approach; for making the industry more accessible to a broad cross-section of enthusiasts; and for mentoring a generation of automotive writers, editors and designers.
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Jean Jennings was the automotive correspondent for Good Morning America and the Oxygen network.
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Jean Jennings was later the Chairman, CEO and host of the self-branded automotive website and blog, JeanKnowsCars, wrote articles for LinkedIn, and edited the book Road Trips, Head Trips, and Other Car-Crazed Writings.
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Jean Jennings guested on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, convinced Jerry Seinfeld to freelance an article for Automobile magazine, and continued to write the Vile Gossip column intermittently for Autoblog.
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Jean Jennings herself was honored by the Detroit Press Club Foundation; won the Motor Press Guild's 2016 Dean Batchelor Award for Lifetime Achievement; was a 2021 inductee to the Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame and won the Ken Purdy Award for Excellence in Automotive Journalism.
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David E Davis, with whom Jennings co-founded Automobile magazine, said Jennings "changed the nature of the readers' response" to automotive journalism.
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Jean Jennings grew up in a Catholic family with five brothers on a farm near New Baltimore, Michigan, the daughter of Audrey Jean Lienert and Robert Marcellus Lienert.
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Jean Jennings's father had a master's degree in journalism from Northwestern, was a copy editor at the Detroit Free Press, and later became the editor of Automotive News.
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At 14, Jean Jennings was an exchange student in Ecuador where she learned to drive in a Jeep-like Toyota, in the Andes mountains.
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Jean Jennings attended St Mary's Queen of Creation school from 1960 to 1970, and later attended the University of Michigan, dropping out after three incomplete semesters.
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Jean Jennings married Tom Lindamood, a taxi dispatcher, in 1979.
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Five years later, with the taxi driving having become increasingly dangerous, Jean Jennings became a driver at Chrysler's Chelsea Proving Grounds and later worked at Chrysler's Impact Lab, where she crashed cars, test drove cars, welded, and wrote for its award-winning union newsletter.
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Jean Jennings had Type 2 Diabetes, sat on the board of directors of the Metro Detroit and Southeast Michigan chapter of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, and had emceed the organization's Promise Ball Gala.
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Jean Jennings nonetheless retired to a house "a dirt road in middle-of-nowhere Michigan" with her husband, Tim Jennings.
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Jean Jennings died from complications of Alzheimers disease on December 16,2024, at age 70.
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Jean Jennings became Editor-in-Chief in 2000 at Automobile, and President in 2006.
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At Automobile, Jean Jennings became known for her automotive adventures with some of the most prominent and important people in and out of automotive culture.
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Jean Jennings taught an Oprah Winfrey Show audience how to change a tire and jump start a car.
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Jean Jennings was profiled by Susan Orlean for The New Yorker, appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, and was a regular on-air contributor, including on Fox Business Network; CNBC's Closing Bell, Squawk Box, Behind the Wheel, and Power Lunch; MSNBC; CBS's This Morning and Evening News; and CNN's American Morning and Headline News.
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In 2012, while still with Automobile, Jennings founded a self-branded website and blog, JeanKnowsCars, with the backing of Automobiles owner, Source Interlink, online and in 18 newspapers nationally.