In a world where automotive history is as much about culture and community as it is about engines and sheet metal, few have shaped the story like William S. Jackson. Bill’s journey intertwines hot rod clubs, hill climbs, the golden age of automotive journalism, and the founding moments of what would become the Society of Automotive Historians (SAH). His reflections stitch together the tapestry of America’s vintage car movement—and offer a front-row seat to the birth of an institution that preserves the spirit of automotive memory.
Bill Jackson’s love affair with automobiles began at Penn State in the 1950s, where his black Ford hot rod and later a Jaguar XK120 led to active roles in local car clubs and SCCA racing events. But his impact truly accelerated when he transitioned into journalism, becoming editor of Antique Automobile Magazine and later spearheading editorial roles across Classic Car, Bullhorn, and World Car Guide Magazine. His writing didn’t just document machines—it championed the people, places, and moments behind them.
During the fall meet in Hershey, Pennsylvania in October 1969, a group of enthusiasts gathered in Jackson’s office at the Antique Automobile Club of America. Their mission? To establish a national body that would nurture and preserve automotive history. That gathering birthed the SAH, and Jackson—then already a publishing veteran—was at the center of it all.
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Jackson’s tales are humorous, poignant, and brimming with historic gems—from mock fire departments formed to secure museum insurance, to meetings fueled by dreams and stacks of brochures. He reminds listeners that automotive history isn’t just collected—it’s lived. Each anecdote is a testament to how dedication and community spirit can build enduring institutions.
Spotlight
Like most of us, William S. Jackson, became involved with automobiles at an early age. During the early 1950’s, he was a member Penn State University’s hot rod club, and in the mid-50’s he was racing in SCCA events with a Jaguar 120-M and some Morgans. After his military service, he completed his degree at Penn State and began a lifelong career in journalism. His editorship of major vintage car clubs magazines during the 1960’s and 70’s gives Bill credit as one the founders who launched the then-fledgling “old car hobby” turning it into the vibrant community and economic powerhouse that it is today.
Bill is a charter member of the Society of Automotive Historians, founded in October of 1969. And during the Annual SAH Awards Banquet in 2023 in Hershey, Pennsylvania, Bill presented his Auto-Biography to the banquet audience, including his recollections of the early days of the SAH; and the following recording was made by Bill, from that same script, in 2024.
Highlights
Skip ahead if you must… Here’s the highlights from this episode you might be most interested in and their corresponding time stamps.
- 00:00 Meet William S. Jackson
- 01:28 Early Days of the Society of Automotive Historians
- 04:33 Founding Members and Their Contributions
- 07:43 Bill Jackson’s Career in Automotive Journalism
- 10:07 Significant Contributions to Automotive Publications
- 11:35 Personal Stories and Reflections
- 17:12 Conclusion and Acknowledgements
- 17:49 Sponsor Message and Closing Remarks
Transcript
Crew Chief Brad: [00:00:00] Break Fix Podcast is all about capturing the living history of people from all over the autos sphere, from wrench, turners, and racers to artists, authors, designers, and everything in between. Our goal is to inspire a new generation of Petrolhead that wonder how did they get that job or become that person.
The road to success is paved by all of us because everyone has a story.
Crew Chief Eric: Like most of us, William S. Jackson became involved with automobiles at an early age. During the early 1950s, he was a member of Penn State University’s hot rod club, and in the mid 1950s, he began racing in SECA events with a Jaguar one 20 M and later some Morgans. After his military service, he completed his degree at Penn State and began a lifelong career in journalism.
His editorship of major vintage car clubs, magazines during the 1960s and seventies gives bill credit as one of the founders who launched the then fledgling old [00:01:00] car hobby, turning it into the vibrant community and economic powerhouse that it is today. Bill is a charter member of the Society of Automotive Historians, founded in October of 1969 and during the annual SAH Awards banquet in 2023 held in Hershey, Pennsylvania.
Bill presented his autobiography to the banquet audience, including his recollections of the early days of the SAH, and the following recording was made by Bill from that same script in 2024.
William S. Jackson: When I was approached by SAH past President Bob Barr and friend, and SAH, board member Dean Nelson, to be the speaker at our annual awards center in October, 2023, we ended up having a conference phone call and discussed what I might talk about.
We quickly discarded the idea of a serious automotive history topic, but rather address my history with the SAH. As it appears, I am the last one living of those who are in attendance [00:02:00] at that October 11th, 1969 gathering in my office in the then small national headquarters of the Antique Automobile Club of America, from which I produced the bimonthly edition of antique automobile for the club.
For historical accuracy. The photograph taken on that occasion was taken with all those attending outside the front doors, which led to both the Hershey Museum and the A A CA headquarters. It was located at the western end of the old Hershey Arena, an ice hockey arena that then the home of the Hershey Bears American Hockey League team.
How did the founding group get there? In the spring of 1969, friends and fellow automotive historians, g Marshall Nall of Newark, Delaware, and Richard b Brigham of Marietta, Georgia, had corresponded regularly on various automotive history subjects and commented on the need for a national organization, which [00:03:00] would bring together and expand, as well as give some organization to the field.
As a result, they decided to mail a questionnaire addressing the subject to about 75 of their acquaintances with similar interests. The results were very positive and even included the suggested name, the Society of Automotive Historians. My own response was printed in that first reorganization newsletter, number one, in which I ventured quote, I think this is an idea, long overdue.
We are still in the first generation of the automobile in this country. Yet if we do not glean this history within, at most the next 10 years, it will be in some part lost forever. In that letter, I also offered my office at Antique Automobile Magazine as a possible location for a first meeting to organize the society.
This during the Antique Automobile Club of America’s Eastern [00:04:00] National Fall meet in Hershey, the second weekend in October, a letter from Marshall Nall followed first noting I was pleased to receive your letter of the application with check for membership in this society. Was the first received. He then went on to say they were accepting my invitation and the initial meeting of the society was set for 10:00 AM Saturday, October 11th, 1969.
The meeting was held and resulted in the photograph being taken outside the entrance to the Hershey Museum. Of all those, attending the inaugural event past President Bob Maher has asked me to report what I know of each. I’m going to go from right to left as I know more about those on the left of the photo.
First, Glenn r Bachelor, a student of automotive history, and one of those working on what we simply called the list as we tried to identify all of the early automobile manufacturers [00:05:00] in America. Richard b Brigham with his wife Grace r Brigham, truly one of the co-founders of the Society. Guy p Sealey Jr.
And Charles W. Bishop. Two more of the early researchers on the American auto industry. G. Marshall Nall, the other co-founder of the Society, Herman l Smith from Canada, and a researcher on American cars manufactured in Canada. Bruce Baldwin, MOS of Madison, Wisconsin, who attended but never joined the society.
Bruce was the builder of the MOS safari car, but also the mo’s ostentatious sedan. He was there at my invitation showing an early race car at the A-A-C-A-B. Next John m Peckham automotive artist and graphic artist who designed some of the early SAH membership brochures. John paintings, one of a Mack truck, char Blank was included in John Monte’s [00:06:00] history of Mack Truck and paintings of a cord model eight 10 sedan and a Model j Dusenberg Boattail Roadster, which was never built.
Gordon B’s design appear in our book Rolling Sculpture. Then Henry Austin Clark Jr. Creator of the Long Island Automotive Museum in Sandy Hollow, New York, and builder of one of the largest and most inclusive automotive libraries and early literature collections in the country, two semi-truck loads when he went to the Henry Ford Museum following his death.
I could regale you with OTE Clark stories for the entire evening, but I’ll tell you just two. When OTE built the Long Island Automotive Museum, he immediately applied for fire insurance only to be told by several insurance companies. His museum was too distant from any fire company protection to qualify for coverage not to be deterred.
He applied for and received a state charter for the [00:07:00] Sandy Hollow Fire Company. Having a red model T Ford Coop chief’s car, an early American France ladder truck, and an early motorized pumper. He was immediately in inundated with calls and catalogs from companies wishing to sell him equipment, et cetera.
He got his fire insurance and ordered one chief’s badge and 50 captain’s badges. He then received a call from the badge company stating that, aside from the city of New York and the city of Los Angeles, it was the largest order for captain’s badges. And where was Sandy Hollow, New York wife. Rosemary and I are captains in the Sandy Hollow Fire Company, but that’s another story.
Secondly, when I was named editor of Antique Automobile Magazine in 1962, I was contacting all of the automotive writers, photographers, artists, historians, and libraries seeking their ideas and help. One I wanted to meet was [00:08:00] Austin Clark. I knew he was going to attend the a a c annual meeting in Philadelphia and planned to meet him there.
I was going to wait till after the annual banquet and speak to him. Then thus, I waited and waited and they were turning down the banquet room lights and he still had not emerged. I went in looking for him. It was the 50th anniversary year of Dodge and the Chrysler Corporation had reproduced the first Dodge brochure and one had been placed at every seat at the banquet I located Austin, making the rounds of all the tables, picking up all the Dodge brochures that had been left.
When he saw me, he simply said They’ll be paying me $5 a piece for these in a year or two. You’re Bill Jackson, and what can I do to help you? That brings me down to the last guy on the left in the picture, yours Truly, at the time, I was in my eighth year as editor of Antique Automobile Magazine for the [00:09:00] A-A-C-A-A stretch.
That was to end in June, 1970 when Rosemary and I purchased the nearby Hummelstown Sun Weekly newspaper and printing firm, changing it to the sun, quote, covering Hershey Hummelstown and lower DA county. However, it was not the end of my automotive magazine editing years as just months after purchasing the Sun.
The Classic Car Club of America came calling and I became editor of their classic car magazine for the next three and a half years. In January, 1980, I took over as publisher and managing editor of Bullhorn, the magazine for the Veteran Motor Car Club of America, which I produced for about next two years.
Other automotive publication contributions include my column Old Car World, which I did for the old competition Press and Auto Week from 1964 to 68, was Vintage car editor of World Car Guide Magazine, also 1964 to 68, [00:10:00] and did articles and photos over the years and Road and Track Motor Trend and Automobile quarterly.
Books thanks to Friend and longtime, SAH Secretary Charlie Bets, who was series editor. I did the Lincoln Continental, 1940 to 48 for an English publisher in 1967, was a contributor to the American car since 1775, published in 1971, did Rolly Sculpture, a designer, and his work with Gordon m Burrick, published in 1975 with a second edition in 2008.
A chapter on British car manufacturer, auto carrier AC in rural bertia when British Sports Cars Saved the Nation by John Nicholas in 2017. Activities in SAH. Due to other obligations I had, I never sought a position on the board of directors nor officer. As about the only Hershey area resident member, myself and [00:11:00] wife Rosemary were responsible for making arrangements for the SAH Annual Dinner and Awards presentation for the first 10 years, taken us from the Hershey Italian Lodge to the Mill Street Inn, and on to the Hershey Parkview Banner.
As our membership attending grew, also the printing division of my newspaper, the Sun printed some of the early SAH brochures as designed by John Beckham and edited by the secretary Charlie Betts. I could keep you here all day telling stories about the many SAH contributing members, but I’ll limit it to just two.
In June, 1970, when I was leaving the editorship of antique automobile and purchasing this son, a man by the name of Chester Krow visited my office explaining he was a publisher from Iola, Wisconsin and was planning to start a new publication dedicated to the auto history and collecting hub working title old cars.
He offered me the [00:12:00] editorship and invited Rosemary and I to visit Iola, giving us plane tickets to Green Bay where he picked us up and drove us on to Iola. We spent two days there meeting those who would be on my staff and touring the vast sprinting plan. We considered it, but the move to rural Wisconsin plus the bank’s approval to buy the Hummelstown sun led us to turning it down.
Mr. Raey was disappointed and asked me, where am I going to find another journalist that knows old cars and the hobby? I then told him I had been corresponding with this young man in Massachusetts who was producing a small, regional old car publication, and I thought he might be the answer. His name, David Brownell, and the rest is history.
Dave guided the creation of old cars, even enlisting Henry Austin Clark Jr. To write a column and oh yes, he also served a term as president of SAH. Secondly, you have to go back to [00:13:00] 1960. When Rosemary and I returned to Penn State for our master’s degrees in journalism, we were a small class and all got to know each other.
At the time, I was still active in Sports Car Club of America, hill Climbing, and the central Pennsylvania region. One of our class members was a girl who was majoring in theater arts and minoring in journalism. She had seen my 1957 AC Bristol Sports car, and it had stirred some interest, so we invited her to a party at our resident, which was mostly for our sports car friends.
She came and was totally fascinated by the cars. Fast forward to her graduation with a job lined up in New York City with a theater publication, which folded shortly after she got there. Thus, she went to the New York Times classified ad section and saw ad for a research assistant at a new automotive history publication.
Remembering how she had liked our car friends. She went for an interview. [00:14:00] The person running the ad was l Scott Bailey, and the research assistant he was seeking was to help him at Automobile Quarterly. The young lady got the job and thus began her fabulous career in auto automotive history writing, including the editorship of aq, the young lady’s name.
Beverly Ray Kimes, who also, like Dave Brownell, served a term as President of SAH. Of course, I take full credit for their mutual success in the automotive writing field and leadership of SAH. But how did I arrive at the position as Editor of Man Automobile Magazine? Like most likely all of you, I started as a car guy, booked on hot rods in the late 1940s.
This turned into a black lowered DRO three quarter race, engine 51 Ford, which went to Penn State with me where I became president of the Penn State Pacers, the only national Hot Rod Association chartered club [00:15:00] at a college east of the Mississippi River. Then I discovered sports cars and went Sports Car Club of America Road racing in 1955 with a 54 Jaguar XK one 20 M Roadster, and did that until I got drafted in June, 1957.
I found my career as a journalist in the Army as sports editor of the Eighth Infantry Division newspaper, the arrow. This prompted Rosemary’s and my marriage in 1960 and had our return to Penn State for master’s degrees. I conned my thesis committee into letting me do mine on the history of automotive journalism in the United States.
I did most of my research in the vast library of early publications at the Swaggart Museum in Huntington, pa. There. I met William e Swaggart museum owner and a board member of the Antique Automobile Club of America, one cold winter afternoon. When I was doing research in his archive, he visited and sent something like, [00:16:00] you really are dedicated.
How would you like to be editor of Antique Automobile magazine? I answered in the affirmative, and he just simply said, oh and left. Fast forward a little over a year later when I had been hired as editor of the Union County Journal weekly newspaper in Lewisburg, pa. My phone rang one night, and upon answering, the caller said, this is William Swagger.
Well, would you. I replied, would I what Mr. Swaggart? His irritated response was, would you like to be editor of antique automobile? Story was Editor l Scott Bailey had left the editorship of antique automobile to start automobile quarterly. This without much notice. As the A A CA board had pondered where they would find an editor.
Mr. Swaggart told him my story, and the board agreed to have then president Mail and patent and vice president for publications. Jordan Norton interviewed me. Long story short, I got the job as a part-time [00:17:00] position for the next six years, growing into a full-time job in 1968 with the stipulation I moved to Hershey and work out of a a CA national headquarters.
There you have it. While Rosemary and I sold the sun in 2007, we both still write for it as to SAH. My only contribution these days is providing material for editor Rubin Verde at the SAH Journal. Case in point, my article, what’s your autobiography in the March April issue in which I hope other SAH members will follow up with stories about a favorite car or automotive history happening.
So much. Thanks for listening, and I’d be happy to answer any questions.
SAH Promo: This episode is brought to you in part by the Society of Automotive Historians. They encourage research into any aspect of automotive history. [00:18:00] The SAH actively supports the compilation and preservation of papers, organizational records, print ephemera, and images to safeguard, as well as to broaden and deepen the understanding of motorized wheeled land transportation through the modern age and into the future.
For more information about the SAH, visit www.auto history.org.
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Though Jackson never sought titles or board positions within SAH, his behind-the-scenes contributions – from hosting annual banquets to printing early brochures -were instrumental. Today, his voice still echoes in the pages of the SAH Journal encouraging others to share their stories and preserve the narrative of car culture.
Jackson doesn’t just speak about history – he embodies it. His life reminds us that automotive storytelling is a collective endeavor, best told by those who lived it and loved it. If this presentation resonated with you, explore more of the Break/Fix Podcast and consider getting involved with the Society of Automotive Historians. After all, preserving automotive heritage starts with listening, learning, and telling the story forward. Because #everyonehasastory.
Become a member of the SAH!
The Society of Automotive Historians (SAH) is dedicated to the preservation and study of automotive history. It was founded in 1969 by people who shared a passion for automobiles and their historical significance. They encourage research into any aspect of automotive history. The SAH actively supports the compilation and preservation of papers, organizational records, print ephemera, and images to safeguard, as well as to broaden and deepen the understanding of motorized wheeled land transportation through the modern age and into the future.
From its inception, SAH has fostered research, documentation, and publication of automotive history by bringing together scholars, collectors, and enthusiasts. To learn more – or become a member – be sure to check out www.autohistory.org.
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