MotorWeek couldn’t exist if John Davis hadn’t found Wall Street Traders so boring – Jalopnik

In the car world, John Davis is a man who needs no introduction. MotorWeek made him an automotive legend, and somehow that little car show on Maryland public television has been around for 45 years, with John Davis still at the helm and zero hosts fired for punching a producer over a sandwich. And for the latest episode of the MotorWeek podcast, America’s Car Dad isn’t the host – he’s the guest. That means you get 90 minutes of stories about his life, his career and the show that made him a household name.

When you woke up today, did you plan on listening to John Davis’ conversation with Jessica Ray for an hour and a half? Probably not, but now that you know you have a choice, I guarantee you will today. I mean, it’s John, crazy Davis.

Considering how successful he has been at MotorWeek, it would be easy to assume that Davis was always destined to end up in automotive media. After all, that’s clearly where he belongs. But as he explains in the episode below, we might never have gotten MotorWeek if the traders he worked with on Wall Street hadn’t been so boring to talk to. Oh, you didn’t know he worked on Wall Street? Remember, there’s another reason you might want to listen to this entire episode.

The thing is, John didn’t grow up in some random town in North Carolina. He grew up in Durham, home of Duke University and one of the three cities that now make up the Research Triangle. As he put it on the podcast: “We had three major universities right next to where I lived, including Duke University in Durham. You had several smaller colleges. … And so everyone was pretty on their toes. It certainly wasn’t a kind of, um, it wasn’t a backwoods place. It was where the research triangle ended up. Anyway, I missed that. I missed that level of informed conversations that I didn’t find in New York.”

Deterred by that lack of “informed conversations,” Davis started looking for other jobs, which led him to Maryland, and the rest is history. So, the next time you watch a MotorWeek video, don’t forget to thank the drunken Wall Street traders of the ’70s who spent so much time talking about money that they bored John Davis into leaving New York City altogether. Without their valuable contributions, the automotive world would not be what it is today, and for that we thank them.