Thread: Marlan davis rip

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Ya'll may already know but I just found out he passed in January. I was wondering what happened to his section in Hot Rod Magazine, found out he got laid off in 2020.
The only magazine subscription I still keep is Hot Rod. Every month I went straight to Marlan's tech section before reading the rest of the magazine.
Here's a link to hundreds of his tech articles;
https://www.motortrend.com/staff/marlan-davis/

RIP Marlan, He was my favorite magazine tech writer.
Nolan

So sad - he was certainly one of the great writers and an all around good guy. Here's the obituary from Motortrend:

Around 10 a.m. on January 15, 2022, Marlan Davis died from complications due to pancreatic cancer. He was 66 years old.

Davis was one of America's most widely respected expert on all things hot rod and performance. Over a 42-year career that spanned from the fall of 1977 until December 2019, Davis focused his research, writing, and photographic skills on hot rods, muscle cars, and V-8 engines of all descriptions (Marlan was not known to play favorites in print, but more privately preferred GM products). In later years, his specialty was fielding tough tech problems from readers and fixing them on the pages of HOT ROD for his column "Ask Marlan. "

Davis was born April 21, 1955, in Staten Island, according to Marlan's younger step-brother, Eric Steiner—and was adopted a few weeks later by Sylvia and Emanuel "Manny" Davis. In 1966, Marlan moved with his adopted family to Sherman Oaks, California, where he finished his primary school education, then graduated Cal State Northridge in 1977 with a degree in political science. As luck would have it, the Davis family lived next to HOT ROD publisher Dick Day. In the summer of 1977, Manny was having a neighborly chat with Day and happened to ask him if HOT ROD might have a job for his son, Marlan. The rest was history.

The newly minted 22-year-old college grad had almost no experience with cars, journalism, or hot rodding, except for a brief stint in high school auto-shop class. It was, however, enough to land Marlan a job at HOT ROD's Sunset Boulevard office—not as a technical writer, but as a mail-room gopher. Once at HOT ROD, Marlan supplemented his mailroom work with shuffling cars from place to place, washing and gassing them, then shlepped gear and supplies to far flung locations for photo shoots and testing. He was a tireless worker with an unlimited supply of enthusiasm, and that soon led to a move up the ladder to associate editor, then technical editor.

By the time this author became Marlan's editor at HOT ROD Magazine in 2017, Davis's place in the pantheon of hot rodding was well established. The intervening decades had seen a parade of young and sometimes defiant novices try to walk in Marlan's steps, only to be knocked to the pavement by pride and corporate inertia. Marlan, by contrast, worried only about the editorial purity and precision of his work. Nearly two generations of hot rodders have gotten their first taste of hard-core muscle car tech—the kind that even the pros trusted—from Marlan. His secret to longevity and success? Professionalism, enthusiasm, and most of all, a modesty and level of respect that was endearing to many. Editorial excellence was Marlan's life, and it came, in a way, at the expense of having a personal life.

To say that Marlan had no personal life, however, is more than a bit misleading. Every waking moment was yet another opportunity to research, observe, and document the secret life of machines, a world he reveled in. To that end, Marlan never married or had children—he was married to his work, and his children were the many readers who hung on his every word. In an industry where every freelance writer and vlogger wants to build a project car with free parts, Marlan forsook his own projects (most notably an L-88-swapped 1969 Corvette and a 1991 GMC Syclone) for those of less-fortunate readers who needed remedial help. Years before Overhaulin', Marlan was spreading the wealth and taking none of the cheese off the table for himself.

Sometime in 1996, Marlan took a bold step to design and build his house in Neenach, California, a small, dusty town in the high desert of Los Angeles County. To most people, the site might seem too remote or desolate, but in Marlan's mind, it was the perfect redoubt to work from on his many projects and store his growing collection of reference materials and speed parts. Alone but far from lonely, Marlan would achieve his dream of living and working in the perfect man-cave with the tools (he was a lifelong fan of Snap-on), resources, and most importantly, the unwavering attention to technical excellence he craved. There in his laboratory and without interruption, Marlan quietly churned out tomes of HOT ROD technical articles that would enlighten and inspire generations of enthusiasts the world over.

When Marlan began experiencing back problems, his trips to the office in the far-flung beach city of El Segundo reduced to a trickle. This, however, resulted in only more opportunities for him to study the internal-combustion engine and the many quirky facets of classic muscle cars. As Marlan's mobility decreased, he began relying more and more on his family and close gearhead associates, and in his last years and months, those people were his step-brothers, Eric and Doug Steiner, and HOT ROD contributors Mark Sanchez and Brett Turnage, who helped Marlan perform research, photography, and vehicle repair for HOT ROD columns.

The separation of Marlan from his life-long job at HOT ROD in 2019 would've been hard for any man, but for Marlan it was like losing his family and his identity. Nevertheless, by the spring of 2021, Marlan had started coming around to the freedoms retirement afforded. Says Marlan's stepbrother, Eric: "I remember getting calls in March, April, May, and he was actually pretty excited to be retired, because he thought to himself, you know even though my back is killing me, I may not be able to do much, I'm still retired, I can wake up a 8 o'clock, 9 o'clock, I can basically do whatever I want. Maybe I can get myself a new car. It's not that he was dejected or anything, he wanted to enjoy retirement, which I thought was great. "

Pancreatic cancer, however, would deny Marlan that opportunity; it will be up to all of us—his hot rodding family—to carry on Marlan's fanatical devotion to hot rods and hot rodding culture, and to enjoy the automotive freedoms unique to Americans. We all stand on Marlan's shoulders whenever we build an engine, troubleshoot an ignition problem, or look up some strange mechanical malady we can't seem to solve. Tech gurus will come and go, but Marlan Davis will always be the gold-standard measure by whom all others will be judged. We will miss you, Marlan!