Beverly Rae Kimes has passed away. If my calculations are correct, she was 67. To say that the automotive world has lost a giant in the field is an understatement.
A writer and editor since 1963, Kimes had the helm of Automobile Quarterly for many years, and was a contributor for decades. She was the author or editor of more than twenty books, including the definitive history of such makes as Packard and Mercedes-Benz. She was also a rarity, a female writer and historian in a male-dominated field.
I had the opportunity to interview her by telephone in 2002 for Old Autos newspaper, and the first thing I mentioned was that when I first became aware of her writing, I assumed from her ambiguous name that she was a man. She said that just about everyone made that mistake, but in the early days, it was to her advantage: her meticulous work earned her a place on the page, and "By the time they found out I was a woman, (at a time) when women weren't regarded as favorably as they are today with regard to the workplace, I had already established myself," she told me. "I had been writing for several years, so they couldn't really take that out on me at that point."
Although she would gain a reputation as one of the top historians in her field, she told me that she'd known nothing about cars when she started. Fresh out of college, she first got a job with a theater magazine that folded shortly thereafter. Sent on a lead by her agent, the job turned out to be the fledgling Automobile Quarterly. Although she admitted her ignorance of automobiles, the editor hired her anyway, on the basis of the research she did for her Master's thesis. Her first story, on the Curved Dash Olds, sparked an interest in finding out the story behind the vehicles.
My story on her contained a minor error, which most readers would never have caught, but Kimes was mortified, especially when I showed her the transcript of our interview and she found the error was hers. I didn't realize it at the time, but she was recovering from a serious illness, which left her a little fuzzy at times. She requested (and received) a correction; her attention to detail would have allowed nothing less.
Kimes entered the field during the infancy of writing about automotive history, and along with a small handful of peers, she set the standard both for research, and for the stories that resulted. Every auto writer who's ever turned a key owes a debt to her, especially women writers, for whom Kimes put a foot in the door. I know I certainly do; all I can say is, thank you.
