2006 Dean Bachelor Award

To most Americans the letters MPG stand for miles per gallon. But for around 750 journalists, photographers and public relations professionals, MPG also is the initials of the Motor Press Guild, a Los Angeles/Orange County-based organization dedicated to the highest ideals of automotive journalism and promoting education and information exchange within the motoring press.

One of the major events on the MPG calendar every year is the Dean Batchelor Award Dinner. Dean’s passion for automobiles spanned many disciplines, from aircraft builder and B-17 flyer to automotive journalist. He was the consummate historian and researcher, editor, author, racer, designer and hot rodder. No matter what he was involved with at the time, Dean did it with style and with the highest ethical and professional standards.

Following his death in 1994, and to honor his memory and contributions to the automobile industry, the Motor Press Guild instituted the Dean Batchelor Award in order to recognize the best. The Award singles out persons demonstrating outstanding achievement in automotive journalism and communications.

This year the award was expanded to include category winners for best Articles, Books, Photography and Audio/Visual. Entries were judged against others in their respective category with one winner named for each category. Then the Dean Batchelor Award was selected from among the four category winners.

This year's winners of the MPG Best of the Year awards are:

Article Category: Pete Lyons, "Heroes Are Human, Too," an article in Vintage Racecar magazine on former Formula 1 Champion and Indy 500 winner Graham Hill.

Book Category: Mark Christensen, "So-Cal Speed Shop," a history of the Southern California hot rod movement as told from the viewpoint of Alex Xydias who started the So-Cal Speed Shop to supply the parts and knowledge needed by hot rodders first in Los Angeles and then across the Nation.

Photography Category: Stan Papior for the photos that illustrated the Insideline.com story, "The World's Greatest Driving Road."

Audio/Visual Category: Chris Szwedo, "A Gullwing at Twilight, the Bonneville Ride of John Fitch," a documentary on the attempt of racing great, John Fitch, to set a new land speed record in a 300SL Mercedes at the age of 88.

2006 Dean Batchelor Award: Among the four top finalists, the 2006 Dean Batchelor Award was presented to Mark Christensen for his book "So-Cal Speed Shop."

WheelsTV had entries in the Audio/Visual category, but we didn’t take a podium spot this year. You can be darn sure that we’ll be doubling our efforts next year.

About the photos:

2006 Dean Batchelor Award winner Mark Christensen and Alex Xydias, left to right.

The Dean Batchelor Award was designed by Gene Garfinkle and John Pyle with sponsorship by Ford Motor Company. The resin-cast Dean Batchelor Award symbolizes the “So-Cal Streamliner” race car that Batchelor designed and helped build in 1949.

Hermancing the Hybrid

Nobody asked me but . . .

This is a sad day in our small auto community. Dave Hermance is gone. He lost his life while playing in his aerobatic flyer, which is probably the only thing in his life, except for his family and friends that he loved more than hybrid powertrains.

Dave was Mr. Hybrid at Toyota. He didn’t invent the hybrid, but he did more than any other individual to popularize the concept. And he had more to do with the Prius’s success in the U.S. than any other Toyota employee. Dave made hybrid synonymous with Toyota and vice versa.

An engineer with the rare ability to simplify the complicated. Dave was so good at explaining hybrid technology that he traveled the world to preach the Toyota hybrid doctrine. To other engineers, sure. But to politicians and to consumers, and, yes, even to the media. It was Dave who first explained that the CVT in the Prius Hybrid wasn’t a bunch of belts, bands, pulleys and rollers but rather a much more sophisticated, but simpler, electronic transmission.

Dave was also an outspoken critic of the EPA's methods and would express his displeasure in presentations and discussions with journalists. I think what he really wanted to see was for the EPA to base mileage estimates on actual fuel consumption, like some other countries.

My favorite Hermance story comes from an email I sent him when I was researching an article on alternative pwertrains for the year 2015 for the Auto Club of Southern California magazine, Westways. Being a left-handed typist I had transposed two letters in the word hybrid when I typed the subject line of the email I was sending to Dave. It read: Hybird Questions. Not more than five minutes later I had a response from Dave. It read: “Your last email was a sight for soar eyes.”

Dave Hermance was one of a kind. He will be sorely and soarly missed.