One particularly noteworthy aspect of Huntington’s career was that he was a freelance writer, as opposed to being a full time staff member at one specific title. By keeping his nose clean and churning out solid wo
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But there’s another angle to the life of Roger Huntington that he never wrote about. He was a quadriplegic. A diving accident at age fifteen left him paralyzed from the waist down and confined to a wheelchair. I didn’t know about this until I read his obituaries in 1989 and I doubt many of his regular readers knew either. The only hint was that he didn’t shoot his own photos and most of his stories focused on static how-to and engineering-intensive research stories which were easier for him to handle with limited mobility.
The only hint of his physical challenge to turn up in writing was that his vehicle road test stories were written from the perspective of a passenger, with never a word written as to why. In fact, the July 1968 issue of CARS magazine contains an Olds Cutlass W31 road test. In the photos you can see Roger riding shotgun, his head rolling back as the driver dumps the clutch and the slicks dig in. The photo caption simply reads Author and test driver blast down the GM Proving Grounds drag strip. It’s a real mover”. And get this, without the use of his arms, Roger typed out his stories using a pencil clenched in his teeth to peck the keys.
Regrettably, I never had a chance to meet Roger but our worlds would cross in 1992 when I arrived at Chrysler Power magazine. The publisher, Roland Osborne, had been a friend of Roger’s and upon his passing, Roger bequeathed a massive collection of automotive photography, literature and manuscripts to Chrysler Power. I was assigned the task of cataloging and organizing the several filing cabinets full of delicious artifacts from Roger’s four decades of effort.
Needless to say, I dug right in. There were thousands of 8x10 manufacturer photos ranging from Studebaker to Cadillac and an equal number of vintage and modern speed equipment catalogs. There were tons of SAE technical reports on topics related to manufacturing and high performance muscle car development. But the most fascinating stuff was the many pencil-written road test notes Roger had taken as a passenger and observer of cars like a ’62 Max Wedge, ’60 Ford Interceptor, ’62 Nova 327 prototype, ’63 Royal Bobcat Pontiac 421 and even the exotic Chevrolet CERV (Corvette Experimental Research Vehicle) 1 and 2. Yes, Roger wrote notes just as he typed, with a pencil held in his teeth. If I didn’t know this, the perfectly legible notes could have passed for ordinary handwriting. Topping it all off were signed correspondence letters to and from some of the greatest names in automotive history. Roger was a player and his archives proved it.
It was my great honor to assemble it all into what we called The Huntington Archives. We used some of the juiciest tid-bits in Chrysler Power though obviously the non-Mopar stuff wasn’t applicable. Eventually the Huntington Archives were sold to Dobbs Publishing (Mopar Muscle, Muscle Car Review) and shipped from California to Florida. When Dobbs was sold to Primedia, the Huntington Archives remained in Florida but I have yet to see any of its bounty of treasures appear in print within the many Primedia magazine titles. Hopefully it’s still intact and sitting quietly. I still have a copy of the index I put together if anybody in Lakeland could use one.
Here’s to Roger Huntington, one of automotive journalism’s greatest names.
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