Forty years at one company is crazy, but that’s the landmark we’re celebrating for HOT ROD’s very unique, devoted, and walking GM part-number catalog, Marlan Davis. Forty years! You know him as HOT ROD’s Tech Editor par excellence—and he’s that, for sure. But Marlan is somewhat of a mystery, even to the staff, as his desert residence in Neenach, California, isolates him from city hustle and bustle, making commutes into Los Angeles a long haul and sightings at the HOT ROD mothership rare.
His longevity at HOT ROD is serendipitous, as he came here when Jim McCraw was editor. Says Jim, “I was the editor of HOT ROD when Marlan was hired in the spring of 1977. He was the son of Petersen Vice President Dick Day’s next-door neighbor, who asked Dick to please give him a job. At the time, Marlan was driving a 1970 SS Chevelle LS7, so Day must have known he was some kind of gearhead. He started out as a gopher and car schlepper all those years ago, but after a while he started to show some interest in engines, and 40 years later he’s one of the most savvy guys in the building.”
HOT ROD needed a car wrangler to shuffle cars and projects around from shop to scenic backdrop to press fleets, and once offered a job at HOT ROD, Marlan grabbed the opportunity. David Freiburger, former HOT ROD editor and current Motor Trend OnDemand star says, “I doubt Day knew that Marlan could write tech, it was just sort of a fluke.” But soon, Marlan was not only writing but also doing features and anything else the staff position required.
Marlan’s thing is automotive technical knowledge, and with his intellectual capacity, he has this incredible ability to dive deep into other people’s automotive maladies—probably much deeper than anyone would’ve considered. Not only that, but he challenges himself to reexamine both the mundane and complex even when past results seem non-refutable, smashing the old adage, “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” Says former HOT ROD Editor David Kennedy, “He was always willing to reevaluate things he knew about just to challenge himself.” So it might surprise you that Marlan’s degree is in political science.
Marlan also has a thing for numbers. Says another former editor, Pat Ganahl, “He can spout GM parts numbers, aftermarket cam specs, and all of the gear ratios used in Muncie four-speeds from memory.” Numbers and details are just some of his gifts, but that’s not all. Says Ganahl, “Marlan is so into Snap-on tools that after his father retired, Marlan talked him into getting a job with Snap-on so he could take advantage of the employee discounts.” It sounds like a joke, but he’s serious. He was quite proud of this connection and would take orders from the staff and pass along the discount, too.
Marlan could be called an extremist, because anything he really gets into, he takes to extremes—like aircraft fittings and braided hoses. He refuses to use anything in his projects that isn’t aircraft-spec. Says Kennedy, “I think he loves anything with a mil-spec because it has a paper trail and not only tells you what it will do but why it does it, so to Marlan, its purpose has been studied and results backed up.”
All whom we spoke with say Marlan is also a research fanatic, which you probably figured from reading his many articles over the decades. Ganahl says he researches to a fault. “With deadlines looming, I would have to tell him to stop researching and write the article. Sometimes he’d want to give six alternatives for solutions when two were plenty.”
Says current Editor Evan Perkins, “Marlan is the most detail-oriented writer I have ever worked with, but it comes from a deep-seated and selfless desire to help people. He is the Robin Hood of tech writing, cramming hours and hours of painstakingly compiled research and part numbers into elegantly complex tables and charts just to make sure readers have every gram of information to do the job right.”
That pursuit for perfection and attention to detail has posed a problem with the car he’s owned since 1974, his 1969 L-89 Corvette. Originally a Tri-Power four-speed big-block car, that engine was soon plucked for an L-88 427 crate motor that Marlan couldn’t leave alone. Numerous changes to the mill have kept the Corvette a garage queen forever. These recent Ganahl shots are the first images of the car seen in decades. Marlan picks at it from time to time, at his generous home garage sharing space with his GMC Syclone pickup he bought new, and his current daily driver, a two-wheel-drive, 6.0L Trailblazer SS, which is kept in pristine condition. Marlan’s cars of choice are a predictable pattern of big horsepower and unique production orders.
We often wonder if Marlan is aware of the amount of information he has provided over these 40 years and how it may have affected gearheads young and old. Says Kennedy, “When I was HOT ROD editor and Marlan would come into my office, he always called me ‘Mr. Kennedy,’ even though he started working at HOT ROD before I was born. And he finally told me he was always puzzled that he and I thought so much alike about mechanical things. I had to remind him that he taught me a lot of what I know today through the pages of HOT ROD.”
With so many years at HOT ROD, we asked Freiburger what he thought Marlan would be doing if not writing: “Marlan thinks in black and white flowchart terms, he’s super analytical. I think he’d be a great computer programmer.” For all of us, we’re glad he’s not, and we’re happy after these last four decades to still be looking forward to the next technical Easter egg from the incredible Marlan Davis.
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