Mr. Len Coates

Len Coates, The Globe and Mail, Cars & Toys, September 25, 1998, Scent of a car
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Len Coates, The Globe and Mail, Cars & Toys, September 25, 1998, Scent of a car

Coates co-founded professional group Went to Ryerson, started WheelsNew AJAC honour named after Len Coates
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In what may be unprecedented in the annals of awards, the first recipient of the award is Len Coates himself.This will make it difficult for anyone else to win it, because a career like his doesn't come along often.

In fact, Coates pretty much invented automobile journalism as we know it in this country, first in the old Toronto Telegram, and subsequently in the pre-Wheels days of the Star.

Back in the 1960s, Coates realized there must be more to life than stringing phone wires for Bell Canada.He entered the journalism program at Ryerson as a "mature student."(I will leave the obvious jokes to others.)

Even then he got noticed: As editor of The Ryersonian, the student-run but administration-overseen campus paper, he got involved in a major battle over who actually was in charge.

One of the very first stories under Coates's byline in The Star (The Toronto Daily Star in those days) had to do with the potential for university administrations to censor student newspapers.It appeared on Jan. 7, 1966 while he was still a student.

Upon graduation, Coates first worked at the Sherbrooke Record, a small newspaper in the eastern townships of Quebec, run by an aggressive entrepreneur who also made quite a name for himself in the newspaper business, Conrad Black.
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Coates then moved on to The Telegram, and then to The Star in various roles, including sports writer.

His life-long interest in cars and car racing led to him to seek greater coverage of both consumer and sporting aspects of the most important industry in the country.He eventually landed a weekly column on automobiles, which he also syndicated to several papers across Canada.

Coates also wrote for various publications, including Canada Track and Traffic and Carguide magazine.He authored Challenge: The Story of Road Racing in Canada, which remains the definitive book on the origins of Canadian motorsport.

He was also the face of Canadian auto writing on the international scene.

In 1981, a group of lesser-light auto scribes conceived the idea of an association of automobile journalists.Recognizing that no one was likely to pay much attention to people writing for such small, community newspapers as the Oakville Beaver and the Milton Weekly Tribune, the group nominated your humble servant to approach Mr. Coates (as we knew him then) to be the first president.

As the unquestioned dean of what at the time was a pretty small faculty, Coates hardly needed whatever leverage such an association might provide.Still, he not only accepted the role, but also noted that he had attempted on several occasions to start up such an association himself.To Coates, the profession was always larger than one person.
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But his heart belonged in Canada, so Coates returned to become one of the inaugural editors of World of Wheels magazine.He continued in a variety of staff and freelance positions, and also started up a desktop publishing business, which allowed him to expand on his lesser-known talents for design and graphics.

He retired a couple of years ago from a copy-editing position with The Globe and Mail.
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Coates maintained he had been going 125 km/h.A Porsche engineer who analyzed the damage concurred - if the raccoon had been going 45 km/h.Coates has always been a man of immense personal charm.But his facile conversation, easy charm and fluid writing style only partly mask a rigid integrity: get the facts right; hold true to your principles; tell it like it is.

I recall about 15 years ago when a writer approached him on his views about designing cars for women, who were making up an ever-increasing proportion of the car market.Coates was adamant that good design was good design, and pandering to "what women wanted" was patronizing.

Coates, now 69, is currently undergoing treatment for a variety of serious ailments, which brings up another famous Coates quote: "If I knew I was going to live this long, I wouldn't have treated my body like a theme park."

This award assures that when all of the current crop of car writers has made its final pit stop, his name will be remembered.