About Us

Editors

Bertel Schmitt Editor-In-Chief

Bertel Schmitt started writing professionally as a Rock’n’Roll journalist in the wild Sixties. He sold out at age 23 and went into advertising. His most loyal client was Volkswagen. Starting with the launch of the Golf MK I in 1974, Bertel served Volkswagen in various capacities, from 1989 through 2005 in his own advertising agency in New York and Düsseldorf, Germany. An assignment for Volkswagen brought Bertel to Beijing, China, in 2004. His wife is a Japanese import. The two divide their time between Japan and China.

Edward Niedermeyer Editor-At-Large

Edward Niedermeyer’s auto obsession started at an early age, with hour-long conversations with his father, Paul. Memory banks well-stocked with paper napkin diagrams of carburetors and engine cycles, he went on to discover blogging in college as Editor-in-Chief of the Oregon Commentator. Upon graduation, Ed suddenly remembered that cars are way cooler than politics, and he joined TTAC as a blogger and writer in early 2008. A year and a half later he was asked to replace the site’s founder, Robert Farago, as TTAC’s Editor-in-Chief. Based in Portland, Oregon, Niedermeyer has found automotive love with a 199 Z3 M Coupe.
Sajeev Mehta Editor

Sajeev Mehta wears the comment “you are completely obsessed with cars” as a badge of honor. His higher education featured an automotive twist: Mechanical Engineering, Fine Art, Industrial Design and Operations Management. These days, if Sajeev’s not studying for his MBA there’s a good chance he’s restoring, modifying or racing one of his obscure Hot Rods somewhere in the Lone Star State.

Steven Lang Editor

I can auction two hundred vehicles an hour. Yet I always seem to forget my keys. I’m Steve Lang and besides having to write this ego trip of a bio, I’m pretty much just a middle aged guy. With one weird quirk of course. The auto auction business which has blossomed into a work life that literally changes in size and scope every week.. This week I’m getting ready to liquidate vehicles in South Atlanta. It will be about a hundred vehicle sale. Next week I will be buying vehicles for two lots that I have in the North side of Atlanta. The week after? Getting ready for another live auction and shooting a TV pilot about…buying cars at auction. This life may be Ralph Nader’s nightmare but I enjoy it quite a bit.

Jack Baruth Editor

Jack is the only person in American history to hold both a professional BMX racing license and a professional auto racing license. This, combined with five dollars, will get you a “venti” at Starbucks. He has been writing for publication since 1991 and wrote the unpopular “One Racer’s Perspective” and “BMX Basics” columns for _Bicycles Today_ magazine. In the past several years, Jack has won a few races, lost many more, received multiple disciplinary actions for contact and rough driving, and hit the Armco at Mid-Ohio at approximately ninety-five miles per hour. He races in the NASA, Koni Challenge, and Skip Barber Mazdaspeed Series. In the past decade he has owned two VW Phaetons, a bright green Audi S5, multiple Porsches, and a deeply-missed 1982 VW Quantum Coupe in Harvest Gold.

Murilee Martin Editor

Murilee Martin got hooked on cars in early childhood when he rode in his father’s ’67 Ford Custom 500 with 289, floor-shift 3-speed, and manual overdrive. Later childhood experiences with a pair of Fiat 128s sealed the deal. He has relied on British Leyland products for daily transportation. He has owned terrible Detroit cars, terrible Japanese cars, and terrible European cars; a Competition Orange ’68 Mercury Cyclone vies with a ’76 Peugeot 504 for the position of ex-car he most wishes he could have back. His writer’s resume includes junk mail, transit-bus shop manuals, sadomasochistic pornography, and some other gigs too shameful to mention. He has worked as an Orange County performance artist. Someday he will own a GAZ-3102 Volga, because he feels that the GAZ-21 Volga lacks the requisite Brezhnevian charm.

Contributors

Mike Solowiew

Hailing from Roswell, New Mexico, Mike’s first word was “Audi” and it went downhill from there. With flying matching his automotive interests, he graduated from the Air Force Academy in 2003 with a law degree and a minor in German so he could fix his Audi properly. Stationed in places ranging from swampy Florida, to glitzy Las Vegas, to Oklahoma City, the good Captain tries to keep busy by organizing outlandish road trips, back country hikes and raids at the local car dealer, racing his Porsche, and fixing his original Audi Quattro.

Alex Dykes
Martin Schwoerer
Don Gammill Jr
Thor Jonsen
Tal Bronfer
David Holzman