Bruce Hotchkiss' "Spare Parts"

There was a time when I got invited on auto press junkets. That was a heady time. Truthfully, I always felt like I was a fake, that sooner or later "they" would find out I didn't belong. It did finally happen, but not because I didn't belong; more likely because budgets were cut. I did get a big head, but only for a very short time. In 1984, tacked onto the end of an American Motors Canada Inc. trip to Southern California (more on the trip later), I stayed on to visit a friend in Laguna Beach. Shortly before the AMC trip I had been at what was known as the General Motors long leads (long leads are product previews for the timelines of magazines). I was acting all "it's no big deal." My friend asked how many journalists were there, and I told him maybe a couple hundred. My friend asked where they were all from. "All over the world" I replied. He was stunned that I, Bruce Hotchkiss, was among such an elite group. I'd honestly never thought of...