About Me

STEVE PARKER CV/BIO

Member, AFTRA (American Federation of Television and Radio Artists), Society of Automotive
Historians, Classic Car Club of America, Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), Antique Automobile Club of America, Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA), and various
other auto- and motor racing-related organizations. Honored with two Emmy Awards (for news reporting at KTLA/TV5, KCBS/TV2).

Steve has served as a consultant and adviser with some of the world's’s top automotive industry consultancies. He has also ghost-written many magazine articles and best-selling books along with and for some of the auto industry’s and auto racing's best-known and most-respected personalities.

Based in southern California, Steve’s career has focused on cars, trucks and motorcycles, the
worldwide industry which makes them and the people who buy, collect, race and lavish over them. If it has anything at all to do with engines, motors and wheels, Steve has been “the go-to guy” for scores of newspapers, magazines, radio and TV shows in need of an on-air “expert.”

With the automotive world now going through the most dramatic changes in its history, since Karl Benz received a patent for his “motorwagen” in 1886, Steve is in the midst of all the action, many turning to his experience and expertise to help them understand what’s happening, why and where all the changes will take us.

Currently, Steve writes and moderates the only automotive-related blog on The Huffington
Post website, one of the world’s top sites with millions of visitors each week (www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-parker). Steve also created this blog for the Huffington Post.

His motoring column, ‘Tornante,’ runs each week in the Santa Monica (CA) Daily Press
newspaper (www.smdp.com).

Steve is a consultant and contributor to the NBC-TV auto show, ‘Whipnotic,’ and the show’s
companion website (www.whipnotic.com).

“American Racing Today,” a daily NASCAR news update, runs on radio stations nationally and
Steve has written, voiced and produced the program for over 15 years. The show is also available on his website, www.SteveParker.com, in both WAV and MP3 formats.

For over 35 years, Steve Parker has covered the world of cars, trucks, motorcycles and motor
racing of all kinds. This has taken him around the world many times, and his work has appeared in most of the best-known newspapers, magazines and websites which follow those industries in addition to many general interest publications, including the Los Angeles Times, About.com, the in-flight publications for TWA, Delta and American Airlines, the New York Post, the prestigious Palm Springs Life monthly and elsewhere.

His popular website, www.SteveParker.com, is in the top 5% of all English language websites.

Visitors to the site find Photo Albums from events such as the Tokyo Motor Show and Los
Angeles Auto Show, Concours d’Elegance shows from Palm Springs, CA to Greenwich, CT to
Pebble Beach, major insider industry gatherings including the annual SEMA Show in Las Vegas
and much, much more.

Steve has worked and is working as a consultant for several auto industry clients and major industry consultancies.

From 2004 through 2009, Steve Parker Productions, Inc., produced a weekly, ½-hour automotive TV show, “Car Nut TV,” for Time Warner cable systems in Southern California.

From 2000 through 2004, Steve wrote a monthly auto column for the Alaska Airlines in-flight
magazine, and also penned a column for several years for Times-Mirror which was syndicated
nationally. He later wrote a column which appeared every week in Gannett Newspapers’ Desert Sun newspaper from 2000 through 2004.

Steve created and hosted the first automotive radio show on a national commercial network in 1987 (“America on the Road”) and he’s hosted several call-in radio programs in Los Angeles and Palm Springs, CA, often live from major automotive events such as the Long Beach Grand Prix, Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, the many classic car auctions each January in Scottsdale, AZ and as a guest of Larry King at the National Association of Broadcasters’ annual convention.

He also created the position of “automotive reporter” at two Los Angeles TV stations, and has been honored by his peers with two Emmy Awards. His reports, first on KTLA/TV5 and later on KCBS/TV2, were the first regularly-scheduled news segments covering the lifestyle of cars, trucks and motorcycles on any TV station in the country.

He’s been on the editorial staffs of Popular Mechanics, Petersen’s Four Wheel Off-Road, auto industry monthly Automotive Fleet and Race Boat & Industry News.

www.SteveParker.com is in the Top 5% of all English language websites, as documented by
www.Alexa.com. Much of the content is also shared with and on the website of the new NBC
automotive show, Whipnotic.

Photo albums on the site focus on visits to the Tokyo Motor Show, Los Angeles Auto Show, the SEMA Show in Las Vegas and other major
automotive events.

Steve’s live weekend talkradio show, THE CAR NUT, ran on Los Angeles radio stations since 1992 in various forms on KMPC, KTZN and KXTA (XTRA Sports 1150), all in Los Angeles, and both KNWZ and KPSI in Palm Springs, CA.

His live shows are now heard online every Saturday and Sunday at 5pm Pacific time broadcast on www.TalkRadioOne.com - podcasts of past shows are there, as well. And they're free!

PAST

His working travels have taken him many times throughout Europe and the Far East and across the USA. From hosting TV shows in the UK (Granada TV’s “The Motor Show”) to his work on American TV being shown in exhibits explaining advanced technologies by Honda
Motor Corporation at major auto shows in Frankfurt, Germany and Tokyo, Parker has “been there, done that” when it comes to the world of cars, always seeking new challenges and reporting on those which reach them, from the newest clean diesel technology to the future of hydrogen-fueled fuel cell EVs.

Three times he’s criss-crossed America’s back roads in a vintage car as a journalist/participant in THE GREAT AMERICAN RACE (now known as “Great Race”), an over-4,000-mile long time/speed/distance rally for classic and antique vehicles of all sorts.

Once, he covered the event for a major cover story in POPULAR MECHANICS magazine (in a car sponsored for the event by the magazine), and twice was in-charge of a true “traveling exhibit” for the over one million member strong GOOD SAM RV club, the world’s largest, accompanying GOOD SAM’s entry in the nationwide race, a 1925 Model A Ford towing a 1929 Zagelmeyer camping trailer. At each of the near-100 heavily-promoted stops along the over-two-week-long route, Parker coordinated and oversaw local, national and international press coverage of the GOOD SAM “race car.”

Parker created, for the first-time at any US TV station, the position of “automotive feature reporter.” He did this at two TV stations in Los Angeles. The 54-year old Parker was the automotive reporter for 10 years at KTLA/TV5 Los Angeles (Tribune Corp.) and for a single
year at KCBS/TV2, Los Angeles (CBS-TV). His TV work was honored with two Emmy Awards.

His KTLA reports were also regularly syndicated to many of the 27 Tribune TV stations nationally, all in Top 50 markets, including stations in Chicago, New York City, Washington DC, New Orleans and other major markets.

Parker created the first nationally-syndicated automotive talk show on a commercial radio network. The syndicated radio program for Westwood One/Mutual Broadcasting, called “America on the Road”,” started in 1987, and was heard on more than 300 radio outlets across the nation.

He was West Coast Editor of POPULAR MECHANICS magazine (1986), and served on the staff of Petersen’s FOUR WHEEL OFF-ROAD and several other major auto and motorcycle publications. He also was editor of RACE BOAT AND INDUSTRY NEWS, and editor of the auto industry’s monthly trade journal, AUTOMOTIVE FLEET.

Parker often serves as an auto expert on local and national TV and radio. Guest spots have included those with MIKE AND MATY on ABC-TV, SCOOP WITH SAM AND DOROTHY on Tribune Television, CNN's BEST BUYS and many more. He appeared many times on the CBS LATE, LATE RADIO SHOW with Tom Snyder and Steve Mason. He's also guested often with Larry King.

Other TV credits include numerous ESPN shows and he hosted SPEEDVISION’s inaugural coverage of the Los Angeles AUTO SHOW.

He served one season as the American “presenter” of THE MOTOR SHOW, the top-rated auto
show in England, produced by Granada Television, the largest commercial network in the UK.

Through the 1970s and '80s, as a freelance journalist, he wrote articles and shot photos for
scores of well-known magazines worldwide, including all the major car and motorcycle magazines and top airline in-flight publications including TWA AMBASSADOR, AMERICAN WAY and DELTA SKY.

His contributions to magazines during that time ranged from Larry Flynt's RAGE to MOTOR TREND, AUTOMOBILE QUARTERLY and even ROTARIAN, official publication of the Rotary Club International, where he reported on the 1985 Tsukuba Science World's Fair, held in Japan, where he has traveled over 20 times on assignment.

PERSONAL

Steve was born in Brooklyn, NY and moved with his family to Southern California at age 16.

He currently resides in Los Angeles, coming off a 12-year stint in the Southern California desert near Palm Springs. "It was too hot," he says, "so I left. The desert won again."

He graduated from Santa Ana High School after serving as Student Body President of the 3,500-student school his senior year (1972), and attended California State University at Fullerton, majoring in computer technology, then an all-new subject, and, naturally, journalism.

He has continued his education through the years through various Society of Automotive Engineers(SAE) courses and others offered through various online and local college and auto industry/auto racing organizations.

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