Longtime Washington Post auto writer Brown dies

Warren Brown, who covered the auto industry for more than 30 years for The Washington Post, died Thursday from kidney disease complications at the age of 70, reports Adam Bernstein of The Post.

Bernstein writes, “A colleague advised him that to ‘make it’ at The Post, he should carve out a beat no one else wanted and make it his fiefdom. Flummoxing some editors, he petitioned to leave the national desk to join the business staff and write about the auto industry.

“He explained that he felt called to the job for reasons he traced to his upbringing in the segregated South. Black passengers, including his college-educated father, were almost always forced to the back of city buses.

“‘Freedom came when my parents and black neighbors bought their own cars,’ he said in the C-SPAN interview. ‘That way they could not only sit up front, but could also drive the things. And that to me was power, that to me was freedom.’

“Mr. Brown reported on automotive safety regulations, trade unions and executive shake-ups at General Motors and other companies. He eventually launched a weekly column, now called On Wheels, and hosted a weekly online chat called Real Wheels Live.”

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