Exclusive Interview: Rory Carroll, Editor, Autoweek

Rory Carroll edits Autoweek from Detroit, but his own car story starts in the orchards of northern Michigan and runs straight through a welded-shut door at the 24 Hours of Lemons. In this conversation with host Pat Caporuscio, Carroll traces his path from a cherry-country childhood to one of the industry’s most recognized editorial chairs, and explains why an editor who still races tells a different kind of story. Read on to find out what shaped his eye for the muscle car world.

Some car magazine editors write about muscle cars from a safe distance, quoting spec sheets and press releases without ever getting their hands dirty. Rory Carroll is not one of them. Sit him down for an interview about his job running Autoweek’s Detroit desk and the conversation drifts, almost immediately, toward welded-shut doors, a racing seat, and 24 hours behind the wheel of someone else’s beat-up endurance car. Getting there took a childhood spent chasing that first taste of freedom on backroads far from Detroit’s press events, and the story of how he got from a kid in cherry country to a nationally known editor says more about what makes someone a real car guy than any masthead ever could.

A Michigan Magazine With Deep Roots

Autoweek is one of Detroit’s institutions, but it did not start life under that name. The publication launched in 1958 as Competition Press, a title that leaned hard into motorsport coverage before rebranding as Autoweek in 1975. Two years later, in 1977, Crain Communications purchased the magazine, folding it into a Detroit media company with deep automotive-industry ties. By the time Carroll took the editor’s chair, he was steering a publication with nearly six decades of history covering the same performance culture that built cars like the muscle machines this site is devoted to, giving him a vantage point most enthusiasts only dream about. That history also means Carroll inherited a readership that expects real automotive credibility, not just polished copy.

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Cherry Country Roots

Carroll didn’t grow up in Detroit’s shadow. He was raised near Traverse City, in what he calls cherry country, where his family has lived since the 1840s. It’s a corner of Michigan defined by orchards and back roads rather than assembly lines, but it produced the same kind of car obsession that took hold in Detroit’s suburbs a generation earlier. Wide open land, quiet roads, and a large extended family gave him room to grow into the hobby long before he ever had a press badge, and that upbringing shaped the hands-on, unpretentious way he still talks about cars today.

A Family Habit, Not a Sudden Spark

Ask Carroll when he caught the car bug and he won’t point to a single moment. His grandfather was into cars, and his father leaned toward sports cars, so the interest was baked in well before his teenage years. What changed in his early teens, he says, was the arrival of real independence: the ability to drive somewhere, meet people, and get into a bit of trouble along the way. That first taste of freedom behind the wheel is a familiar refrain among gearheads of every generation, and it’s the same emotional hook that built the muscle car era in the first place, long before any of these cars became six-figure collector pieces.

Political Science, Not Automotive Engineering

Carroll’s academic path wasn’t exactly aimed at Detroit’s press corps. He attended Michigan State University and studied political science, a degree that has little obvious connection to writing about horsepower and handling. It’s a reminder that a lot of the people covering the car world didn’t take a direct route into it. What got him there instead was persistence and an obsession that outlasted whatever career plan a political science degree might have suggested, eventually landing him behind the editor’s desk at one of the industry’s most recognized magazines.

From the Newsroom to the Racetrack

What separates Carroll from a lot of automotive editors is that he doesn’t just write about racing, he does it. He fielded a team for the 24 Hours of Lemons, the budget endurance race famous for cars worth less than the price of a decent set of tires. Photos from those archives show him leaner and in full racing trim, strapped into a car with doors welded shut for safety, the kind of detail that only makes sense once you’ve actually climbed into a stripped-out race car through a window. It is the sort of firsthand experience that no press credential alone can substitute for.

Why Backroad Racing Still Resonates

When Carroll talks about growing up racing in Traverse City, the parallels to Detroit’s own street and drag racing culture aren’t subtle. Both scenes depended on the same ingredients: open land, informal tracks, and a community willing to organize its own competition outside of any sanctioning body. Carroll’s host for the interview, Pat Caporuscio, made that connection explicit, comparing the empty runways and back roads of Carroll’s youth to the same kind of makeshift dragstrips that once dotted the Detroit area, proof that this culture never needed a permanent facility to take root.

An Editor Who Still Talks Like a Fan

It would be easy for a magazine editor to drift into press-release language after years covering new product launches, but Carroll’s interview reads more like two enthusiasts trading stories than a formal Q&A. That tone matters. Autoweek’s readers, and the muscle car community more broadly, tend to trust writers who still sound like they’d rather be under a hood than behind a desk, and Carroll’s own history gives him the credibility to write that way without it feeling forced or performative.

The Bigger Picture for Muscle Car Fans

Interviews like this one matter for a niche audience because they put a face and a personal history behind the coverage readers see every week. Knowing that the person assigning stories about big-block torque figures and restoration projects also spent his teenage years racing back roads in northern Michigan changes how that coverage lands. It’s the difference between reading about the hobby and reading someone who has actually lived inside it, tuning his own car and hauling a trailer to the track on weekends.

A Career Still Rooted in the Same Obsession

Decades removed from those Traverse City backroads, Carroll’s day job now involves shaping how an entire industry gets covered, but the throughline from teenage racer to Autoweek editor is hard to miss. The freedom he chased as a kid never really left the equation; it just moved from a welded-shut race car door to an editor’s chair with a much bigger platform to talk about it from, one that still circles back to the same question that got him hooked in the first place: what makes a car worth caring about.

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