relatives of car and driver contributing editor davey g. johnson now say they presume that he has died in an accidental drowning at age 43, agreeing with the suggestion by searchers from the calaveras county sheriff's department, which scaled back its efforts to find the missing man after 10 days of intensive searching in northern california. while the search continues, the sheriff reported finding all of johnson's belongings near the mokelumne river and said that trained dogs had tracked his scent to the water's edge.
"i saw davey as the voice of his generation," said hearst autos chief brand officer eddie alterman, explaining why he hired johnson in 2014, when alterman was editor-in-chief of car and driver. "he was a gifted, innate storyteller and a man consumed with his enthusiasms."
johnson had been making an impression on the business since he started writing in 2001 about "the machines that move us," as he described them. especially in stints at jalopnik from 2005 to 2007 and as a senior online editor for autoweek from 2012 to 2014, he stood out as a rising star. current jalopnik editor-in-chief patrick george wrote that johnson's work "helped establish this publication's voice." autoweek editor andy stoy said johnson became "one of our most reliable 'interview editors,' a unique flavor of journalist who can dive into a one-on-one interview, really pluck out the personality of the interviewee, then put it into words. he was also just a genuinely nice guy.” aw executive editor natalie neff added that he was "genuinely engaging, sincerely interested in connecting with whoever he’s talking to. he’s just one of those people whose personalities feel so defined and has such an infectious energy that even a brief encounter with him has to leave an impression."
c/d online editor andrew wendler remembers johnson this way: "the first words davey johnson ever said to me in person were: 'you know, my whole life is a vacation.' as an automotive writer—or journalist, or blogger, or whatever convenient title the outside world has branded the creatives that occupy this space—there is a tendency for healthy journalistic skepticism over time to metastasize into jaded cynicism. davey never suffered from this affliction, despite several decades in the business.
"a superbly talented writer and master of the nebulous reference, davey wrote without a net, often blending cultural touchpoints as disparate as punk rock, obscure soviet history, and golden-era french motocross champions into a single storyline, while still managing to emerge on point," wendler said. "davey's tastes didn't discriminate based on pedigrees or hype; he could extract just as much joy from a well-executed subcompact as a low-volume six-figure-plus parade float, as long as the vehicle was capable of putting a smile of satisfaction on the driver's face."
when he wasn't exclusive to one publication or another, johnson freelanced, spreading his work among many magazines and websites. alterman recalls a 2011 story for car and driver as especially memorable, saying, "when i think of dgj, i think of his cross-country trip in the [1977 mercedes-benz] 450sel 6.9."
"we were interested in bringing him on in one way or another for some years before we did," recalls daniel pund, who was then car and driver deputy editor. "we offered him a deal very shortly after davey had signed up with autoweek. once he was available, we grabbed him."
born in california on december 4, 1975, david gordon johnson was the only son of margaret mary and gordon oliver johnson. his mother had been a nun with the sisters of saint louis, sent from her native ireland to serve in southern california in the late 1950s. she met johnson's father, who was a priest, about a decade later, and both left the church to wed. they became northern california academics who sent davey to saint mary's college of california in moraga, class of '98, where he majored in english language and literature. he always lived in california except for a brief time when he called austin, texas, home.
this distinctive and memorable story of his origins was one davey told his fellow auto scribes and friends for years before he shared it with c/d readers in a 2018 story. that was roughly two years after his parents both died, within a month of each other, in early 2016, events that also appeared in his writing. he wrote often, subsequently, of visiting ireland and his relatives there.
read a lot of davey g. johnson stories, and you could begin to think you knew the man himself. integrating personal details from his life into tales that were nominally about cars, motorsport, or cycling was typical of his approach as a writer. his subject was always life; the windshield of whatever vehicle was at hand was simply the lens through which he viewed it. johnson also folded in all his enthusiasms, which, alterman remembers, "ranged from punk rock to the history of california to graphic design to, lately, motorcycles." references to any or all of those, plus movies and other pop-culture references common to his generation—and alien to those of his editors who were baby boomers or older—peppered johnson's stories. he was equally adept at stories for print and the web, demonstrating to his elders that being a digital native and being literary were not mutually exclusive.
"his writing was cinematic in scope, but microscopic in detail. and he didn’t give a shit if you liked it," alterman recalls. "above all, he was consumed with cars. his curiosity led him down all sorts of narrow and dark automotive passageways, and he always emerged with some luminous piece of writing."
other particularly memorable stories alterman cited include the time johnson played uber driver using a rolls-royce in san francisco and another in which he drove a porsche 911 turbo s to explore california history and the site of the 1928 saint francis dam disaster.
his enthusiasm for life on two wheels was recent, though it was preceded by an interest in motorcycle racing. johnson didn't get his own motorcycle license until 2015. he wrote about the process of learning to ride—and get good at it—in a series of stories for c/d called "year of the goose," named for the moto guzzi v7 employed in the exercise. he wrote about how he fell off it on a rainy day without serious physical consequence but a costly repair bill, and later, when he was simply turning in to a parking lot, the bike was hit from behind by an inattentive motorist—it was totaled, and he broke a leg and a foot. these experiences of cycling's inherent dangers didn't dissuade him, and he seemed to double down on his new passion, tackling a series of long-distance rides, picking up new clients among cycling publications, and buying his own moto guzzi. he wrote recently that "extended motorcycle trips are one of my top five favorite things in the world," and his last piece for car and driver, an opinion column, was about the honda gold wing.
"long-distance riding is meditative," he once wrote, "and i find i prefer it on a naked bike, wholly exposed to the elements. all the while, the world is benignly conspiring against you. road imperfections, inattentive motorists, trucks shedding tire tread, rain, deer, snow, crosswinds, dehydration, hail, lightning."
his last long ride started in los angeles, home of his girlfriend jaclyn trop, a fellow journalist. theirs was a fresh romance, sparked when both went on an adventure above the arctic circle, an event staged by mazda to show off the new cx-5. johnson changed his facebook status to "in a relationship" on january 2, the day before the resultant story posted online.
"we both thought this year was going to be the best one of our lives," trop told kcar-tv in sacramento. "it's not looking that way now." she told c/d she was "absolutely gutted" by davey's disappearance. after spending the first weekend of june together riding around her los angeles home on the honda cb1000r that johnson was testing for motorcyclist, trop flew to florida while johnson headed for las vegas and then toward his sacramento county home—the one in carmichael in which he'd grown up, which he opted to keep after his parents' deaths—via the sonora pass through the sierra nevada range. it was trop who reported him missing when she hadn't heard from him for an unusually long period. police didn't respond initially but began to search in earnest after he'd been out of touch for 72 hours. the bike was located parked at roadside in a rest area, his belongings were found near the adjacent mokelumne river, and, he'd have been quick to point out, it wasn't his consuming enthusiasm for motorcycling that got him in the end.