Interview with Martyn Schorr of Thunder Am

Here is Volume 1, Issue 1 of Thunder Am.

Over the years most generic automotive magazines have had a hard time describing Pontiac people. It's difficult for them to understand why someone would want an automobile that doesn't feature a mainstream following and ubiquitous nameplate. As a result, Pontiac loyalists had to deal with whatever rudimentary coverage of Firebirds, Bonnevilles, Grand Prixs, or GTOs these publications could provide amidst a sea of Mopar, Chevy and Ford pros. However, that all changed when Martyn Schorr decided to publish Thunder Am magazine in 1979.

You longtime HPP subscribers have lived the Martyn Schorr Thunder Am to HPP story and there were accounts of it in the Dec 1996 issue, of which we have excerpts here. However, this time around, while celebrating our 25 years in print, we're going to get a deeper insight into the man behind the ink. The Pontiac story for this Bronx, NY native and the planting of the seed that became Thunder Am can be traced back to 1954.

HPP: What was your first Pontiac?
MS: The first Pontiac I owned was a '51 two-tone blue sedan [acquired] in 1954--my parents' car. I bullnosed the hood, dechromed the decklid, added a glasspac muffler, Mallory ignition, and Stellings air cleaner. [No different than the youths of today with their sport compacts.] I kept the '51 until 1961 when I bought a new Bonneville.

HPP: What was your favorite Pontiac?
MS: The new Bonneville coupe I bought in 1961 with a 389/348 Tri-Power engine. I added Cragars and did some engine mods. It was the best car I ever owned. I always loved Pontiac. I guess it was the combo of style and performance. I kept the Bonneville for 8 years, sold it to my brother-in-law and it was later stolen from him! Joel Rosen [of Motion Performance] also tuned this car.

Martyn Schorr today as president of PMPR, Inc.

While Pontiacs were his favorite, Schorr also became familiar with other makes. He was all over the emerging musclecar scene. Martyn's professional automotive journalism career started in the late '50s as a freelance photojournalist. He sold his first story to Custom Rodder. Schorr also did work for Car, Speed & Style. In 1960 he got the opportunity to edit them, leading to the job as editor of CARS magazine (a New York-based Magnum-Royal Publications periodical). During his tenure there, he rose through the ranks to become Editorial Director of all the automotive publications and ultimately VP of Editorial when the company went public in 1972 as Magnum Communications. Between '67 and '73 he also helped with the creation and marketing of the Joel Rosen and Baldwin Chevrolet Motion cars.

HPP: Can you tell us about the stocker GTO's you raced in NHRA?
MS: We spent a couple of months with a '67 Royal Bobcat GTO--weekends at the tracks. One weekend we won class and Street Eliminator. We sent the huge trophy to Pontiac public relations and kept the bond. Joel Rosen and I drove it. Joel tuned it and prepped it at the track. The '67 GTO was a 4-barrel, automatic originally prepared by the guys at Royal Pontiac. It was badged a Royal Bobcat. It had Doug's headers and the usual Royal stuff. Goodyear supplied the tires for me to run at the track. It ran OK but Joel Rosen at Motion thought it could run better. It did after he dyno-tuned it. It was a white car with blue and red lettering. I think it was running in the mid-13s and I used it to commute into NYC just about every day -- lettering and all. Photos of me and the car were used for CARS magazine advertising/promo pieces. Jim Wangers arranged for me to get the car and I flew out to Detroit, met Wangers and the guys at Royal and the next morning drove it back to NY. Jim Wangers was never very happy that Rosen and Motion made the car run better. The '68 GTO was a factory car they sent us for road testing--not Royal tuned. We had it for about a month--we usually have cars for a week. Problem is the GTO had GM manufacturer plates and GM legal pulled the car back soon after they saw the photos of that car with those plates drag racing.

HPP: What was the automotive (Pontiac) performance scene like in that era?
MS: The Pontiac scene was limited compared to Chevy, Ford, and Mopar. Pontiac never really built ultimate performance cars. They fit into classes well--like Stock Automatic. Pontiac people were really diehard performance nuts who tried to compete and they did, like Nunzi in the East and other guys on the West Coast. They were always compromise cars though--heavy cars with hydraulic lifters. The engine being a basic oversize wedge couldn't compete with the big-block Chevy and big-block Hemi Mopar. But there was a strong Pontiac contingent probably because they were passed down through generations. The performance was limited but they did a wonderful job, considering all Pontiacs used the same blocks and the major modifications were to the camshafts, intake manifolds, and heads. The SD cars were just wonderful. Pontiacs did well in their class because they were so heavy. . .putting a 455 in a big heavy Bonne meant you were low in the index. But you could do well. Pontiac's advertising was outrageous. You had wild music, shoes and cologne. A GTO was so much more appealing than a Chevelle. Pontiac's interiors in the early '60s were striking-- wo toning it, tri-toning, chroming it. Kids who wanted just to go fast bought Chevy's. For people who wanted nice cars to drive that were fast and quick and could track straight--Pontiac was the obvious choice.

Schorr's first Pontiac--a hand-me-down '51 Pontiac 8 sedan used in racing sports car rallys in 1956.

In 1973, Schorr started Performance Media Public Relations (PMPR, Inc) and began freelancing his automotive journalistic talents. It wasn't until 1979 when it all came together and today's HPP readers came to really know PMPR, Inc. It was in this year that Thunder Am, the predecessor of High Performance Pontiac came to be. The 3 year existence of Thunder Am and its metamorphosis into HPP were highlighted and documented in our December 1996 issue by then-editor Terry McGean like so:

1979: The Pontiac Trans Am hit record production levels, serving as proof positive for Martyn Schorr, a veteran automotive journalist, that the time was right for a Trans Am dedicated magazine. Convinced that such a publication would be a hit with owners/lovers of Pontiac's F-car, Schorr launched Thunder Am from his New Jersey home.

The premier issue was 42 pages, all black and white except for the cover, which was a studio shot of the new '80 Turbo T/A. The staff included Schorr as publisher, Editorial Director Sharon Rosinger the late Roger Huntington as Detroit Editor and noted automotive artist Scott Teeters. In his first Thunder Road editorial, Schorr explained the meaning of the magazine's title--"It's short for Thunder American or American Thunder, which in 2 words describe what Pontiac represents to the world of the performance enthusiasts."

In an article reviewing the then-new '80 Turbo Trans Am, Schorr stated, "The '80 Turbo Firebird with 301 power is quicker and faster than last year's 403-inch automatic cars and similar in performance to an automatic T/A 400 machine. The cubes may be down for 1980, but the Trans Am still remains the Number One street performance car built in this country. And that's the way it's going to stay!" [HPP, December 1996]

HPP: Can you elaborate more on why you started Thunder Am?
MS: To make money of course. I chose [Thunder Am] because I couldn't use Trans Am. Licensing costs were prohibitive. Additionally, I saw an opportunity to serve the needs of Pontiac hobbyists who were getting short-changed. There were Chevy and Mopar publications galore and Super Ford. I figured I could nail down that niche market because I had Pontiac contacts and access to information that the average Pontiac person didn't have--to give Pontiac people their own place.

A '61 Bonne coupe was Martyn's first new Pontiac. No wonder he was hooked.

HPP: How did you launch the magazine (publish and promote) it?
MS: I would go to POCI meets and pass it out. And I got mailing lists from people like Herb Adams [Ex GM engineer, racer and owner of VSE].

HPP: How quickly did it catch on?
MS: I got a pretty good initial response, but it leveled off because it was difficult to get more people to subscribe.

1980: The second issue of Thunder Am saw the turn of the decade, and with it some notable, changes, including the first bits of paid advertising. The magazine had already begun to develop a cult-like following. It had a flavor of being an underground newsletter for die-hard Poncho fans. And the subscription-only circulation contributed to this feeling. The February issue contained the very first of a long line of "Is This the Next GTO?" articles. This time, it featured Scott Teeter's sketches proposing a Grand Am-based Goat.

By the end of the first year, Thunder Am was turning more and more into a "real" magazine with the introduction of classified ads, back issues for sale and full-page ads.

The year ended with the special First Anniversary issue in December 1980. It featured 4 more pages (the cover was still the only color), and an "exclusive interview" with The Bandit himself, Burt Reynolds, and the first-ever reader's survey, whose results Thunder Am, forwarded to Pontiac Motor Division. [ HPP, December 1996]

Here is Martyn at the strip with a press pool '68 GTO running in the D/Stock Auto class. Note the manufacturer's license plates of the day that start with the letters GM. Martyn noted that the GM lawyers didn't take to kindly to Cars magazine's printing photos of GM cars with their tags at the strip. Remember these were the days of high insurance premiums for high performance cars and all manufacturers were beginning to downplay their roles in drag racing.

HPP: What was your vision for the magazine's future?
MS: To grow it bigger and get it fatter and get advertising [because it was] too thin [and] too expensive to produce because I used heavy coated stock [paper]. It was subscription based and never grew beyond 2,500 circulation.

1981: The year started with a new logo, and the possibility of becoming available at a newsstand near you. The February issue also contained the first ad from Pontiac Motor Division. It called the '81 Turbo Trans Am the "Soul Survivor" and a "descendant of the original legend." It was living proof that Pontiac's ad campaigns were into nostalgia long before it was fashionable. Despite the rapidly expanding readership, Schorr was beginning to realized that no matter how popular the magazine became with the "underground", newsstand presence would be mandatory if TA were to become truly successful.

This realization led Schorr to sell Thunder Am to Stephen Schneider. Schneider was already publishing successful niche magazines, and he knew what it would take to turn TA into a nationally recognized publication. Schorr stayed on as [senior] editor and Schneider set the wheels of change in motion by adding color as well as more pages, and also securing newsstand space for the magazine.

CARS magazine editor, Martyn Schorr, presenting the 1973 High Performance Car of the Year award to Martin J. Caserio, Pontiac General Manager, for its '73 SD 455 GTO.

Now that he could focus his efforts entirely on editorial, Schorr addressed a controversial development in the Pontiac community: the "corporate" V-8. "Since Pontiac has ended its V8 engine building career and will now focus only on four cylinder production, we will have to accept a Chevrolet-powered V-8 Trans Am."

1982: Thunder Am roared into the New Year with the brand-new '82 Trans Am on the cover of its February issue. "Pontiac Re-Invents the Ponycar" the coverline read, and it was close to the truth. The magazine itself was also getting reinvented. The February issue boasted of more color pages, and the magazine's popularity had generated so much interest that the first 8 issues were eventually reprinted.

But the biggest change for TA came with the August issue, as the magazine's title was changed to High Performance Pontiac. The magazine had slowly been expanding its coverage of Pontiacs other than Trans Ams with each passing issue, and the High Performance Pontiac moniker reflected that new editorial direction. Fourteen years [now 22 years] later, it's clear that the name change was a good move. According to this interview with Martyn Schorr, he had started Vette magazine in 1977. Steve Schneider agreed to buy the Vette title only if Schorr would edit, package and produce the magazine for him. So during his last year with TA/HPP he was titled as Senior Editor of HPP. Quicksilver Communication was the name of his publishing company, now inactive, through which Martyn published Thunder Am and a library of marque series books in the '80s, which included compilations of his work at CARS and Thunder Am.

This photo was taken in 1980 while Martyn was editor of Thunder Am magazine.

Always the entrepreneur, by 1982 calendar year, he expanded PMPR, Inc. to a marketing communications/media relations consulting firm that specialized in the automotive field, which he is still president of today. Martyn's roster of clients include everyone from Buick ('82-00), Mercedes Benz USA, Panoz Auto Development, Italy's Zagato Styling Center, and Bulgari jewelers.

HPP: Do you miss being editor of an automotive magazine?
MS: I loved being an editor. I did it for half of my working life. I don't miss the monthly deadlines but the actual process of being out there in the industry--yeah I miss it.

HPP: What are your thoughts on Pontiac cars now?
MS: I think they've been going in different directions. However, I just drove an '04 Comp G GTP with the paddle shifter. It was fast. It was superb. Outstanding handling and braking. The new GTO is a generic jellybean car lacking the character of the original. I think it really needs hood scoops and dual exhaust. I spoke with Lutz about it and he has expressed commitment to see that these things happen down the line [dual exhaust will be on the '04 model].

We, the Pontiac crazies, salute and thank Martyn Schorr for realizing his vision of a Pontiac magazine to call our own. With another anniversary under HPP's belt, we wish Martyn continued success and thank you, the readers, for keeping the Poncho passion alive.