Writing Assignment 2

Jimmy Humphrey, Lifelong Car Enthusiast

Jimmy Humphrey was born in Nashville, TN on Christmas Day, 1992. Over the years, Jimmy, who has Asperger’s Syndrome, has held many focused interests including weather, classic video game collecting, old magazine collecting, and many others in diverse fields. The longest lasting interest Jimmy has had has been cars. The start of Jimmy’s car enthusiasm was very early, probably when he was age 1 or 2. His first ever word was “Datsun”, read out of a phone book at the age of 15 months; this also showed that Jimmy was a very precocious reader. As a toddler, Jimmy would say what kinds of cars he was seeing when he was in parking lots, which impressed many bystanders. He watched car commercials with enthusiasm and grew most interested in the safety features. Several mid-late 1990s issues of his grandparents’ old magazines, mostly Reader’s Digest, were written in by Jimmy as a small child; a 1997 Consumer Reports Buying Guide, for instance, was found to have the words “WITH AN AIRBAG” and “DUAL AIRBAGS” written in it, along with a basic drawing of what inflated dual airbags looked like.

The years from age 5 to 8 were a step back for Jimmy’s car enthusiasm. Amid reports of airbag dangers, Jimmy became fearful of the devices, resulting in him becoming fearful of car commercials. For several years, the car enthusiasm died out.

Around age 10, Jimmy’s car enthusiasm came back. He began to collect car magazines in summer 2003, quickly growing interested in cars again, as well as car safety and crash testing. Jimmy decided he wanted to become a car safety engineer. He enjoyed his trips to Lane Motor Museum in Nashville, TN, where the old cars fascinated him. On the car safety front, Jimmy kept track of new crash testing releases and did hours of research onto what makes cars safe.

On August 5, 2008, Jimmy got to fulfill his dream when he was able to go to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety to see a frontal crash test of a 2009 Hyundai Genesis.

Through high school, Jimmy took many math and science courses that would help him in his track of being an engineer. He then went to Tennessee Tech University in 2011. It was during the TTU era that Jimmy began to question his desire to be an engineer; he found the subject matter dry and difficult and decided that his calling was in a different field. During this time period, he began to get more interested in cars themselves, and specialized in Honda after his first ever ride in a 2008 or newer Accord on August 31, 2011. By the time Jimmy left TTU in 2013, he was known as the biggest Honda enthusiast there. During his 20-month time at Tennessee Tech, Jimmy rode in 585 different cars. Upon leaving TTU, he decided he wanted to enter the automotive journalism field.

Jimmy, despite being a car enthusiast, was late to drive; he didn’t get his first car until age 19 on May 4, 2012, a black 2008 Honda Accord sedan. On April 22, 2013, the Accord was totaled, and on May 4 of that year Jimmy got his current car: a white 2011 Honda Accord V6 sedan.

Jimmy “restarted” college in August 2013, enrolling at Volunteer State Community College as a journalism major. On May 9, 2015, he graduated with an associate’s degree in journalism and enrolled at Western Kentucky University from August 2015 to pursue a further degree.

Jimmy has also made his first forays into actual automotive reviewing. Since the start of the 2016 model year, he has test-driven every Honda that has been redesigned or introduced. The first of these test-drives was on May 26, 2015 for the new Honda HR-V. Jimmy has plans to expand his test-drive program to Acura (Honda’s luxury brand) and other brands of cars in the near future.