Walter A. Woron, the first editor of Motor Trend magazine, died on July 2 at the age of 91. Reached by telephone, Anne Woron, his widow, said he had been ill in recent years with multiple ailments.  Mr. Woron, most recently a resident of Calimesa, Calif., was born in Detroit in 1921, but was raised in Los Angeles, a pedigree that perhaps predestined him to a professional life in the automotive realm.  An enthusiastic hot-rodder, Mr. Woron was a regular at dry-lake speed-run competitions in postwar California and a contemporary of Robert E. Petersen, the founder of Petersen Publishing Company and Hot Rod magazine. When Mr. Petersen decided to publish a second magazine, he conferred with Mr. Woron, who suggested it be called Motor Trend. Mr. Woron was named the magazine’s first editor, in 1949, and remained in the position until 1960.  Hot Rod was an enthusiast magazine, so to distinguish Motor Trend, Mr. Woron sought to shape it in the image of Motor, a British publication, with a broad editorial menu that included testing of new automobiles. The magazine’s first two road tests were published in the October 1949 issue. The trials were conducted on public roads with minimal instrumentation: the automaker’s standard speedometer and a stopwatch.  Mr. Woron’s regular column, Driving Around With Walt Woron, served to personalize automotive reviewing, and he peppered his reports with anecdotes — a practice that was further developed in the ’60s by writers like David E. Davis Jr.  At Motor Trend, Mr. Woron developed the Car of the Year competition, an industry award that became highly coveted by vehicle manufacturers. Initially called the Engineering Achievement Award, the prize was first bestowed, in 1951, on Chrysler. Although that award became the magazine’s best-known feature, and later applied to individual models rather than to manufacturers, it was a mix of standard fare and the unusual that distinguished the material in Motor Trend in its early years.  “In the beginning, Walt ran every conceivable type of automotive article, from reports on atomic cars to a test of the Soviet Moskivitch,” Michael Lamm, a journalist and author, wrote in a memorial to Mr. Woron.  After 11 years leading Motor Trend, Mr. Woron left for New York, where he worked in public relations and advertising. A brief second tour of duty at Motor Trend followed, but Mr. Woron and Petersen Publishing were no longer on the same page.  He later served as West Coast editor for Automotive News and as editor of Road Test magazine. After retiring from that final editorial position, he and Ms. Woron opened a retail antique business, but he was a guest columnist for Motor Trend on occasion.  “I already miss him as the inspiration, friend and mentor that he was,” Mr. Lamm wrote. “A kind, thoughtful, creative, gentle man and a gentleman in every sense of the word.”
Mr. Woron helped to innovate an anecdotal style of automotive writing that was widely adopted in the 1960s.