Before there was ESPN, MotorWeek, Speedvision or pretty much anything else of an automotive nature on television, there was Bud Lindemann.
Born Gordon Charles Lindemann in Chicago in 1925, “Bud” as he was widely known returned from military service in World War II to work briefly at a radio station in Boston before moving to Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Lindemann was the track announcer at the Grand Rapids Speedrome, Berlin Raceway and Kalamazoo Speedway. While working as a disc jockey for radio station WZZM, he developed a show, Autoscope, for the affiliate TV station, reporting on local and some national auto racing events.
He took the half-hour show national and to more than 160 TV stations as Car and Track. He also produced auto racing segments for ABC’s Wide World of Sports and for the CSB Sports Spectacular and later did Walter Mitty reports featuring writer George Plimpton.
Lindemann died of cancer in 1983. Speedvision gained access to his archives and rebroadcast many of his car-test reports.
Our featured Video of the Day is one of those reports, on the 1969 AMX 390 sports coupe.
Fun times