Trivia / MotorWeek

• Cast the Expert: When the show began in 1981, Pat Goss was merely a local mechanic who was willing to let MotorWeek film at his shop. Craig Singhaus was the host of the car care segment in the first unaired pilot, but Goss opted to host the segment himself once the series began.
• Died During Production: Mechanic Pat Goss during the 41st season. His "Goss' Garage" segment was replaced in the 42nd season by a new DIY care segment named "Your Drive".
• First-Run Syndication: From 1993 to 1998, the show was run concurrently in first-run syndication on commercial TV stations; since 1998, it has also run on various automotive-themed cable channels.
• Follow the Leader: In the late 1990s Car and Driver and Motor Trend magazines launched short-lived TV shows that were copies of MotorWeek; hence the addition of the word "Original" in their slogan "Television's Automotive Magazine" as aforementioned in the Aluminum Christmas Trees entry above.
• He Also Did: John Davis was the producer of Wall Street Week from 1970 to 2002.
• Long Runner: The show has been active since 1981 and some of its personalities, such as John Davis and Pat Goss have been with the show the whole time.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: MotorWeek previously didn't do anything with their old episodes or reviews aside from letting them rot away in the vault. Come the late 2000s, YouTube user Bajabusta began uploading old MotorWeek reviews from his own personal collection and gained a popular following. While his channel was eventually taken down due to copyright strikes, MotorWeek's producers took notice and began uploading old segments to their YouTube channel under a new series called "Retro review". They took it a step further during the early 2020 COVID-19 lockdowns, where they livestreamed every episode from 1981 to 1990; these periodic livestreams have continued, with them now having worked up to the 2002-03 season.
• Technology Marches On: The cause of the "Goss' Garage" segment suffering Seasonal Rot. Originally the segment was a step-by-step instruction about how to perform common car repairs and later evolved to Pat Goss answering viewers' letters seeking his advice over problems with their cars. By the Turn of the Millennium however, cars had become too computer and electronic heavy for the average person to be able to work on in their garage, and thus the segment evolved to Goss giving viewers general car care advice and helping them better understand what they may be hearing from the shop. To that point, John Davis decided to retire the "Goss' Garage" segment entirely following Goss' death in 2022 rather than try to keep it going with another host.
• The Pete Best: The two industry news reporters before Lisa Barrow, both of whom only lasted a couple seasons.
• You Look Familiar: Craig Singhaus served as the in-house mechanic/technical expert in the unaired 1978 pilot. He was replaced with actual mechanic Pat Goss for the 1981 pilot and served as a nameless test driver until he became a feature reporter in the mid 1980s.