Talk:Peter Egan (columnist)

Sources, please? I'm not sure I can find mine...
Please note everything in the article can be found in his 25+ years of columns, many of the best of which been anthologized in seven books: four Side Glances compilations, two Leanings compilations and a book called Peter Egan on the Road which was published in the last two years. There may be others. Although there is no shortage of verifiable sources available for citation, I am not prepared to go through and do an exhaustive job footnoting everything-- perhaps someone would like to? Or maybe just list the books as sources for everything? 97.120.76.143 (talk) 02:26, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

I have added substantially to this article but I have not cited my sources. They are all from what I remember of his writings in Road & Track or, substantially less so, in Cycle World.

The line about the Jeep in Vietnam being "the only non-English vehicle I ever owned that exploded" is from a Side Glances article called "Garages of Ill Repute", but I do not remember what issue that was in.

The Model A road trip was in the articles "Model A Odyssey", Parts I & II. Again, I do not know which issues, but I think they might have been in an April and a May issue respectively, as I remember an "April's Fool" article being in the same issue as Part I.

The Isetta road trip was in the article "In Search of the Blues". I know someone went with him. I think it was Chris Beebe.

I am not sure in which issues the other references can be found. I also do not remember his brother's name, although I do remember that he wrote in a column about his brother being ejected from a car accident in which the car eventually fell into a swamp and disappeared, and that he wrote in a later column that the outcome of that accident was the only favorable one he knew of for an unbelted occupant in an accident. He also mentioned that his brother liked new cars that did not have to be worked on, and that his brother did not work on cars.

Any help in finding these sources would be appreciated, especially if you old Road & Tracks are better organized than mine. Respectfully, SamBlob 16:25, 9 June 2007 (UTC)


 * The TR3 horn incident is also mentioned in the Side Glances article "Tuning Secrets of the Ultra-Slow" and in a more recent article about Lucas electrics. Respectfully, SamBlob 16:53, 9 June 2007 (UT

He has hepatits C, which has slowed him down. I don't know if he has discussed it in his columns, but he mentioned it in an e-mail to my husband, so I don't think it's a secret. We don't know him personally, but my husband sent him an e-mail and Peter Egan responded.
 * He has mentioned it in his column more than once. He said it slowed down his E-type project a lot.  There were days when he couldn't move from the couch. Respectfully, SamBlob (talk) 17:13, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

I've read Egan for years, and while he is frequently ironic, he is never sarcastic. His humor is compassionate and appreciative, even when the subject - frequently the author himself - is struggling. 63.249.114.85 (talk) 04:36, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Independent sources and notability
This article relies way too much on Egan's own columns for its contents. Egan probably meets the first criteria listed under WP:AUTHOR, "regarded as an important figure or is widely cited by peers or successors.", but the actual third party sources establishing that fact need to be cited here in the article. The rest of the contents rely too heavily on Egan's own columns. While there is editorial control over his columns published in motoring magazines, they're still his columns, so they're close to self-published sources. We need to see a much greater number of 3rd party sources to verify the claims here, especially the more extraordinary claims. I don't think an AfD would succeed here, but notability needs to be asserted and cited. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 05:18, 7 March 2014 (UTC)