The Best way to describe John Conde is “multifaceted.”  He’s been one of the old-car hobby’s most influential personalities because he’s been involved in the automotive history for more than 60 years.  Conde retired from American Motors Corporation in 1976 as its assistant director of public relations, following a 30-year career during which he helped write many of the press materials used by Nash-Kelvinator and American Motors.  In 1977, he became curator of the transportation collection at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan.  He retired from that position in 1981 to devote his time to writing and lecturing on automobile history.

Among his many accomplishments, Conde was also a founding member of the Society of Automotive Historians in 1969 and served two terms as its President.  A long-time member of the Board of Trustees of the National Automotive History Collection (NAHC) of the Detroit Public Library, he was one of the volunteers who labored to sort and identify the huge collection of photos and negatives donated to the HAHC by the Packard Motor Car Company in 1955.  He also served on the board of the Auburn Cord Duesenberg Museum.

Then, too, he helped foster the hobby of collecting automotive literature and is a noted authority of auto literature values.  He’s also been a collector, and the size and scope of his personal literature collection was legendary.  Many people who have met John Conde may not have realized it.  For years, he was a regular fixture at the Hershey, Pennsylvania, swap meet each fall.  He and a fellow enthusiast would set up in a big tent from which they sold their wares.  Inside were rows of tables holding box after box of automotive literature, an amazing assembly covering virtually all makes.  Those in the know always went directly to Conde’s tent in order to get first pick of the really rare stuff.

But John Conde was more than just one of the world’s leading literature dealers.  His “real” job was pretty interesting too.  His public relations career, which began just after the end of World War II, brought him in contact with Charlie Nash, Henry Ford, George Mason, George Romney, Roy D. Chapin, Jr., and a host of other automotive celebrities.

But there’s still more.  Conde is also an author.  During the Fifties, he created the Nash family Album, a pictorial history of the automobiles of Nash and its predecessors.  Those books were followed by the Rambler Family Album and the American Motors Family Album.  John wrote other books of automotive history and numerous magazine articles, including several for Collectible Automobile® between 1984 and 1996.

Under the title “John Conde; Man of Letters,” Patrick Foster wrote a Personality Profile in Collectible Automobile Volume 25, Number 1, of August 2008.  John Conde passed away August 29^th, shortly after the article was published.  John Biel, Editor-in-Chief, has granted permission for this profile of our past SAH President from 1984 to 1985.