Biography
Sue Mead, Bio
Sue Mead began her automotive career as a part-time freelance evaluator for Four Wheeler Magazine in 1988, on the first team that included women as test drivers. Today, she travels the globe test-driving cars and trucks, and working as a photojournalist/feature writer for dozens of publications. Mead specializes in 4WD, and has been an auto editor and 4WD editor for CNN/fn. Over the last 25 years, she has accumulated enough off-road miles to have circumnavigated the world in the dirt. Mead has been inducted into the Off Road Motorsports Hall of Fame and won her class as the Driver of Record in the 2011 Dakar Rally.
Mead has received a number of awards for her work in the field of automotive journalism. She has written for Four Wheeler, 4Wheel & Off Road, Automobile, AutoWeek, Popular Science, Popular Mechanics. Parade, Women’s Sports & Fitness, Autobytel, AutoTrader and the New York Times, as well as publications around the globe. She is also a correspondent for Motor Trend Radio. Mead has written three books: Monster Trucks and Tractors; Off Road Racing, Legends and Adventures; and Rock Crawling.
**Mead has been on Camel Trophy adventures in Borneo, Mongolia, Central America, and in Tierra del Fuego, Argentina/Chile; Camel Trophy was considered the world’s most-grueling 4x4 trek and competition. Mead has also participated in numerous adventure drives and on record-setting teams, including the Arctic Circle Challenge ‘95, the Tip to Tip Challenge ‘96, and the TransAmerica Challenge ’97. She has been a co-driver for Rod Hall in the 1996 Baja 1000(1st -place finish); a co-driver for Darren Skilton for the 1999 Baja 1000 (1st- place finish) and the Paris-Dakar-Cairo 2000, the world’s longest and most difficult off-road race. She completed her first off-road race behind the wheel with Skilton, winning first place in Class 3 in the SCORE 1999 Primm 300. Mead was also a co-driver in the Baja 2000, on the internationally-ranked Mitsubishi team (1st-place finish) and on the Scaroni Motorsports Team, in 2001. She competed as a co-driver in the Nevada 1000, and is featured in the off-road documentary, Into the Dust, as a member of the Toyota Motorsports Team. Mead also competed behind the wheel on two Wide Open Baja/Centrix Teams in the 2002 and 2003 Baja 1000.