Ask Patty wants to welcome our newest team member, Brandy Schaffels! Brandy comes to us most recently from Motor Trend and Truck Trend, where she held down the fort for years. Brandy discovered words were her strength in a third-grade spelling bee, and journalism has been her passion since she became editor of her high school newspaper ("thank you, Mr. Call!").

She earned her Bachelor of Arts degree at California Lutheran University while working as a graphic artist/typesetter, and now has more than 25 years of publishing experience in a variety of print and digital roles and automotive subjects. She spent the last 10 years as part of the Motor Trend Magazine team where she was a copy editor and assistant managing editor, and later became their Website manager (aka "motortrend.mom"), handling a variety of duties including developing, writing, photographing, and programming stories; nitpicking over sundry details; optimizing search engine metadata; and organizing projects galore.

A car gal at heart, Brandy first burned rubber in a red 1976 Chevy Monza and will never forget her first true muscle car, a Root Beer Brown 1968 Mustang Coupe with a 289cid small-block V-8. She traded her sportified Honda Civic for an Odyssey minivan to accommodate her growing family, though her daily driver is an Accord sedan with 132,000 miles on the original clutch. She has two sons, a 13-year-old named Benjamin who is already anticipating his driver's license, and four-year-old Tristan, who just wants to be big enough to reach the pedals of the Autopia cars at Disneyland so he can also "drive-drive."

Brandy will be our latest and greatest Ask Patty blogger/writer/contributer and we are so happy to have her! Help us welcome and congratulate her!