Born in Detroit, Michigan, to Sarah (Campbell) and Archibald Stewart, he had an early passion for cars. He began his writing career as a Journalist for The Detroit Times. In his 20's, he founded and co-published Competition Press, a weekly magazine devoted to car-racing that eventually became Autoweek; he also briefly edited Motor Life magazine. In 1960 he left reporting and moved to New York for the advertising industry, becoming copywriter and creative executive for a series of agencies such as J. Walter Thompson, Young & Rubicam and BBDO. Not surprisingly, he specialized in advertising copy for the motor trade, an area of booming competition in the car-obsessed economy of 1960s America. He became creative Director of the Fletcher-Richards Agency and an expert on all things Automotive. He moved to Hollywood in his 40s to try his hand at screenwriting; his first film was Roger Corman's Jackson County Jail and his last was Dead Silence, a TV-movie starring James Garner.