Bob's Story

About Bob Manor

I’m based in the Windsor, Detroit corridor, a place where the automotive industry isn’t just an employer, but an environment. Factories, rail yards, dealerships, ports, auctions, and highways overlap here in ways that quietly shape how you see systems, movement, and consequence.

I’ve spent decades moving through that ecosystem, not from one fixed role, but across many. Retail. Wholesale. Export. Warranty. Consulting. Media. I’ve built and operated multiple automotive-related businesses, worked internationally, and crossed borders both literally and figuratively. Much of my work has lived in the spaces between silos, where frictions appear, where incentives misalign, and where overlooked details tend to matter most.

Alongside building businesses, I’ve written extensively about the industry. Some of that work has appeared in established automotive publications, much of it has lived on my own platforms. Writing has always been a way for me to slow things down , to surface patterns, explore second-order effects, and give language to things many people feel but can’t quite articulate.

Over time, I found myself working less as a traditional operator and more as a catalyst. Part integrator, part instigator. I’m drawn to deltas, the gaps between what exists and what’s needed, between how things are framed and how they’re actually experienced. That instinct has shaped how I build, how I write, and how I see.

Photography entered my life the same way.

Not as a career move, and not as a brand play, but as another way of paying attention. A way to capture moments that won’t repeat, systems that usually go unnoticed, and objects that carry more story than their surface suggests. For me, photography isn’t about spectacle or perfection. It’s about presence. About noticing what’s already there. ManorVision grew out of that practice.

While writing for myself and for others, I repeatedly ran into the same constraint: access to relevant, high-quality automotive imagery that didn’t feel generic, disconnected, or prohibitively expensive. The images available rarely reflected the lived reality of the industry I knew, particularly in a North American context. Rather than continue to compromise, I decided to start building something slowly and deliberately: an archive of human-made photographs informed by lived experience.

ManorVision is that archive.

It’s not a stock site in the traditional sense, and it’s not a portfolio chasing volume. It’s a growing body of work created at my own pace, rooted in observation, and shared to be useful to others working in and around the industry, writers, journalists, dealers, builders, and operators who care about fidelity as much as output.

In parallel, I’m also in the process of launching Dealer Insider. an editorial platform focused on truth-first coverage of the automotive industry. No advertorial pressure. No sponsor influence. Just lived experience, thoughtful analysis, and contributions from people who’ve actually spent time in the trenches. It’s an extension of the same philosophy that underpins ManorVision: frequency over static, substance over performance.

At this stage of my life, I’m less interested in scale for its own sake and more interested in building things that age well. Work that compounds quietly. Artifacts that remain useful. Ideas that can be picked up years from now and still feel relevant. Photography and writing are simply two expressions of the same instinct, one capturing ghosts, the other creating them. ManorVision is where the captured ones live.