Our Sponsors
Month: June 2025
Data Dive
General Motors’ premium-priced brands illustrate the decline of big cars
(EXPANDED FROM 1/24/2024) Last year Paul Niedermeyer (2024a) discussed the decline of premium-priced big cars in the late-1950s. One of the points of contention in the comment thread was the degree to which these cars […]
History
Was Ford right to kill the front-wheel-drive 1963 Cardinal/Redwing?
(EXPANDED FROM 6/30/2023) Did Ford make the right move by pulling the plug on a U.S.-built subcompact slated to be introduced in the fall of 1962? The car, initially called the Cardinal but later renamed […]
Links
Dean’s Garage series on 1992 Cadillacs illustrates Detroit’s lack of self awareness
I have been so busy lately that I have tended to only scan the stories at Dean’s Garage. However, this morning I got out of the canoe long enough to read the articles and comment […]
Readings
Brock Yates brilliantly analyzed fall of U.S. auto industry
(EXPANDED FROM 1/22/2021) The Decline and Fall of the American Automobile Industry is one of the most important automotive books of the last 50 years. That’s because Brock Yates presented what may very well be the […]
Drive-By Musings
Would anything have ‘saved’ American Motors?
RF stopped by to respond to our story, “Pat Foster barks up wrong tree by lauding an AMC Gremlin GT with a 360 V8.” Well, sort of. He seemed to be more interested in answering […]
Photo Essay
A sad reason bridges aren’t just used for driving over
I would imagine that a goodly number of people who drive over the Mores Creek bridge in southwest Idaho are anticipating a happy time at the nearby Lucky Peak State Park. However, when trying to […]
Quotes
Brooks Stevens’s rejection of brand continuity was bad for small automakers
Brooks Stevens was a complicated character. For example, he championed ultra-simple car designs but also coined the term “planned obsolescence” to describe an industrial designer’s mission (Adamson, 2003; p. 129). One way that played out […]
Current Events
EVs need a George Romney to champion them in the next few years
With the Republicans likely to slash support for electric vehicles at every turn (Ferry, 2025), automakers will need to work much harder to market their wares in the next few years. What would be particularly […]
Design Notes
Citroen SM: A surprisingly conventional next step
(EXPANDED FROM 12/4/2020) In a post on the Saab 99, we mentioned how in the late-60s and early-70s a handful of iconoclastic automakers tried to mainstream their basic designs. A case in point was Citroën. […]