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Year: 2025
History
1971 interview with GM’s top designers shows automaker’s struggle to adapt
Top General Motors’ designers William Mitchell and Chuck Jordan showed glimmers of adaptiveness in an interview with Motor Trend (1971) magazine. However, the luxury of hindsight allows us to see some of the blinders that […]
Gallery
1953 Hudson Hornet was both peak ‘step down’ and the beginning of the end
(EXPANDED FROM 1/15/2021) The 1953 Hudson Hornet’s styling strikes me as being peak “step down.” As a case in point, this was the last year for the rounded rear end. It looked dated compared to […]
Current Events
Why are auto industry and media so surprised by Trump’s tariffs?
It’s been fascinating to watch the auto industry and media react to President Donald Trump’s tariffs. To the degree that this topic has broken through the usual phantasmagoria of new-product launches and nostalgic musings about […]
Photo Essay
National parks: As American as baseball, hotdogs, apple pie and Chevrolet
Last week we talked about how cars are for going places. Remember the slogan Chevrolet used in its advertising: “See the USA in your Chevrolet”? National parks were sometimes shown because they are as American […]
Quotes
Patrick Foster dances around problems with the 1961-63 Ford Styleside pickup
A good way to test the journalistic independence of an auto history writer is to see how he or she addresses a problematic product. So when I recently bought Patrick Foster’s book, Ford Tough: 100 […]
Design Notes
U.S. cars often suffered from weak styling continuity and boxy shapes in 1970-80s
(EXPANDED FROM 1/23/2023) This post’s comment thread has received a burst of new attention, so I thought it would be worth expanding upon my original argument. I wrote this article in response to debates about […]
Links
Car designer John Manoogian II tells the inside story of his tenure at GM
An Indie Auto reader kindly pointed out a series of first-person accounts by John Manoogian II about his tenure as a designer at General Motors. The series, which is entitled “Never a Dull Moment,” has […]
History
Might the Rambler Tarpon have sold better than the Plymouth Barracuda?
(EXPANDED FROM 7/2/2021) Patrick Foster has questioned whether the 1964 Rambler Tarpon show car would have sold better than the Plymouth Barracuda if it had reached production. His rationale was that neither compact sporty coupe […]
Drive-By Musings
What were the five most successful postwar facelifts among US cars?
In the “Story Ideas Bank” Stewdi offered a topic that got me thinking: What are the most successful facelifts of all time? The power was out at Indie Auto’s world headquarters for most of the […]