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1970s
Media Analysis
Was Mac’s Motor City Garage wrong about the 1974-78 Matador coupe?
Fred (2018), a Mac’s Motor City Garage commentator, argued that a story about the 1974-78 AMC Matador coupe was riddled with “typical mistakes that get repeated again and again” by “one hack Internet report after […]
Links
How auto art can be more than idle entertainment for bored retirees
I just added two new entries to the “Bibliography of Links.” The first one is Cars as Art, which is a Facebook public group that focuses on “conceptual art and cars.” The site has pretty […]
Current Events
Whyte’s ‘The Sack of Detroit’ gives auto history a hard-core libertarian spin
As I was reading Paul Niedermeyer’s critique of Kenneth Whyte’s new anti-Nader book, I found myself wondering how the auto buff press would have responded if the book had been published in the early-70s. In […]
Quotes
Ads comparing Ford Granada to a Mercedes were ‘brilliant’
“The Granada/Mercedes campaign was a stroke of absolute brilliance. Why do you think we remember it 40 some years later after nearly every Granada has been made into a Huawei refrigerator? Ok, so Consumer Reports […]
Letters to the Editor
Kim Margosein: Ford Maverick was the last of the simple cars
When Indie Auto opened up its comment threads, I failed to “enable” that function on a few stories. That included, “What a simple modern car should look like.” So Kim Margosein used our contact form […]
Quotes
Aaron Severson: Would Ford Cardinal have spawned FWD derivatives in U.S.?
“We may speculate, of course, that had Ford gone ahead with the U.S.-market Cardinal/Taunus P4 and if that had been reasonably successful, it might have spawned follow-on FWD derivatives in the manner of the later […]
Quotes
Leo Levine was an aggressive p.r. guy for Mercedes
“Levine prolifically wined and dined the trade press, but he also took what he considered any disrespect for the brand personally. (And if he didn’t take it personally, he certainly acted as if he did.) […]
Links
On the origins of the 1974 Riviera and 2021 Grand Wagoneer
Wayne Kady comments about the bustleback Buick: The April 2021 issue of Collectible Automobile has a letter from retired General Motors’ designer Wayne Kady. He described how GM’s head designer William Mitchell ordered him to […]
Readings
Hiott’s VW book captures essence of old Beetle better than new one
Andrea Hiott has written an engaging and nuanced automotive history that transcends the usual “car guy” narratives. Thinking Small: The Long, Strange Trip of the Volkswagen Beetle offers a wealth of background about the political, economic […]