(EXPANDED FROM 5/28/2025) The Society of Automotive Historians (2026) recently gave the 2026 E. P. Ingersoll Award to The Last Independent American Automaker. This television documentary about American Motors strikes me as an obvious choice, […]
The American car-buff media has struck me as rather stale lately, but one relative newcomer has offered a ray of hope. The Car Collective’s Substack is a “newsletter” (re: a website with email distribution) that […]
(EXPANDED FROM 9/10/2024) A few years ago Dean’s Garage reprinted a prescient essay Harry Bradley (2022) wrote back in 1974 about the future of the American station wagon. His article made a number of important […]
(EXPANDED FROM 6/26/2024) Compact cars represented a dramatic change for U.S. automakers when they were introduced in the early-1960s. After spending the previous decade making its “standard-sized” cars bigger, glitzier and more powerful, Detroit responded […]
(EXPANDED FROM 1/8/2021) When writing a story about the 1974 AMC Ambassador, I came across American Motors car brochures for 1979 and 1980 that took the unusual step of picturing the company’s headquarters in Southfield, Michigan. […]
(EXPANDED FROM 3/5/2021) Patrick R. Foster’s Hudson Automobiles: An Illustrated History lives up to its title. If you are mainly interested in pictures, this is your book. The 128-page paperback is dominated by photographs, artist […]
(EXPANDED FROM 7/15/2024) One of Indie Auto’s first harshly negative comments came from someone who was infuriated with my essay about the 1974 AMC Ambassador, where I criticized the car’s looks. “Worst stupid article I […]
(EXPANDED FROM 7/7/2023) A while back Stéphane Dumas quite rightly noted that another alternative to the 1964 Rambler Tarpon concept car was the XR-400. This was a 2+2 convertible proposed to American Motors in 1962 […]
(EXPANDED FROM 2/4/2022) The above image shows an early design proposal by Brooks Stevens for a redesigned AMC Ambassador planned for 1972-73. The car has vague similarities to mockups pictured in a Patrick Foster (2013) […]
(EXPANDED FROM 2/27/2023) Indie Auto was partly created to spark more robust debates in U.S. auto history. As a case in point, a few years go I questioned a take by Richard M. Langworth and […]
Copyright © 2022 Olympia, Earth Media, LLC | All rights reserved