(EXPANDED FROM 3/3/2023) The 1956 Mercury represented the end — at least for the next four years — of Edsel Ford’s original conception of the brand. Since it was introduced 1939, Mercury had been positioned […]
Only rarely will Automotive News publish a historical piece. One such occasion was when it ran a feature about former Chrysler design head Virgil Exner. The thing I find most striking about this article is […]
Question-of-the-day features tend to be vapid, so I usually ignore them. However, I must admit to getting drawn into a Jalopnik query about what are the ugliest cars on the market today (Bellwood, 2025). The […]
(UPDATED FROM 9/20/2021) A few years back Hemmings published a for-sale ad about a 1966 Duesenberg prototype designed by Virgil Exner (Stohl, 2017). The car shared major styling themes with another one Exner subsequently designed — […]
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 […]
(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 […]
(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 […]
Roy D. Chapin Jr. showed little self awareness when recounting his tenure as head of AMC from 1967-77. He participated in an oral history project sponsored by the Henry Ford museum. The Automobile in American […]
(EXPANDED FROM 9/2/2022) The 1958 Imperial has received little attention by automotive historians even though it arguably represented the brand at its peak. Never again would Chrysler’s luxury car offer so many field-leading product innovations. […]
(EXPANDED FROM 2/6/2023) A few years ago Curbside Classic reposted a comment from a guy named Rob who had a “soul-crushing experience” driving a 1959 Rambler American to high school hangouts (Niedermeyer, 2023). In 1968 […]
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