Indie Auto

Brooks Stevens’s rejection of brand continuity was bad for small automakers

by Steve in Quotes 0

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 was his repeated advocacy of ditching established nameplates. According to Richard M. Langworth, Stevens stated that, “I convinced (Studebaker) management to de-emphasize the Lark term which had its own connotations, just as I finally got Roy Chapin to dump Rambler for AMC cars, when we were involved with them [...]

EVs need a George Romney to champion them in the next few years

June 13, 2025 15

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 helpful is the emergence of [...]

Citroen SM: A surprisingly conventional next step

June 12, 2025 5

(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. This French [...]

1936-37 Cord 810/812 tried to do too much at once

by Steve in History 10

(UPDATED FROM 12/20/2022) The 1936-37 Cord 810/812 is arguably one of the most important American cars of the 20th Century. In addition to offering iconic styling, it was also remarkably advanced in its engineering. Among the car’s features included front-wheel drive, unit-body construction with a step-down floor, independent front suspension, and a [...]

Classic film shows human side of Studebaker’s end

June 10, 2025 15

(UPDATED FROM 6/20/2022) Documentary films contribute to automotive history in a different way than words on a page (either paper or electronic). In general, film can capture much better the human elements of a situation, such as [...]

Once upon a time, car wheels were 36-to-42 inches in diameter

June 9, 2025 5

(UPDATED FROM 1/3/2023) Indie Auto’s latest Sponsor of the Week is the legendary Auto & Debt magazine, whose June 2025 issue road tests the hot new 36-inch wheels. Of course, this is a fake ad that mocks the increasingly large wheels [...]

What would you think if it was 1965 and you could magically see this truck?

by Steve in Photo Essay 1

Our pictured truck may be unusually beefy, but jacked-up big pickups are quite common in rural parts of Washington state. As I was taking pictures of this recent-model Ram, I wondered: How would someone from 1965 react if they could be magically shown photographs of this truck and told that someday it would be a type of [...]

Brooks Stevens’s 1965 Studebaker Lark concept: Almost a baby Continental

June 6, 2025 5

(EXPANDED FROM 12/10/2021) Brooks Stevens apparently was convinced that he could come up with a new-generation Studebaker Lark design that would top the work of Raymond Loewy’s team, which was then working on an [...]

Packard kept a bigger foothold in the luxury-car field than commonly assumed

June 5, 2025 9

Our discussion in the comment thread about the 1956 Packard Executive story all but inevitably brought up one of the most common criticisms of the automaker’s management — that it did not do enough in the early postwar period to maintain [...]

Peter Grist views car designer Virgil Exner through rose-tinted glasses

June 3, 2025 9

(EXPANDED FROM 12/6/2022) Peter Grist stated that he tried to make this authorized biography of car designer Virgil Exner “as unbiased as possible” (p. 5). Even so, Visioneer has a family scrapbook quality, replete with childhood photos and [...]

1970 Mercury Montego had a last-of-the-wine quality

by Steve in Drive-By Musings 2

In a number of respects the 1970 Mercury Montego exuded a last-of-the-wine vibe. For one thing, it was the final reskinning of the mid-sized platform that the Ford Motor Company introduced in 1962. Let’s just say that it got porky as it grew older. The Montego’s high-performance Cyclone models also represented the last gasp of the muscle-car boomlet. [...]

Brooks Stevens’s rejection of brand continuity was bad for small automakers

Current Events

EVs need a George Romney to champion them in the next few years

Design Notes

Citroen SM: A surprisingly conventional next step

1936-37 Cord 810/812 tried to do too much at once

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Classic film shows human side of Studebaker’s end

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Once upon a time, car wheels were 36-to-42 inches in diameter

What would you think if it was 1965 and you could magically see this truck?

Fake Design

Brooks Stevens’s 1965 Studebaker Lark concept: Almost a baby Continental

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Packard kept a bigger foothold in the luxury-car field than commonly assumed

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Peter Grist views car designer Virgil Exner through rose-tinted glasses

1970 Mercury Montego had a last-of-the-wine quality

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