Indie Auto

Did the odd styling of the 1969 Chrysler two-door hardtop hurt its sales?

by Steve in Data Dive 6

(EXPANDED FROM 6/7/2024) Curbside Classic commentator nlpnt (2024) argued a while back that the fuselage Chrysler’s best-looking body style was the wagon. Conversely, I would add that the two-door hardtop was the least aesthetically pleasing body style. Of course, these are subjective judgments, so I wondered whether the switch to the fuselage body in 1969 [...]

Miscellaneous ramblings about being on the road

June 25, 2026 1

The above photo was taken two days ago during a trip across Washington state. Gas prices had come down from the previous week, when I paid a low of $4.89 and a high of $6.09 per gallon for regular unleaded gasoline. Those prices are [...]

DeBest ad for the 1981 Pontiac Trans Am that was never printed

June 17, 2026 2

(UPDATED FROM 7/17/2023) Pete DeBest thought he had it made. He followed his dad into the car business by landing a gig at Pontiac’s ad agency as a copy writer. Things went great at first. For example, one day he was in a meeting where [...]

Automotive Hall of Fame post on Robert McNamara is still riddled with fact errors

June 15, 2026 24

(EXPANDED FROM 1/17/2024) More than two years ago we pointed out that the Automotive Hall of Fame posted remarkably inaccurate information about former Ford Motor Company executive Robert McNamara. Their fact errors still haven’t been fixed. This is particularly problematic at [...]

1969-77 Plymouth: Fuselage wasn’t so bad compared to anti-fuselage

June 12, 2026 15

(EXPANDED FROM 5/3/2024) Ponderous styling of the so-called “fuselage” Plymouths has been pointed to as the biggest reason why sales were smaller than the well-regarded platform it replaced (e.g., auto editors of Consumer Guide, 2022). [...]

1974-76 Elite shows how Ford was late to the party with mid-sized personal coupes

by Steve in Gallery 13

(EXPANDED FROM 2/27/2024) The 1974-76 Ford Elite highlights one of the Ford Motor Company’s bigger mistakes of the 1970s. The automaker was too slow in entering the mid-sized personal coupe field. The Elite was a cobbled-together design that had the smell of being rushed to market. This new top-of-line Gran Torino was a disguised Mercury [...]