Indie Auto

Ford gets back into the mid-sized game with redesigned 1966 Fairlane

by Steve in Design Notes 8

(EXPANDED FROM 11/15/2023) Even though Ford came out with one of the first mid-sized cars in 1962, only three years later it was pummeled by General Motors and Chrysler. In 1965 even American Motors’ mid-sized lineup outsold Ford’s aging Fairlane. This is why a 1966 redesign was intended to put Ford back into the game. Ford’s handiwork did relatively [...]

Adam Wade’s top-10 ugliest ‘classic’ cars list is decidedly quirky

March 11, 2026 10

Top-10 lists are inherently subjective, but Adam Wade’s (2026) ugliest “classic” cars strikes me as being particularly quirky. On his YouTube channel called Rare Classic Cars & Automotive History, Wade focuses on American cars from 1957-90. [...]

Could Iran war show that Detroit is too dependent on gas-guzzling vehicles?

March 9, 2026 25

As I write this, Automotive News has not yet posted a full news story on how a protracted war in Iran could impact U.S. car sales. The industry’s leading trade journal has only parenthetically made reference to the conflict as [...]

Why did American Motors fire Wells Rich and Greene in 1972?

March 6, 2026 6

(EXPANDED FROM 5/14/2024) American Motors and the ad agency Wells Rich and Greene would seem to have been a match made in heaven when they started to work together in 1967. After all, both had a penchant for unorthodox [...]

Was the 1966 Olds Cutlass Supreme the first mid-sized brougham model?

March 5, 2026 23

(EXPANDED FROM 2/14/2024) This is one of Indie Auto’s more hotly debated stories. Here I question Paul Niedermeyer’s (2024) contention that the 1966-67 Cutlass Supreme brought the “Great Brougham Epoch” to the mid-sized field. “With [...]

Splashy new cars often were the biggest disasters during the postwar period

March 3, 2026 4

One of the biggest assumptions of U.S. automakers in the postwar period was that they desperately needed splashy new cars. Yet when I think about the biggest disasters of that era, they often involved expensive product launches. Here I am [...]

Was the 1967-68 Chevrolet C10 the ‘first modern pickup’?

by Steve in Gallery 8

Indie Auto doesn’t focus a whole lot on trucks, but I recently photographed a 1968 Chevrolet C10. When researching this article, I came across the argument from Aldan American (2026) that this was the “first modern pickup.” True? The parts supplier’s background about the 1967-72 C10 Chevy pickup has a strong point of view. Aldan American (2026) concluded [...]