This is a centralized place for readers to offer specific story ideas to Indie Auto. Any ideas are welcome, from potential feature stories to book reviews.
I have started off by posting suggestions from readers who sent me messages (and presumably did not want their names mentioned). You can use that route (go here) or post a comment below.
Please do not be offended if I don’t end up publishing a story about your suggested topic. Indie Auto is a solo operation that I run in my spare time. Prioritizing what I write is necessary, and that can be based on a variety of factors such as the availability of information and whether Indie Auto is the best venue for a given story. Also note that timing can be unpredictable, e.g., I might respond to a request within a week or it could take a year.
Also see ‘Why was one comment approved and others rejected?’
I don’t mind if other auto history media outlets use story topics listed here. The primary goal of Indie Auto is to advance U.S. automotive history — and that’s a team sport. At any rate, I think it is pretty close to guaranteed that Indie Auto will treat a given topic differently than other websites.
If you appreciate Indie Auto’s approach, then I would invite you to show your support by making a donation (go here). I can get away with posting stories on obscure topics because this website does not need to keep advertisers happy with a consistently high number of page hits.
Share your reactions to this post with a comment below or a note to the editor.
From a reader: I loved the article on the Camry rear faux vents, aka crying eyes. This has looked stupid since I first saw it 3 years ago. Love this kind of article on current issues, even thought I’m a first year Boomer, and I glaze over when Hudson, Stude and Packard articles appear! It was just natural selection that eliminated them.
I try to post articles on more contemporary topics when I can. One challenge is bandwidth — I don’t always feel like I have as much depth of knowledge on a current issue as a historical one. Another challenge is that stories on current events seem to get far less readership. Perhaps that’s a chicken-and-egg situation: The more stories I post, the more people will seek out Indie Auto who want to read those kinds of stories.
From a reader: Here is a question for your blog: After the 1965 restyle of the Corvair, with Chevrolet needed a Mustang competitor for 1966 rather than 1967, why didn’t G.M. / Chevrolet take a page from the 1961 Y-body B.O.P. “Senior Compacts”? Put a 230-cu.-in. six or 283-cu.-in., put the engine / transmission in front, a modified I.R.S. or at least a four-link solid axle in the back with a trunk and gas-tank under the seat in the rear, conventional heating and cooling (like the Y-bodies) and slap a Camaro grille on the front? Sadly, after 1962, the really interesting Corvair variations were gone (although I think the Lakewood wagons should have remained), so “86”-ing the Corvair would likely not have impacted Chevy sales that much with both a restyled Chevy II and the Chevelle intermediates. The Camaro-“front-engined Corvair,” I think would have easily out-sold any Corvair (even though I think the coupes and 4-door hardtop were gorgeous as they were), if it looked like this.
I think it would have made Ford react into redesigning the Mustang for 1968 rather than the Larry Shinoda-designs for 1969. Of course, Ed Cole would probably been irate since the Corvair was his baby. If only the flat-six had been able to be enlarged beyond 164-cu.-in. and the valve-seats more robust.
I briefly get into your scenario in an updated version of our “fake design” story that moves the engine to the front of a second-generation Corvair (go here).
From a reader: Why was not the 1955 Hudson a success? It had up to date pleasant styling with a Ferrari-inspired egg-crate grill that was even nicer than the ’55 Chevrolet, A.M.C.’s Weather Eye HVAC systems with optional air-conditioning, Nash-developed interior comfort and a choice of Hudson/ AMC/Packard powerplants. My guesses are that Romney did not allocate enough advertising/marketing funding, and that it was probably over-priced in a marketplace where there were many competing brands touted with hotter styling: Motoramic Bel Air Chevrolets, V-8 Pontiacs, Buicks, Oldsmobiles, Mercurys, Fords reflecting the Thunderbird, long-low-lovely Lincolns and Packards. I do not remember an Indianapolis-area Hudson dealer, so it may be that the Hudson franchises were dwindling to nothing.
The December, 2022 Collectible Automobile article on 1955 AMCs sparked this question. The man who owned the “Cities Service” gas station in Whiteland, Indiana, where I lived between 1954 and November, 1963, owned a beautiful three-tone coral, black and white 1955 Hudson Hollywood sedan with the Packard V-8. It was the only 1955 Hudson in the area. To my then untrained eye, I could not tell that it was a Nash-derived body. (The 1956-1957 V-Line Hudsons were styling disasters in my opinion.) Frank owned that car until his death, and every time I visited Whiteland, I passed his house and often, his Hudson was parked in the driveway outside the garage.
By 1955 the buying public had seen a dozen or so independent makes leave the car business or the nameplate merged out of existence. The car companies would enter a death spiral of low sales limiting funding for updates, ads, etc leading to even lower sales. By the end, the wonder is not why so few were sold, but why so many.
In response to this query I posted, “Why was the 1955 Hudson not successful?”
From a reader: Was the Oldsmobile division and its advertising agency (Leo Burnett, U.S.A.) ahead of the rest of the automobile industry by enlisting the on-camera services of Grambling football coach, the great Eddie Robinson, to tout the luxury, features and styling of Oldsmobiles? I do not recall any automobile advertising with testimonials from a Hispanic-American (until the Chrysler Cordoba and Ricardo Montalban-1974) or an African-American in the natural manner that Oldsmobile presented in the 1970s with Coach Robinson. It would be interesting to know if the Robinson series of Oldsmobile ads boosted sales to minorities in the 1970s Regardless, revisiting these YouTube TV spots give me a much greater appreciation on how Oldsmobile eventually overtook Chevrolet, Pontiac and Buick in the 1970s.
Hello Steve: I ran across this today on YouTube, a series I have never seen before. Ed’s Auto Reviews (E.A.R.) is interesting, humorous and somewhat accurate. Enjoy at your own risk: “Mistake of ’58: The GM Chromemobiles and Far Out ’59s.”
Thank you for the tip. Go here for my mini-review.
Ford produced one of it most intriguing concept cars in 1962: the Mustang 1 mid-engine sports car. Two examples were produced, a rolling chassis car for shows, and a runner for testing and demonstrating at tracks.
Was this a missed opportunity? Could Ford have made a limited production car by using a fiberglass body, raising the roll bar and wind deflector to make a weather tight targa, and beat VW/ Porsche to the 914 and Fiat to the X/19?
Certainly this would not be a high volume car as the famously rebodied 1964 Falcon became, but there was a market for mid priced mid engine sports cars in ‘60’s and ‘70’s, just as Ford was wanting a less pedestrian and more exciting image…as evidenced by the Shelby and GT40 efforts.
Inspired by your recent post on the Mercury Colony Park, I would like to see more about post-war station wagons. I’m a die-hard wagon lover and it would be great to read more about how and why wagons became so important to American car makers.
Along those lines how about something on the 57-58 Mercury Commuter? A 2 door hardtop wagon, a true shooting brake and the only competitor to the Nomad/Safari
In case anyone missed it, I have posted a piece on the 1957-60 Mercury wagons, and discussed the two-door hardtop (go here).
Based on recent comments between reader Jeff Kennedy and myself, I would also like to suggest stories about the 1975-80 Chevrolet Monza, including any information about potential second generation models. Could the Monza have morphed into a smaller, more efficient Camaro? Or might it have gone in a more European direction, adopting all independent suspension and 4-wheel disc brakes to become a bargain-priced American sports car (lighter and cheaper than a Corvette) that could have challenged the Mazda RX-7 and Porsche 924?
As the Monza was based on the Vega platform for it to have a 2nd generation would necessitated a suitable platform to be derived from. The Chevette would not have been such a suitable platform. If there had of been a 2nd generation Vega then the Monza had a chance.
Another consideration in this is how the Monza started as a Bill Mitchell design. By 1980 he had been retired for several years and a new mentality was in place not only in Design but the powers above Design that wanted their revenge against Mitchell’s ways.
Excepting the Corvette, an anomaly in the GM system, the considerations were about volume and shared platforms and parts. Add to this, it has been stated many times how Chevrolet made sure no other division could have anything that they perceived as encroaching upon the Corvette with a smaller sports car.
Good points, Jeff. The Monza was clearly doomed from the start, which was too bad because it was such a stylish car at a time when that was really needed, IMO. GM’s ill-considered Wankel rotary engine investment also prevented the Monza (and Vega) from getting a much better engine, designed expressly for it (them), although I have to wonder why the Cosworth engine wasn’t planned for the Monza instead of the Vega.
In hindsight, I think Chevy has been over-protective of the Corvette. There was more than room enough at lower price points for other GM sports cars over the years. I feel the corp backed Chevy’s intimidation efforts far too strongly (mostly by Pontiac) at offering a sports car that would never have appealed to Vette fans in the first place. In the end, there were so many great ideas that either never made it to production (Pontiac Banshee, for example) or that failed to live up to their potential (Monza, Fiero).
Can’t remember which publication did a story on the Vega Cosworth but it was interesting in how the original performance expectation kept getting watered down and that in the end it was not a good race engine either. The block even after the Cosworth changes just was not rigid enough for all the rpms that the Cosworth head was capable of.
One can see the Corsica and Beretta as somewhat taking over the space of what had been the Vega. The Beretta was particularly good looking for its time.
Why can’t/couldn’t the Italian and French automakers establish “permanent” sales here? They tried several times and there were some good products offered (Peugeot 403s and 504s were good cars, but most Fiats had reputations of questionable longevity – and recent the 500s still do, at least in northern climates). Anyway, these large successful companies couldn’t “get it on” in North America for more than 15-ish years despite a couple of tries each. Why couldn’t Renault sell a Clio, but Nissan’s Versa Clio-clone was quite popular?
As explained to me by someone that had been part of a VW dealership back in some of those days there were 2 significant requirements by VW of America. (1) VW maintained an excellent supply of spare parts to support the sold cars. Apparently this was fairly unique amongst the imports. (2) The service manager had as much decision importance as the sales manager. Likely this was unique for foreign and domestic.
The Peugeot 403s and 404s were good solid cars. “Road & Track” publisher John R. Bond loved them, and they ranked among his “Ten Best”! The 504s and 505s were more upscale and complex, but outside of New York City and Los Angeles, dealers and parts were few and far between. When I programmed WHO-AM, Des Moines, in 1984-1985, the Frank N. Magid consultant (Cedar Rapids, IA) owned a beautiful 504 sedan, but it was out-of-service more days than not because of parts. A few years later, Peugeot pulled out of the U.S. Interestingly, Americanized 504s and 404s would have made great Chryslers if they had Chrysler’s dealer network ! Think of the irony !hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
In 1908 when Billy Durant was initiating General Motors, he had meetings with several carmakers in order to buy them and and bring them into the “fold”, including Henry Ford. l believe that he did not invite Studebaker. This despite Studebaker already being a large established, well-financed company having world-wide dealer operations and a desire to get vigorously and substantially into the automobile business (which they did very shortly after on their own). And Durant was already well-versed in the horse-drawn business which Studebaker would run successfully for a few more years concurrently with their blossoming auto business.
A funny theory of mine is that Durant did not like the Studebaker name. He deathly afraid that the public would pronounce B-u-i-c-k as “BOO-ik”, and he really loved Louis’ last name – “Chev-row-lay”! Stoodeebayker – probably not so much!!
The Graham Brothers were very successful at everything they did – farming, glass manufacturing and Graham trucks and running Dodge after those brothers died. But the Graham family could not make a success of it on their own in the dog-eat-dog car bizz despite their great credentials. Yes, l know of the Kaiser-Fraser arrangement the the New York Rangers and Madison Square Gardens successes later – but the brothers didn’t bring those about.
Despite today’s generally wrong opinion, The Studebaker brothers were very, very successful.
The Fisher Brothers were also very successful and very “unsung” nowadays.
The Stanley brothers, F.E. and F.O. were successful (photographic processing, the air brush) – and eccentric. And a good story.
The Duryea brothers, not so much good a story. The Apperson brothers (metallurgy), the White brothers (sewing machine family), the Packard brothers (electrical manufacturing, bought by GM), the Dodge brothers of course (heavy component suppliers to the industry, fantastic teamwork together), the Chevrolet brothers (racing, manufacturing, Louis’ punch-out of Arthur Champion), the Briscoe brothers (important involvement with David Buick, the United States Motor Co. and how Maxwell-Briscoe eventually morphed into the Chrysler Corp.).
There’s more!
What do the Graham Brothers (above) have to to with a humiliation of Hirohito at the surrender of Japan?
What does a defunct American car company, headed by a former racer, and that used a “hat-in-the-ring” symbol, have to do with Nazi Germany and Audi?
And – l’m fuzzy on this one – what does a pre-war Ford economy car have to do with France and post-war Chrysler?
The Hat-In-The-Ring symbol was that of Captain Eddie Rickenbacker, World War One flying ace, Medal of Honor recipient, race car driver, owner of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Corporation between 1924 and 1945, and head of Eastern Airlines. Rickenbacker was sympathetic to many of the positions of Nazi Germany before the war, as were General Motors (Adam Opel, A.G.) and Henry Ford (Ford of Germany, Jews).
The pre-war Ford small flathead V-8 was put into the Simca after the war, sold by Chrysler as the Vedette in France !
Why did Corvette get produced SOOOOO LOOOONG with the same body – 15years? Seems crazy
when you think about it! It wasn’t a Morgan, you know!
That the ’68 body first appeared at the same time as a high point in VW Beetle sales and when it ended in 1982, when the almighty Beetle was long gone and the Rabbit/Golf was already in it’s second generation is telling. A lot of water (time) went under the bridge. The Nova was gone before ’82, the Mustang was on it’s third platform since ’68, the Maverick had come and gone. Chrysler had lost its way then gone bankrupt and was just in in the process of making a big splash with a 4 cylinder front-drive car (and the minivan was about to be launched). That’s a LOT of time in a very competitive industry! How did Corvette think it was doing a good job?
Considering the Corvette’s original market target, how come an ’82 Corvette looks very much like a ’68 Corvette – and with the same engine block! Seems ridiculous!
Good one! To expand, to what extent did the long production run undermine the Corvette’s reputation? Was it still a car to aspire to in the mid-late seventies and early eighties, or was it now appealing to the ‘wrong’ demographic to be taken seriously as a sports car?
Bingo. LIke this one.
The C3 was not supposed to go as long as it did. Multiple things conspired to make this happen as various developments were started, stopped, and mutated with different thoughts.
As the Corvette was not a high profit contribution car line to the corporation it was easy to slow/stop revisions in order to fund the bread & butter cars.
There were plans to become mid engine. This especially when the Pantera came out. At that point there was a fear that it would actually sell well enough to hurt Corvette. Luckily for the Corvette there were so many issues with the Pantera that it never got anywhere near its volume projection.
The introduction of the Porsche 928 also had an influence on Corvette decisions. If Porsche decided that the future was a conventional front engine/rear drive platform (remember that the 928 was to be the eventual replacement for the 911) then maybe the Corvette did not need to go mid engine.
The 2-rotor Corvette was cliniced as a potential next Corvette.
I don’t know if it is true or not but remember being told that the most common replacement car for the Covette back when was a Riviera. If that is true, then what we think of as the great Corvettes with all the performance versions may not have been where the majority of their real buyers were or were going to in the longer term.
The book “Corvette: From the Inside”, written by Dave McClellan, a former chief engineer for the Corvette, provides an excellent view into the technical aspects and to some extent, the economics, behind the car from 1953 to 1992.
http://www.davemclellanlegal.com/corvette-from-the-inside/
That’s helpful, thank you. My Corvette research materials are rather limited, partly because the nameplate has been so heavily covered by other websites.
How about an article that explores the challenges surrounding the application of the Toronado’s front-wheel-drive system in an F-85/Cutlass family sedan instead of the Toronado?
In particular, an analysis of how much this vehicle would cost, as compared to the cost of conventional competitors, and whether it would offer enough extra room or compact dimensions to make it more appealing to customers.
A front-wheel-drive Cutlass with a base price in nicely equipped Delta 88 territory would have been a tough sell in the mid-1960s.
Another challenge is that the direct competitors – Chrysler B-bodies, Ford Fairlane/Mercury Comet and Rambler Classic – weren’t seen as being particularly oversized or cramped by prospective customers.
From everything I heard as a teenager from my father’s Detroit friends and from “Motor Trend” and “Popular Mechanics”, the front-wheel-drive Oldsmobile “mules” were 1964 F-85s and 1963-1964 88s to try out components for the Fall, 1965 introduction of the Toronado. The “mules” were mainly driven at Milford, MI, the upper peninsula of Michigan and then in Arizona in early 1965 to test the cooling abilities of the car. The car was always going to be a halo car to compete with the Riviera and eventually the Eldorado.
It would also be interesting to look at Chrysler Corporation’s market share in the medium-price sector after Dodge was given the Dart (the full-size version) for 1960.
The move boosted total Dodge sales for one year, but Plymouth sales declined, and the medium-price Dodge became an after-through.
Here’s a first take on this topic. Like most shorter Indie Auto stories, I will expand it over time.
The 1971 Ford Pinto might benefit from a counterfactual poke and prod, see comment:
https://www.indieauto.org/2020/06/01/lee-iacocca-got-lucky-with-the-1964-66-ford-mustang/#comment-6318
Car and Driver tested the Pinto and Vega and commented that the Pinto’s “bucket seats, with their poorly-shaped and too-upright backrests, proved to be agony for most of the staff.” Other reviews said the Pinto’s seatbacks were too thin and seats too narrow. What these comments suggest is that the Pinto’s front seats were compromised both by the need to fit between the wide transmission tunnel and by the need to deliver adequate rear seat knee room. In addition, C&D said this of the rear seats: “Realistically, either the Pinto or Vega should be limited to carrying two adults with the rear seat reserved for children or parcels.” All told, Pinto under-delivered in the key attributes of front seat comfort, rear seat room and fuel tank protection.
https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/comparison-test/a15125566/chevrolet-vega-vs-ford-pinto-archived-comparison/
On top of all this, here is a damning video revealing Lee Iacocca’s attitude towards the Pinto insofar as its fuel tank safety was concerned. Was this a major reason why he was fired?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmW8tiALUdo
Given all of these negatives there is perhaps justification in raising a counterfactual that asks if Pinto’s several dozen vehicle attributes were poorly balanced.
I think they were but my counterfactual depends on how important the rear seats were to the market that Pinto served. Would a base model with no rear seats have been chosen by a significant number of buyers? The Gremlin’s low take-rate on its 2-passenger version suggests not:
https://www.allpar.com/threads/the-gremlin-amc%E2%80%99s-oddly-named-oddly-styled-oddly-successful-compact.229788/
A transverse FWD powertrain would have largely eliminated the floor tunnel, thus increasing spaciousness, and would have enabled wider front seats and a flat rear seat bottom. The opportunity to package the fuel underneath the rear seat bottom was always there but apparently none of the Big 3 either realized it or chose it.
Another powertrain possibility would have been to stick with the engine’s longitudinal layout and put the transmission in the rear as part of a transaxle with independent rear suspension. Were such a car to have strictly been a two-seater, a large 20+ gallon fuel tank could have packaged between the front seats and rear transaxle, and the front bucket seats could have been made as wide and deeply cushioned as those used in Ford’s full-sized cars.
In this scenario the rear load floor would have been lower than the original Pinto and completely flat because the spare would no longer have been above the fuel tank. The main question is, would it have sold 3M over its lifetime as the original Pinto did?
The Mustang II and 4-seat Pinto wagon, both sharing the same long rear overhang, could have used the 2-seat Pinto hatchback’s rear transaxle but the fuel would have needed packaged aft of the rear transaxle as before.
There would be no 2-door Pinto with trunk, only a very useful hatchback with a 600 mile cruising range. Had Ford added lots of sound insulation they could have positioned the car as a comfortable commuter vehicle for multi-car families, that relaxed rather than beat up its driver Monday thru Friday.
Fuel injection would have greatly helped with starting and drivability in these early years of pollution control. In all, the picture forming is a car with significantly more tech and front seat spaciousness and comfort than the original Pinto, but with no rear seats.
Iacocca firing. This goes straight to how HFII no longer trusted Iacocca after he submarined Knudsen. Iacocca led the threatened revolt of senior executives which HFII never forgave him for.
Pinto – Please do not use a now consideration for what the car should have been at that time 50 years ago. The Pinto and Vega used a conventional front engine, attached transmission, and even the live axle read end as that was the typical worldwide layout for that time. The Mini, some other BMCs and Fiat were the only ones really doing the fwd at the time. Rear engine would have been the other choice when looking at the then marketplace, although that was a dying solution.
The Pinto have the fuel tank at the back was another worldwide industry typical solution.
Here’s two questions that I will preface with the work of advertising / marketing by Jack Trout and Alan Ries in 1979: The concept and practice of “positioning”, in this case, automotive product branding. Why did Lincoln try to sell rebadged Ford F-150s in the 1990s, and did it lead to a decline in Lincoln car sales as they matched a weakened Cadillac. Why didn’t Ford create a limited Blackwood brand rather than extending the Lincoln brand ? I understand Lincoln S.U.V.s (Navigator, Nautilus, Aviator, Corsair), but trucks ? This leads to the second question: Why Cadillac trucks other than to copy Lincoln ? Ries and Trout would say that the upscale Silverado / Colorado should only be the premium-grade G.M.C.s, so the luxury trucks would not confuse the Cadillac image. Cadillac could still have its Escalade, XT4-5-6 as pluah, luxury S.U.V.s, but pickup trucks ? Why ?
Seemed like a good idea at the time. Highly optioned/high profit special edition pickups were all the rage at the time. It was a low risk high profit move.
Thanks for soliciting suggestions! There a couple of pieces of conventional wisdom I’d like to see re-examined:
#1. The ‘50’s-‘60’s “Safety doesn’t sell” mantra, as with regard to Ford in ’56.
I’ve come to seriously question both the conclusion and the candor of those making it. I don’t doubt sales figures and don’t dispute that “dangerous” was widely perceived as sexier than “safe” at the time; I just doubt that purchase decisions can be attributed to a safety-versus-performance tradeoff. Surely the complex of competing factors, constraints, agendas and timeframes makes this unknowable. My hunch is that “safety doesn’t sell” came from salesmen comfortable with selling sexiness, not hard sales data.
#2 If insurance companies killed the muscle car, just how bad were late ’60’s muscle car insurance losses?
Those unromantic insurance companies fundamentally raise rates for one reason: higher losses than projected for a rated category. Consequently, insurance claims on early muscle cars – compared with other vehicles – must’ve been conspicuously excessive – but just how much worse were early muscle car accidents / insurance claims compared with the overall car population?
The scale of the differences may be pretty, um, striking (were the extra losses from broken cars or broken people?). On the other hand, it might find that the insurance companies really did abandon their actuaries this time, either just spitefully to screw car guys or because they perceived an inelastic warp in that part of their demand curve. Of course, if examination reveals any juicy “car ‘a’ was much more dangerous than car ‘b’”-type revelations, so much the better.
Not really expecting smoking guns or anything, but a reasoned examination of either might shine a light on interesting questions long ignored.
One that get me is the dearth of Willys/Aero Willys articles. Left out of the “Little Four” group, it was an orphan’s orphan. It came out of WWII with a hell of a reputation, the Aero Willys all but invented the mid size, and put a dogleg windshield on the planned 1956 reskinning and you have a much better looking product than any independent except the non Clipper Packards.
“One that get me is the dearth of Willys/Aero Willys articles.”
Kim, if you are talking about the commercial auto history sites, I’d agree. If you are talking specifically about Indie Auto, remember that this is a volunteer-produced, solo operation. I’d spend more time on it if I could build donations to a reasonable level.
Regarding Willys, Indie Auto has published a number of relevant stories:
— 1933-42 Willys offered a better template for an import beater
— How Brooks Stevens’s designs for a postwar compact Willys evolved
— Would Hudson have been Packard’s best merger partner?
— Could Studebaker have come out of the 1970s as successful as Jeep?
I’d like to see an in-depth report on the career of Brooks Stevens. His car designs spanned many years and manufacturers. I think the 1962-64 Studebaker Hawks were/are outstanding designs. His own Excalibur cars were, or at least the early models, very attractive neo-classics.
Michael, that’s a good idea. I have been picking at parts of his career with the following articles:
— Brooks Stevens book gives useful overview of his car designs
— How Brooks Stevens’s designs for a postwar compact Willys evolved
— 1964 Studebaker: Brooks Stevens hammered final nail in the coffin
— Brooks Stevens’s 1965 Studebaker Lark concept: Almost a baby Continental
— Accounts of Brooks Stevens’s Studebaker Sceptre and siblings can vary
Here is a letter to the editor that I wasn’t sure where to post but it may make the most sense here:
“(U)p to the 50s wagons were viewed as rather utilitarian. Yet why did they remain built of wood structurally well into the first postwar generation with some makes. That make these ‘utility’ vehicles more expensive to build, and to maintain. The technology was there and in fact GM was making all steel wagons on their pickup chassis since the mid 30s. Was it simply inertia?”
Here some little ideas then I thought but I think it won’t go far.
-If Chrysler had taked an styling approach once suggested by Don Kopka who did a clay model of a proposed 1962 DeSoto who have a front end of a mid-1960s Mercury?
-Something more recent, what if GM accepted Kirk Kerkorian idea of an alliance with Renault-Nissan?
-how about a short article about Virgil Exner’s idea of revival cars where he imagined how Packard, Pierce-Arrow, Duesenberg Jordan, Buggati and Stutz would have looked in the mid-1960s? The proposed 1966 Duesenberg looked very different from what he originally drawed but the more I look to it, with some photoshop, the 1966 Duesenberg front end would have some “Packardesque” look.
Reading the article on the Pontiac X-400s of 1959, 1960, 1962 and 1963-1964 in the October, 2023 edition of “Collectible Automobile”, it appears that after the end of the G.M. Motoramas in 1961, G.M. became less and less interested in gauging public opinion in styling and features for its cars and trucks, except at the auto shows in New York, L.A., Chicago and Detroit. Yes, there were custom versions of Buick Wildcats and the X-400s, but Ford seemed to have its series of Mustang / Cougar / T-bird concepts and every now and then, Elwood Engel would roll out something like the 197X concept. Why did concept cars evaporate ? In today’s automotive world, I guess it really does not matter, as most cars look very much the same anyway. Ditto for trucks !
I believe all of the great customizers of the 1950s and 1960s have gone to the great body / fabrication shop in the sky, but I have come to admire and respect most of the designers / fabricators / mechanics / painters featured on “Motor Trend TV”. The manufacturers’ creations are modified in ways that most original designers never expected to be replicated into sheet-metal, composite or fiberglass. Are designers like Chip Foose, “Shorty”, the Nichols or the Martins the equivalents of Walker, Mitchell, Exner and Engel now that almost all cars and trucks resemble each other without much distinction between brands ? (No wonder big logos on the grill are necessary today !)
GM in the early 2000’s had too many brands or marques. The economic crisis of 2008 made a thinning of the herd necessary. With the benefit of hindsight, did GM make good choices?
Was Saturn under utilized…could it have been a US sales network for European or Asian GM products? Was the decision to close Pontiac and keep Buick the right one? Does GMC need to make consumer vehicles and siphon off sales from Chevrolet, or is it the truck line offered at the Buick SUV dealership?
Riffing off the idea of “If you could have foreseen the future in high school, would today’s cars surprise you?”, how about prognosticating into the future? It doesn’t have to be 40 years out, maybe 10-20 years or so.
This is a very interesting interval in time; it may even be pivotal vis-à-vis the adoption (or some would say the enforcement) of BEVs and the intersection of fossil fueled powered vehicles.
I’m trying to imagine the landscape in that time frame, but I think it would interesting to hear other’s opinions about this.
Sounds like an intriguing idea but I’ll leave it to younger and more prescient folks. When I graduated HS in 1968 I would have guessed turbines as the wave of the future. Otherwise, longer lower wider as far as the eyecould see. I would have thought air cooled engines fir the near future. I’ve seen too many fads come and go to take a crack at it.
Stay tuned….
Well l remember while l was i high school in the ’60s that there was an article in Popular Mechanics or Mechanix Illustrated magazines that Ford Motor Company was going to market an electric car by 1975. Too bad for them that it didn’t happen – it would have been well positioned timing-wise with gas prices in flux and gas supplies in jeopardy.
So last week, I acquired a 1991 full-line dealer sales catalogue for the Oldsmobile “Division” of General Motors. Nine platforms and “The Oldsmobile Edge”…should have been the formula for success for the cars that had been the Number One domestic make (1,157,990) in 1986, right ? Wrong !!!!! Like every other G.M. division (except perhaps for Saturn), what was an Oldsmobile ? For 1991, one could have a Ninety Eight, a Toronado or Toronado Trofeo, an Eighty Eight Royale, a Cutlass Supreme, a Cutlass Ciera or Cutlass Cruiser, a Cutlass Calais, a Custom Cruiser, a Silhouette (“The Cadillac of Minivans”*) and the Bravada (with two-door and four-door variations and a book of available trim and feature options)! Poor John Rock…even he could not fix the division ! John Smale and Ron Zarrella did very little to right the ship after the 1992 boardroom coup. Even though the entire Oldsmobile line-up for 1991 had very clean styling down the line, in my opinion, every division overlapped each other with vehicles that were essentially badge-engineered variants except for Saturns and the Corvette. In 1990, total Olds sales were 489,492, decreasing in 1991. No wonder G.M. was in a cash-flow pinch in 1991-1992: Too many models and too many similar cars all at the same price. My question is why didn’t G.M. realize by 1989 that less (much less) was more ?
*-Quote from the character “Martin Weir”, protrayed by Danny DeVito in the 1995 movie, “Get Shorty”.
IMO a couple of reasons why GM didn’t realize Oldsmobile was in trouble… 1: Things had been going swimmingly up until a couple of years previous. I’m sure they felt they could get it right. 2: Dealer agreements. When the end finally did come, it took quite a few cubic dollars to make the dealer body happy. I think dealer agreements were the main reason why most consolidations are so slow in coming.
In some regards, the launching of the Aurora was the last best gasp GM had to rescue Oldsmobile, but it wasn’t comprehensive enough to change attitudes. By the mid 90’s the Japanese luxury makes had consolidated their marketing power (in a rather short amount of time, too) with their lower lines eating in the space where Buick, Oldsmobile, Lincoln and Chrysler existed. The older part of my cohort (Baby Boomers) were not remotely interested in the re-booted Cutlasses that were being offered. When a Lexus or Infiniti cost a bit more but came with the “luxury” car cachet, why get a lumpen Olds or Buick or…?
Also, the multiple full line car divisions were become obsolete, but no one seemed to be aware of it. What could you get at Oldsmobile that you couldn’t get at Chevrolet at that time? In fact, many Chevy sales films (for the sales staff) were about how to sell AGAINST other GM divisions! What genius thought this was a good idea? How would this work if you had a multi-line GM dealership? Cannibalize sales from one marque to another? Would the more expensive brand ever win?
IIRC, the 1992 “re-organization” was rather more serious than we knew until some time after it had happened. Like those spinning plate jugglers on the old TV variety shows, I’m sure just keeping the plates spinning was all they could do to keep the enterprise going. I thought it was a shame for them to shut down Oldsmobile in 2004; it had been the oldest continuous automotive manufacturer in the United States at that time.
I’d hoped that GM would have mimicked the Lexus sales model; i.e. flagship (Aurora) and mid priced models (Intrigue, mabye Alero?) with a SUV (Bravada). Ditch the Silhouette and the 88 and 98. By the mid 90’s no one remembered those model designations as they hadn’t relevant at least as late as the late 1970’s. But, they were mired in an old sales model with a line up that hadn’t been working in years. RIP Oldsmobile.
It is my understanding that John Rock of Oldsmobile and Ron Zarrella, the G.M. ringmaster of branding and advertising were at loggerheads over the future of the division for over four years. Zarrella wanted Olds shut down but the corporate attorneys said they had to wait due to state franchise laws and existing contracts negotiated in the Roger B. Smith years. Zarrella believed that no youthful buyer would want a car branded “Oldsmobile”. When John Rock resigned in 1997, Oldsmobile’s death sentence was put into motion on the 14th Floor. Of course, Olds was gone by 2005 with only untitled cars and demos on the lots.
Let’s remember that Zarrella is who was pushed out of GM (with a golden parachute) for a bogus resume
‘You’re 25 & just bought your first new Chevy, at what ages and which models would be your moves up the Sloan Ladder?’ could be a good story idea.
To answer your question, probably a GMC Acadia, or a GMC Terrain Denali, in the early 30s. Cadillac is too far up and when you see a Buick it’s going down the highway on cruise control set exactly at the speed limit. I would say the Sloan ladder existed from approximately 1925 to 1990. By then every make came on every platform and essentially were trim levels with grills.
If Steve had been in charge of GM from 1973 to 1983, how would he have handled the downsizing from 1977 through 1986? What products should have been developed that weren’t? What products were developed that shouldn’t have been? How should the engines have been developed differently?
If Jaguar fails, there will be world-wide “mourning”.
If Buick fails, l know l will be one of many to shed a tear.
Did you “shed a tear” for Pontiac and OLdsmobile and Plymouth (probably not Saturn!).
So here’s a question: Was G.M.’s corporate threat to shutter Pontiac when Semon E. “Bunkie” Knudsen was made General Manager in July, 1956, genuine or was it an empty threat ? Pontiac production-1954: 277,744; 1955-554,090; 1956: 405,730; 1957: 334,041; and, 1958: 217,303. Look at Buick’s production output arc-1954: 444,609; 1955: 738,814; 1956: 572,024; 1957: 405,086; and, 1958: 241,892. Oldsmobile (just for grins) production-1954: 354,001; 1955: 583,179; 1956: 485,458; 1957: 384,390; and, 1958: 294,394.
I do not believe that the G.M. Executive Committee wanted to eliminate the Pontiac division, but really wanted to reimage the brand so it was not viewed as just a cheaper version of an Olds 88 or a Buick Special, even though the Special and the 88 shared body shells while the Pontiac was a longer wheelbase version of the Chevrolet with a longer rear deck. Dealer franchise agreements were subject to state law, so eliminating Pontiac in the late 1950s and early 1960s would have likely encounter more grief than what G.M. experienced when they eliminated Oldsmobile after 1997.
I think Chrysler avoided the problem of eliminating the De Soto brand because they rearranged the Chrysler-Plymouth and Dodge dealers as they de-dualed Plymouth from Dodge dealers, which may have also been motivated to not name the 1960 Valiant as a Plymouth. I cannot speak for every major urban area, but I recall that no De Soto dealer in Indianapolis went away when De Soto production ended in the fall of 1960. One became a Chrysler-Plymouth dealer while another became a Dodge dealer.
The other question is why the “threat” to shutter a G.M. division was not made to Buick, although their general manager position was a “musical chairs” situation with Ed Rollert (April, 1959-July, 1965) following Ed Ragsdale (March, 1956-April, 1959). Rollert led Buick back to better sales, but still not the annual production of 700,000+ Buicks Ivan Wiles promised in 1954 !
Pontiac had the lowest sales of the BOPs. It was also the lowest priced of them. If you had to dump one, Pontiac would be the logical choice. How did Ford do on eliminating the Edsel? Were there any standalone Edsel dealers?
Yes, in Gayle Warnock’s book, the Edsel (or then, the “E-Car”) team focused on recruiting Edsel dealers from independent brand dealers (Studebaker, Nash and Hudson) and from the most-successful used-car dealers in each urban area. There was also a push to recruit dealers for new stand-alone Mercury dealers, all as a part of the 1952 Jack Reith-Ernie Breech five-division corporate Ford plan. The Edsel managers were told by Robert McNamara not to approach existing Ford dealers as they had both cars and trucks. On a case-by-case basis, established Mercury dealers could be approached, but only if they were financially qualified and could expand their facilities. I know of at least two standalone Edsel dealers in Indiana, one in downtown Indianapolis and one in Marion. The former dealership building in Marion still has the green Edsel signage hanging outside.
Here’s an interesting sidebar topic about the American automobile industry: In the 1950s, 1960s and the 1970s, S.M.P. / A.M.T, Revell, Jo-Han, Monogram, Hubley, Pyro and Palmer issued plastic model cars as annual promotional models and customizing kits. Bathrico (before 1955) and Hubley also issued diecasts. Customizing kits started in 1955-1956 with Revell / A.M.T. Chevrolet and Fords were the most popular promos and kits, but in the 1960s, A.M.T. offered Pontiac Grand Prixs, Bonneville hardtops and convertibles and Tempest hardtops and convertibles (1964-1965). Many kits, especially the A.M.T. Styline kits offered special custom front and rear-end styling options by customizers including George Barris, Gene Winfield and the Alexander Brothers. For 1962, Revell went “all-in” on the entire 1962 Chrysler line in 1/25-scale and 1/87, including clear plastic bodies with metal-flake imbedded in the plastic so to have the effect for the body, one painted the inside of the car body ! My question is two-fold: 1.) Did the offerings by the model makers reflect the anticipated popularity of the car (or truck, as there were model pick-ups); and 2.) Did the customizers’ modifications to the original styling represent “the path not taken” or a leaked styling option of what was to come ? For example, the 1961 Ford Galaxie Styline kit offered a stacked headlight option foreshadowing the 1965 Ford full-size car. The 1962 Corvair couple Styline kit also had styling cues the previewed styling cues for the 1965-1969 Corvairs.
In the summer of 1980, when I was living in Memphis as Program Director of WHBQ Radio, I read in the New Hork Times that Pontiac was going to abandon full-size cars for the 1982 model year. The Canadian Pontiac dealers revolted as most were Buick-Pontiac dealers and there was much consternation over the cancelled full-size Pontiac. The easiest solution was to assemble full-size Pontiacs on a Chevrolet Caprice platform as had been done with earlier full-size Pontiacs with 1981 Pontiac trim, emblems, grilles and taillights, the 1982 Parisienne, assembled at Oshawa, Ontario. In 1982, the biggest Pontiac sold in the U.S. was the former Luxury LeMans, now the Bonneville Model G ! With the early success of the Pontiac 6000L/E and the 6000S/E front-wheel-drive cars in the U.S., why didn’t G.M. decide to reposition Pontiac as the “Excitement” division, drop the full-size cars and focus on the 6000s, 2000s, Grand-Ams, Firebirds and Fieros ? Let Oldsmobile fight the imports, and Buick have its traditional customers, positioned above Olds. I am guessing that Roger B. Smith did not want the headaches of shuffling dealer franchise agreements, but pairing a slimmed-down Pontiac (and G.M.C.) with Buick made a lot of sense by 1984. With Chevrolet and Oldsmobile paired with Olds focusing on specific up-market import-fighting vehicles, such minor consolidation could have saved G.M. the embarrassment of 1992 near-bankruptcy and beyond.
l had a BEAUTIFUL full-sized 1981 Pontiac Parisienne 2-door with the upright formal “C” pillar in a light “sand” colour with ivory interior, factory styled steel wheels, and fender skirts. l wish l could post a picture!
It was made in Oshawa (it had a 305 in it). Curiously, the fender scripts showed it was a Parisienne, but the dashboard script said “Bonneville”!