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Month: March 2025
Drive-By Musings
Trump’s trade war could tempt Canada to welcome Chinese EVs
Republican attempts to “slam the brakes” on electric vehicle adoption (Rivero, 2025) combined with President Trump’s trade war with Canada could create an opening for Chinese EVs. BYD is increasingly looking like it it is […]
Current Events
Is UAW support for Trump’s Canadian tariffs ultimately a turf battle?
The United Auto Workers’ endorsement of Trump’s tariffs makes at least some sense when applied to a low-wage nation such as Mexico, but why Canada? The UAW (2025) has thus far framed its support as […]
Readings
Richard Langworth’s death raises questions about auto history’s future
Indie Auto reader Zachary Morecraft suggested in the “Story Idea Bank” that we do a piece on Richard M. Langworth, who died February 20 at the age of 83. Langworth was such a towering presence […]
Links
How long will automotive styling be dominated by brutalism?
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 […]
Design Notes
1973 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme: Monument to a fading dream
(EXPANDED FROM 15/8/2023) General Motors’ 1973 mid-sized cars were a major focus of our discussion about William Mitchell’s tenure as head of design. Thus, I thought it would be a good time to expand on […]
Photo Essay
Exurban graffiti: There goes a generation
(EXPANDED FROM 3/16/2025) This is a photo essay that I shot over a number of years. If you don’t find graffiti sociologically interesting, then you might want to move on to the next post. Evergreen […]
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Quotes
How Ford responded to safety issues with the original Econoline van
Indie Auto reader James E. Duvall recently commented about how the Falcon-based Econoline van and truck had such a front-end weight bias that they could flip on their front end under intense braking unless there […]
Drive-By Musings
Let’s grade William Mitchell’s 1970s car designs
William Mitchell was vice president of design at General Motors from December 1958 through July 1977 (Wikipedia, 2025). I have previously raised the question of whether he stayed in his position too long (go here). […]