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Month: May 2025
Media Analysis
Automotive News declared war on Trump tariffs but only brought a squirt gun
Automotive News’ April 28 front page reminded me of a daily newspaper announcing the start of a war. Rather than the usual assortment of product launches and resume-polishing profiles of auto executives, the industry journal […]
History
1971 Plymouth Valiant sedan impressed media more than buying public
(EXPANDED FROM 3/27/2023) A Popular Science road test ranked the 1971 Plymouth Valiant four-door sedan above its newest rivals among the low-priced brands — the Ford Maverick and AMC Hornet (Norbye and Dunne, 1971). That […]
Photo Essay
Can the soul of Olympia, Washington be found in its darkened streets?
Olympia, Washington was incorporated way back in 1859, and you can still see a few vestiges of its carless past in the victorian decor of some downtown buildings (Wikipedia, 2025). However, like many West Coast […]
Quotes
Jack Mueller’s rationale for GM not selling V8s to Kaiser is questionable
Jack Mueller’s book on Kaiser-Frazer weighrd in on the question of why General Motors did not end up selling the automaker its Rocket V8 engine. He pointed to evidence that the Oldsmobile Division initially showed […]
Gallery
Was the 1969-70 Eldorado the best-looking postwar Cadillac?
When I was expanding a John DeLorean book review the other day, I dug up a 1967 General Motors ad that included a photograph of a Cadillac Eldorado. That got me wondering: Was the 1967-70 […]
Media Analysis
Could Trump’s tariffs force out of the U.S. market 11 car brands?
A recent Autoline After Hours (2025) episode had the breathless title, “11 Car Brands That Tariffs Could Force Out of U.S. Market.” I would imagine that this episode got an unusual number of views on […]
Readings
DeLorean’s book is still one of best critiques of General Motors
(EXPANDED FROM 4/1/2022) On A Clear Day You Can See General Motors ranks right up there with Brock Yates’ The Decline and Fall of the American Automobile Industry (1983) in articulating where Detroit went wrong. Yet it should […]
Design Notes
The 1958 Packard went too far in styling, size and pricing
(EXPANDED ON 9/30/2022) Indie Auto doesn’t generally dwell on collectible cars, but a restoration of a 1958 Packard shed light on what I have found to be one of the bigger peculiarities of the postwar […]
Multimedia
Could Joe Ligo’s American Motors TV series expand the audience for auto history?
I first wrote about Joe Ligo’s idea of making an American Motors film in early 2020. Two years later he announced that he was retooling the project and would do a six-part series for the […]