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Year: 2025
Quotes
Peter DeLorenzo dunks on car dealers’ short-sighted greed
Peter DeLorenzo is back from a break in writing his column . . . and is in a foul mood. He is particularly critical of dealers being “insanely” optimistic in the wake of the Trump […]
History
AMC’s Roy Abernethy was increasingly hemmed in but not without options
(EXPANDED FROM 3/4/2022) Automotive historians, both professional and armchair, tend to beat up too much on Roy Abernethy’s leadership of American Motors. Thus, Geeber (2021) offered useful context in responding to a denunciation of Abernethy. […]
Links
Road Test columnist attacks Motor Trend for Car of Year awards to Pontiac
(EXPANDED FROM 6/26/2023) The June 1968 issue of Road Test magazine took its rival, Motor Trend, to task for anointing the Pontiac GTO as Car of the Year. Columnist Byron Bloch argued that the award […]
Design Notes
1958 Imperial: Virgil Exner’s best shot at Cadillac
(EXPANDED FROM 9/2/2022) The 1958 Imperial has received little attention by automotive historians even though it arguably represented the brand at its peak. Never again would Chrysler’s luxury car offer so many field-leading product innovations. […]
Media Analysis
Why hasn’t Consumer Guide Automotive fixed a discredited anti-Nader rant?
(EXPANDED FROM 11/1/2019) One way auto history websites can squeeze more profits from their content is to endlessly repost stories. That’s not a bad thing if the information is accurate, but it strikes me as […]
Ad Nauseam
What happened to Mercury’s 1967 ‘Man’s Car’ ad campaign
Mercury’s ad agency, Weiner, Cox & Baltz, thought that it had come up with a clever solution to a lingering problem: the brand’s cars were primarily bought by women. “Our data shows that women are […]
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Quotes
Maryann Keller: Postwar GM had ‘almost pathological resistance’ to change
Maryann Keller was one of the most astute automotive analysts of the last half century. A short passage in her 1993 book, Collision, arguably sums up as well as anyone the primary reason why General […]
Editor's Note
A thank you to recent donors and an update on new initiatives
This week Indie Auto paid its quarterly business taxes, so this is a good time to publicly thank all of you who have made recent donations. We’re too small to give you any trinkets, and […]