(UPDATED FROM 6/20/2022) Documentary films contribute to automotive history in a different way than words on a page (either paper or electronic). In general, film can capture much better the human elements of a situation, […]
If you wanted to see Stonehenge but haven’t managed to fly to England, there is an alternative in the United States. Around a century ago philanthropist Sam Hill built a replica in a rural corner […]
During the depths of the Covid pandemic I explored random back roads. For example, one Sunday close to sunset I came across a large building whose front yard was filled with rusting old cars. A […]
The car-buff media is so oriented toward the gear that it tends to neglect one of the biggest reasons people drive automobiles — to go somewhere interesting. We could talk about that in scholarly terms. […]
I am ambivalent about Charles K. Hyde’s book, Riding the Roller Coaster: A History of the Chrysler Corporation. The American automotive history field desperately needs more scholarly books, and Hyde is a relatively rare academic […]
One curious aspect of American automotive culture is how the car-buff media largely ignore the roadways that make driving possible. I find bridges to be as interesting as car styling in expressing the zeitgeist of […]
(EXPANDED FROM 1/10/2022) Now that we’re once again hitting the peak of gift-giving season, let’s take a look at one of the more popular automotive books. My Dad Had That Car ranks among the top-15 […]
Stéphane Dumas (2024) recently commented that “it would have been a shock if a car from the 1980s” was on the cover of Collectible Automobile magazine. The newest model he could remember was a 1975 […]
Over the last few days we’ve had a mini-seminar on Packard’s decline in the comment thread of the story, “1956 Packard booklet hints at how James Nance got too big for his britches.” Geeber took […]
(EXPANDED FROM 12/15/2022) James A. Ward’s Packard book, The Fall of the Packard Motor Car Company, is dwarfed by Automobile Quarterly’s epic tome edited by Beverly Rae Kimes (2002) as well as Stuart R. Blond’s […]
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