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 […]
(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 […]
(EXPANDED FROM 3/1/2020) Once upon a time a Truth About Cars commentator lauded the simplicity of the then-new Jeep Renegade. “Well, I for one am yearning for a simpler time, and this vehicle suggests that,” […]
(EXPANDED FROM 4/10/2020) If Dodge: 100 Years represents the future of automotive history, then we’re in real trouble. What we have here is a lavish display of mindless car porn and marketing babble. That’s an […]
(UPDATED FROM 10/16/2020) Charles K. Hyde’s history of American Motors and its constituent companies is a valuable scholarly addition to the literature. His book, Storied Independent Automakers: Nash, Hudson and American Motors, offers considerably more […]
(EXPANDED FROM 11/13/2020) Thomas E. Bonsall wrote one of the better Studebaker histories, but it suffers from flaws that undercut the book’s usefulness. More Than They Promised, which was published in 2000, is a refreshing […]
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