(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 […]
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 […]
One of the lingering debates about the early postwar period was when the seller’s market ended. Charles E. Edwards’ (1965) book, Dynamics of the United States Automobile Industry, offered a scholarly dive into the data […]
Automotive historian Thomas E. Bonsall argued that the 1958 Edsel wasn’t a flop and that the Ford Motor Company shouldn’t have given up on the brand so quickly. The “real failure in the Edsel saga” […]
I have mixed feelings about the 2002-5 Ford Thunderbird. I am glad the automaker brought back the storied nameplate and think that this generation had a few interesting design touches. That said, the car strikes […]
The most significant postwar trend among independent automakers was a rush to compact cars. Between 1950 and 1953 four automakers came out with new entries. This would prove to be a double-edged sword. On the […]
The Volkswagen Beetle was so popular in the United States during the 1960s that it can be viewed with an aura of inevitability. Even so, one could argue that the VW benefitted by being in […]
(EXPANDED FROM 7/15/2022) I can’t usually tell in advance whether an article will hit a nerve. As a case in point, I didn’t think this one about the 1954 Packard Clipper would generate much notice. […]
Lately I have been listening to an interview David Crippen did with Richard Teague in 1985. This was a few years after Teague retired from leading the design staff of American Motors (Wikipedia, 2025). The […]
Car-buff magazines have tended to focus primarily on entertaining their readers. Thus, they have mostly avoided serious topics until they become too pressing to ignore. That’s why I find interesting how Motor Trend magazine covered […]
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