(UPDATED FROM 12/11/2023) The Consumer Reports 1975 Buying Guide was fairly positive about imported cars but cautioned about dealer service. The annual guide, which was published in December 1974, noted that some foreign brands had […]
(EXPANDED FROM 10/19/2023) One could point to a number of car designs that represented the turning point where foreign automakers began to outshine Detroit in the late-60s and early-70s. The first-generation Jaguar XJ strikes me […]
(EXPANDED FROM 10/4/2023) The Ford Fairmont had sold well in its first two years but in 1980 was confronted by formidable new competition — Chevrolet’s Citation. If this were still the good old days we […]
(UPDATED FROM 12/4/2023) Nineteen-seventy would be disastrous for the Pontiac GTO, but you’d never guess that from a Motor Trend article at the beginning of the model year. Indeed, Bill Sanders wrote that Pontiac’s muscle […]
(EXPANDED FROM 12/1/2023) The introduction of compacts for Pontiac, Oldsmobile and Buick represented a major change for these General Motors’ premium-priced brands. Did they help sales grow in a changing marketplace? Or did smaller cars […]
(UPDATED FROM 10/30/2023) Popular Science had a mixed record in making predictions about the auto industry during the postwar period. We have already discussed the magazine’s misfires in 1967 and 1970. Now let’s take a […]
(EXPANDED FROM 4/26/2023) Reasonable people can debate when the Big Three automakers stopped building sensibly-sized cars during the postwar period. For example, one might point to the 1956 Ford because it was only slightly larger […]
(EXPANDED FROM 10/3/2023) Stephen Pellegrino has sparked a debate about the value of automotive brands by arguing that Hudson, Nash and Rambler were worth saving. His punchline is that “brand names mean something, and the […]
(EXPANDED FROM 8/21/2020) Patrick Foster (2024) illustrates how fanboy sentiment can undercut the quality of historical analysis by arguing that AMC should have offered a luxury spin-off of the 1974 Matador coupe — and that […]
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