Drive-By Musings
Would anything have ‘saved’ American Motors?
RF stopped by to respond to our story, “Pat Foster barks up wrong tree by lauding an AMC Gremlin GT with a 360 V8.” Well, sort of. He seemed to be more interested in answering […]
American Motors
Quotes
Brooks Stevens’s rejection of brand continuity was bad for small automakers
Brooks Stevens was a complicated character. For example, he championed ultra-simple car designs but also coined the term “planned obsolescence” to describe an industrial designer’s mission (Adamson, 2003; p. 129). One way that played out […]
Current Events
EVs need a George Romney to champion them in the next few years
With the Republicans likely to slash support for electric vehicles at every turn (Ferry, 2025), automakers will need to work much harder to market their wares in the next few years. What would be particularly […]
Fake Design
Brooks Stevens’s 1965 Studebaker Lark concept: Almost a baby Continental
(EXPANDED FROM 12/10/2021) Brooks Stevens apparently was convinced that he could come up with a new-generation Studebaker Lark design that would top the work of Raymond Loewy’s team, which was then working on an Avanti-inspired […]
Multimedia
Why does Joe Ligo’s PBS series sanewash AMC’s mid-70s recklessness?
I have mixed reactions to Joe Ligo’s (2025) fourth episode of his six-part television series on American Motors. This 30-minute program focuses on the automaker’s two final big-ticket redesigns before losing its independence: the 1974 […]
Media Analysis
Do car ads need to talk down to people in order to be engaging?
One of the laziest kinds of clickbait in the auto history media are posts of old advertisements, commercials and various types of marketing videos. All too often the text that accompanies the ads could be […]
Multimedia
Joe Ligo’s third AMC episode suffers from analytical weaknesses
One downside of partnering with another automotive historian on a media project is that you inevitably have to negotiate editorial details. That can be particularly challenging if one of the partners has considerably more stature. […]
Data Dive
1963 Rambler Classic was more of a compact than an intermediate
(EXPANDED FROM 7/10/2023) Last Friday the Public Broadcasting Service aired the second of Joe Ligo’s six half-hour episodes about American Motors, which focused on how the automaker navigated the 1960s (go here). In sync with […]
History
1971 Plymouth Valiant sedan impressed media more than buying public
(EXPANDED FROM 3/27/2023) A Popular Science road test ranked the 1971 Plymouth Valiant four-door sedan above its newest rivals among the low-priced brands — the Ford Maverick and AMC Hornet (Norbye and Dunne, 1971). That […]
Drive-By Musings
How might John Z. DeLorean have done as head of AMC?
(EXPANDED FROM 7/15/2021) A few years ago Curbside Classic commentator Chris Cieslak (2021) noted that American Motors toyed with the idea of hiring John Z. DeLorean after he left General Motors. This brings up an […]