One of the biggest assumptions of U.S. automakers in the postwar period was that they desperately needed splashy new cars. Yet when I think about the biggest disasters of that era, they often involved expensive […]
(EXPANDED FROM 9/29/2023) The 1970 Plymouth Barracuda and its sibling the Dodge Challenger proved to be a costly mistake that epitomized Detroit’s slowness in responding to changing times. Indeed, the Chrysler Corporation’s early-1970s pony cars […]
(EXPANDED FROM 5/2/2023) When car enthusiasts talk about high-end pony cars, they tend to focus on which ones were the fastest or won the most races. I would like to focus on a nerdier question: […]
Roger Sizemore had the feeling that Chrysler was going in the wrong direction. The product planners talked excitedly about selling at least 200,000 Plymouth Barracudas and Dodge Challengers annually. Yet the all-new 1970 pony cars […]
Motor Trend‘s road test of the 1970 Dodge Challenger was largely laudatory, noting that “Dodge has had a few years to observe what’s been going on in the pony car field and has incorporated many […]
(EXPANDED FROM 11/26/2021) The 1971-73 Ford Mustang has been criticized for growing too big and fat (e.g., Mueller, 2010). However, Ford didn’t act in isolation. All of the pony cars bloated out when they were […]
(EXPANDED FROM 5/11/2020) Automobile magazine is dead but its Facebook page continues to recycle old articles. Yesterday the one million followers of this page were blessed with a reposted history of the Ford Mustang. Aaron […]
The third-generation Dodge Challenger has always run a distant third in sales to the Ford Mustang and Chevrolet Camaro, arguably because of it is the most extreme caricature of a pony car. The chunky, almost […]
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