(EXPANDED FROM 9/8/2023) The 1975-80 AMC Pacer may have been a memorable car, but it was also a key factor in American Motors’ demise as an independent automaker. What’s particularly tragic is that the Pacer’s […]
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. […]
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 6/23/2023) A while back Indie Auto reader Geeber asked about what happened to Chrysler Corporation’s market share in the premium-priced field after Dodge went downmarket in 1960. He was referring to a major […]
(EXPANDED FROM 2/19/2021) This story has seen a burst of renewed interest, so I have updated and expanded it — partly in response to reader comments. However, the punchline remains the same: that Virgil Exner’s […]
(EXPANDED FROM 3/19/2021) This story has received more reader pushback than almost any other single piece that I have published in Indie Auto. Even so, I think that it epitomizes what this blog is all […]
(EXPANDED FROM 1/7/2022) When writing about the 1953-54 Plymouth, I wondered whether there could have been a compromise between the practicality of Chrysler head K. T. Keller and the trendiness of his successor, Tex Colbert. Let’s apply that question to […]
CEO Lynn Townsend hinted at why the Chrysler Corporation arguably neglected its aging line of compacts in the first half of the 1970s. Townsend told Forbes in 1973, “The subcompacts are just too small. The […]
Aaron Severson (2024) recently suggested that auto history counterfactuals almost always focus on design, engineering and product-planning choices rather than what he considers “far more decisive and dominant factors,” which he argues are “capital investment […]
(EXPANDED FROM 1/13/2023) Last year a reader contributed a good question for our “Story Ideas Bank” — Why was the new-for-1955, Nash-based Hudson not successful? After all, the reader noted, the Hudson “had up-to-date and […]
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