Automotive historian Thomas E. Bonsall argued that the 1958 Edsel wasn’t a flop. Indeed, he insisted that the Ford Motor Company shouldn’t have given up on the brand so quickly. The “real failure in the […]
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 […]
(EXPANDED FROM 8/5/2022) A few years ago Dean’s Garage posted a fascinating story about the battle over the 1972 Lincoln Continental Mark IV’s styling. Jim and Cheryl Farrell (2022) described how a design proposal championed […]
“. . . Henry was himself growing a little dizzy with everything happening around him. And the more disoriented he became, the angrier he got. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Ford sat through […]
(UPDATED FROM 3/30/2023) Newly declassified intelligence documents show how a crash program by American automakers to switch to eggcrate grilles for their 1972-73 models thwarted a space alien invasion. The strategy worked so well that […]
(EXPANDED FROM 3/3/2023) The 1956 Mercury represented the end — at least for the next four years — of Edsel Ford’s original conception of the brand. Since it was introduced 1939, Mercury had been positioned […]
(EXPANDED FROM 8/3/2023) The rise of the four-door subcompact generated a robust debate at Indie Auto a few years ago (go here), so I did a data dive to bring some facts to the table. […]
Question-of-the-day features tend to be vapid, so I usually ignore them. However, I must admit to getting drawn into a Jalopnik query about what are the ugliest cars on the market today (Bellwood, 2025). The […]
Indie Auto reader James E. Duvall recently commented about how the Falcon-based Econoline van and truck had such a front-end weight bias that they could flip on their front end under intense braking unless there […]
(EXPANDED FROM 3/31/2023) Compacts and personal coupes generated an outsized amount of media attention during the 1960s, but the most important emerging market segment turned out to be mid-sized cars. Sales rose steadily to the […]
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