(EXPANDED FROM 12/24/2021) Curbside Classic commentator XR7Matt (2014) offered a fascinating justification for the stylistic excesses of the 1973-77 Chevrolet Monte Carlo: “Space efficiency is marketing buzz that everyone has fallen for in recent years, it’s actual day […]
(UPDATED FROM 10/23/2023) One of the most pervasive myths in U.S. automotive history is that a V8 engine became essential to an automaker’s success in the first half of the 1950s. This narrative is summed […]
The December 2023 issue of Collectible Automobile has a photo feature of a 1967 Rambler Rebel SST hardtop. As usual, the images are first rate and the accompanying text give a nuts-and-bolts overview of the […]
(EXPANDED FROM 11/1/2019) The dominant tendency of the U.S. auto industry has been to make its vehicles bigger, glitzier and more powerful. In recent decades both domestic and foreign automakers have embraced this practice. Indeed, […]
Paul Niedermeyer (2023) recently suggested that the 1961 Rambler American’s “two-box” styling “just doesn’t work for me.” That makes sense. The newly reskinned car represented one of the most extreme — and awkward — examples […]
It’s an old trick in the U.S. auto industry to blame consumers for bad corporate behavior. Automotive News (2022) recently lent a helping hand by playing the victim card to justify the lack of improvement […]
Stuart R. Blond’s biography of Packard head James Nance is among the most unusual books in my automotive library. For one thing, Spellbinder: The Life of James J. Nance, is a two-volume set that stretches […]
CJ recently wrote an exceptionally thoughtful comment that I would like to highlight on the front page as a letter to the editor. This missive was in response to the story, “Historians differ on origins […]
(UPDATED FROM 1/1/2019) Antitrust regulations in the United States were created in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. Their goal was to support free competition in an era of increasingly large corporations — some of whom […]
(EXPANDED 10/24/2022) “Lower, longer, wider” was the domestic automakers’ dominant design approach until they were forced to downsize their fleet in the late-1970s due to federal fuel-economy standards. Since that time automakers have at least […]
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