(UPDATED FROM 8/3/2022) The 1969-71 Chrysler was an unfortunate example of a promising design that went sideways because of a few bad decisions. The styling was exceptionally clean and purposeful for an American premium-priced car […]
When Irv Rybicki was interviewed by Dave Crippen (1985) about his design career at General Motors, he told a story about how the 1971 Cadillac Eldorado supposedly got opera windows. The Monte Carlo was initially […]
Whether John Z. DeLorean was merely a car guy with a tragic life trajectory or a sociopath has been an ongoing debate here at Indie Auto. Thus, I was intrigued to come across David E. […]
(EXPANDED FROM 4/1/2022) On A Clear Day You Can See General Motors ranks right up there with Brock Yates’ The Decline and Fall of the American Automobile Industry (1983) in articulating where Detroit went wrong. Yet it should […]
(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 […]
(EXPANDED FROM 15/8/2023) General Motors’ 1973 mid-sized cars were a major focus of our discussion about William Mitchell’s tenure as head of design. Thus, I thought it would be a good time to expand on […]
In response to soaring import sales in the early-1970s, US automakers made brave promises of a counterattack. In retrospect, many of those promises sound decidedly hollow. For example, in the wake of a critical review […]
(UPDATED FROM 9/23/2022) The easiest way to sum up the spectacular failure of the DeLorean Motor Company is to say that its founder was exceptionally unlucky. I am hard pressed to think of a worse […]
(EXPANDED FROM 8/19/2022) The topic that has elicited the greatest blowback from Indie Auto readers has been my argument that the U.S. auto industry was less able to respond to a rising tide of imports […]
David Burrell has written what may be the most detailed account of how William Mitchell vainly tried to shift the “boat-tail” 1971 Buick Riviera to a mid-sized platform. Burrell’s story in Retro Autos (2021) even […]
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