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 […]
(UPDATED FROM 5/7/2021) Warren Buffett has argued that the Number 1 problem a company can face is choosing the wrong chief executive officer. Buffett, who is CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, has said that over the […]
“I didn’t like his aloof egotism. He’d sit in a meeting and open his briefcase and brush his hair, and he’d dress floozy, you know, and he called us the establishment. He was a queer […]
“The K-Car program proposed a common body and chassis for all the GM cars in the intermediate and compact car classes. On the Chevrolet lines alone this meant building the Chevelle, Camaro and Nova, which […]
“Bunkie Knudsen never had a chance at Ford. It was not that he lacked the skill to handle the job; indeed, that was something that almost never came up. It was that Ford was so […]
“DeLorean spends the rest of his life in and out of court. He declares bankruptcy in 1999. His Bedminster estate is purchased by a Connecticut-based golf-course development partnership, who within two years will sell it […]
When John Z. DeLorean was head of Chevrolet in the early-70s he got rid of the brand’s massive billboard presence because it allegedly contributed to roadway blight (Wright, 1979). Like so many liberal crusades, that was […]
(UPDATED 12/15/2022) Volkswagen Group’s global design chief Walter de Silva is worried that optimizing aerodynamics in order to meet tightening emissions standards could hurt aesthetics and branding. In an Automotive News question-and-answer piece, he complained […]
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