(EXPANDED FROM 5/28/2025) The Society of Automotive Historians (2026) recently gave the 2026 E. P. Ingersoll Award to The Last Independent American Automaker. This television documentary about American Motors strikes me as an obvious choice, […]
(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 […]
(EXPANDED FROM 8/21/2020) Patrick Foster (2024) illustrates how fanboy sentiment can undercut the quality of historical analysis by arguing that AMC should have offered a luxury spin-off of the 1974 Matador coupe — and that […]
(EXPANDED FROM 5/5/2023) One of the curious things about American cars is that even the most ridiculed models will invariably develop a dedicated fan club. As a case in point, some collectors of the infamous […]
(UPDATED FROM 10/4/2014) Collectible Automobile’s interviews can be a valuable means of documenting automotive history, but they can also lead us astray due to inaccuracies. For one thing, the memories of key participants can fade […]
The January 1975 issue of Popular Mechanics offered a breathless peek at a new generation of smaller cars that would supposedly be “big on the inside but small outside.” Although the story included sketches of […]
Automotive News’ obituary of Gerald C. Meyer treated his tenure at American Motors with kid gloves. Meyers died on June 19 at the age of 94. Presenting a largely upbeat narrative would make sense if […]
For its September 1975 issue, Popular Mechanics’ Detroit Editor Robert Lund asked executives from each of the Big Four U.S. automakers to predict what cars would be like in the decade ahead. Lund started off […]
(UPDATED FROM 1/25/2014) Joe Ligo has produced a well-rounded overview of the AMC Pacer’s short and mostly unhappy life. The almost 35-minute documentary is posted on YouTube. “I’m impressed with the film,” wrote Truth About […]
(EXPANDED FROM 7/17/2020) One of the hazards of any kind of writing is that you can get too close to your subjects. In anthropology this has been called “going native.” Because we are human, we […]
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