(EXPANDED FROM 3/15/2024) Ralph Kalal’s articles on Packard history have had a boomlet of interest among Indie Auto readers, so now could be a good time to expand on a review I wrote last year. […]
(EXPANDED FROM 1/20/2023) This essay has generated more blowback than almost any other post at Indie Auto. In a way I find that surprising because it makes what strikes me as a fairly mundane point: […]
The 1953 Chrysler Town & Country wagon was one of the more obscure cars of the early postwar period, but it was essentially the granddaddy of today’s large sport-utility vehicles. Not the only one, but […]
(EXPANDED FROM 8/12/2022) For 1972 the Ford Thunderbird brochure tried to get extra fancy with see-through paper. And on inside pages the text gushed that the only way to change the car was to “Make […]
(EXPANDED FROM 4/22/2023) This story received an unusual amount of pushback in the comment thread when it was originally posted two years ago. A focus of reader criticism was my argument that Hudson’s demise had […]
(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 […]
(EXPANDED FROM 12/8/2023) One of my lingering questions from a Collectible Automobile story about the Mercury Park Lane was why it didn’t sell better in 1968 (Biel, 2021). This was arguably the first year that […]
An Indie Auto reader asked me to explain what I mean when referring to the premium-priced field. More specifically, how do I rank General Motors’ brand hierarchy — and where do I put Pontiac, Olds […]
(EXPANDED FROM 12/15/2023) I don’t think one can fully understand why the 1963-65 Buick Riviera wasn’t as successful as commonly argued in automotive histories without considering its relationship to the Electra 225. So let’s do […]
(EXPANDED FROM 1/24/2024) Last year Paul Niedermeyer (2024a) discussed the decline of premium-priced big cars in the late-1950s. One of the points of contention in the comment thread was the degree to which these cars […]
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