Kaiser-Frazer deserves credit for experimenting with offbeat ideas. Unfortunately, most of them didn’t work very well. This is why the fledgling automaker is a useful case study of how trying to be “innovative” can backfire […]
(EXPANDED FROM 1/15/2021) The 1938-40 Graham is a popular topic in the auto history media because of the car’s infamous “sharknose” styling. What gets little, if any, attention is that even if the design had […]
The 1961 Buick represented a shifting point for General Motors’ deeply troubled premium-priced brand. The car’s styling lurched from the swaggering flamboyance of the 1950s to the more utilitarian conservatism of the 1962-64 models. This […]
Mercury’s Colony Park never got a huge amount of attention, but it generated steadily increasing sales throughout the second half of the 1960s. For example, in 1966 almost 19,000 of the top-of-line Mercury wagons were […]
Peter’s letter to the editor last week about our 1958 Studebaker article has generated a robust discussion. Thank you to everyone who has participated. Part of Geeber’s comment in that thread addresses a broader topic: […]
“Then, in a postscript — and as if adding insult to injury — the most successful Edsel of all, the Comet, was built as a Mercury. The Mercury Comet was virtually indistinguishable from the Edsel […]
One lingering question I have about Semon “Bunkie” Knudsen’s short tenure as Ford Motor Company president is what influence he had on the 1972 Ford Thunderbird’s design. Jim and Cheryl Farrell (2022) have written that […]
Paul Niedermeyer (2021) has called the 1965 Chrysler New Yorker “the last great Chrysler.” He argued that this particular vintage “represents a pinnacle: never again would the New Yorker attain this degree of success, prestige […]
While the 1961 Chrysler was hardly a stylistic masterpiece, it strikes me as being the least weird of the automaker’s lineup in that model year. The Plymouth suffered from a bizarre shark-faced fascia, the Imperial’s […]
(EXPANDED FROM 1/2/2021) Hudson as been a popular topic with readers this week so I have expanded a story that takes a different angle: What might have happened if Hudson had managed to remain an […]
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