(UPDATED FROM 1/16/2024) The Chrysler Corporation’s decision to shrink its big Plymouth and Dodge for 1962 occurred at a tumultuous time — the U.S. auto industry was reportedly considering even more dramatic changes due to […]
(EXPANDED FROM 9/27/2021) Disaster in Dearborn: The Story of the Edsel is paradoxical. On the one hand, this is a serious history book. That’s the opposite of so many of the coffee table books that […]
How might Robert McNamara have influenced Ford if he had remained company president for a few more years? This is a question that emerged from the comment thread in our recent Don Frey story. Let’s […]
(EXPANDED FROM 10/1/2021) The four-seater Thunderbird was a surprisingly pivotal car for the Ford Motor Company during the postwar period. The T-Bird showed that the No. 2 automaker could better compete against mighty General Motors if it pioneered new […]
(UPDATED FROM 2/18/2022) Five miles up an unpaved road in the Olympic Mountains is a harbinger of today’s stylish trucks. Slowing decaying in the rainforest is a 1962 F-Series pickup. Rather than trying to cart […]
Indie Auto appreciates when readers give us a heads up about interesting content elsewhere on the web. In a recent comment, John Sutter pointed to an eye-opening review of Thomas E. Bonsall’s (2002) book, Disaster […]
It’s an old trick in the U.S. auto industry to blame consumers for bad corporate behavior. Automotive News (2022) recently lent a helping hand by playing the victim card to justify the lack of improvement […]
“[P]robably the guy that was most admired [by Ford Motor Company executive Lewis Crusoe] was [Robert] McNamara. He was a very concise speaker, he was a logician and prided himself that he was. He knew how […]
(UPDATED FROM 10/9/2020) Did Ford deviate too much from the original Ford Mustang’s size before finally getting it right once again in 2005? That year was pivotal because it was the first time in a quarter […]
Retired Ford engineer Ben J. Smith said that he “wrote some very very strong letters to the product planning people and to Bob McNamara” when his manually-retractable roof design for the original Ford Mustang was rejected. […]
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