Sporty cars
Styling comparison: C8 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray versus the original
A few days ago I finally had an opportunity to take photographs of a mid-engined Chevrolet Corvette Stingray. As I made my way around the pictured car, I wondered why they called it a Corvette. […]
1967-73 Mercury Cougar: A classic goes to hell
UPDATED FROM 7/9/2021) The 1967-73 Mercury Cougar is a tragic story of a classic design going to hell. The first-generation models, which were produced from 1967-68, were among the best-looking pony cars of the late-60s. […]
1957 Rambler Rebel was so close yet so far from legendary
American Motors head George Romney didn’t realize it at the time, but he was onto something when he okayed the production of the 1957 Rambler Rebel. This was intended as a limited-production model, perhaps primarily […]
1953-73 Chevrolet Corvette ads gingerly showed changing gender roles
(EXPANDED FROM 2/26/2021) A few years ago John E. Mohr assessed how advertising for the Chevrolet Corvair reflected the “gendered nature of automobility in 1960s America” (2020, p. 24). In an essay published in the […]
1963-64 Studebaker Avanti: A classic failure
(EXPANDED FROM 1/1/2020) The Studebaker Avanti is arguably one of the most important American automotive designs of the 1960s. It has quite rightly been described by historian Patrick Foster as “one of the most beautiful automobiles […]
So what exactly is a ‘muscle car,’ anyway?
“For this writer, the Pontiac GTO not only defines the genre (it was a mid-size or intermediate body), but also the beginning and end of the Muscle Car Era; 1964-1974. Some might argue that the […]
Road & Track once predicted a Karmann Ghia-based VW sedan
The Volkswagen Beetle was a hot commodity in 1959, but it was unknown how the car would hold up against the Big Three’s armada of new compacts in 1960. This led Road & Track magazine […]