Indie Auto

Brooks Stevens’s 1965 Studebaker Lark concept: Almost a baby Continental

by Steve in Fake Design 4

(EXPANDED FROM 12/10/2021) Brooks Stevens apparently was convinced that he could come up with a new-generation Studebaker Lark design that would top the work of Raymond Loewy’s team, which was then working on an Avanti-inspired replacement. Judging from Stevens’s archives, he invested considerable effort into his proposals. Alas, even the most well-developed of his sedans looks amateurishly weird. That’s too bad, because with a bit of tweaking it could have been a baby 1961-63 Lincoln Continental. The proposed Lark was apparently intended for [...]

Packard kept a bigger foothold in the luxury-car field than commonly assumed

June 5, 2025 8

Our discussion in the comment thread about the 1956 Packard Executive story all but inevitably brought up one of the most common criticisms of the automaker’s management — that it did not do enough in the early postwar period to maintain [...]

Exner bio offers mostly positive take on controversial car designer

Peter Grist views car designer Virgil Exner through rose-tinted glasses

by Steve in Readings 9

(EXPANDED FROM 12/6/2022) Peter Grist stated that he tried to make this authorized biography of car designer Virgil Exner “as unbiased as possible” (p. 5). Even so, Visioneer has a family scrapbook quality, replete with childhood photos and purple prose. We are informed that Exner was “(a)lready a dashing figure at 15” (p. 10). Meanwhile, his son Virgil, Jr. is [...]

1970 Mercury Montego had a last-of-the-wine quality

June 2, 2025 2

In a number of respects the 1970 Mercury Montego exuded a last-of-the-wine vibe. For one thing, it was the final reskinning of the mid-sized platform that the Ford Motor Company introduced in 1962. Let’s just say that it got porky [...]

Bumper stickers about pets and kids can get really dorky

June 1, 2025 1

(UPDATED FROM 11/13/2020) It makes sense that parents — both of kids and pets — would stick with PG-rated bumper stickers. But why are they so dorky? The obsessiveness of pet parents is amply displayed in the above photo. [...]

Auto history: A bastion of older white male privilege?

by Steve in Quotes 15

My perception is that there has been a fairly good gender balance at the auto shows I regularly attend at the LeMay Collections at Marymount. Thus, I wonder why so few women appear to participate in U.S. auto history media, either as writers or commentators. That seems to be a general pattern regardless of media outlet, including here at Indie Auto. Is [...]

Automotive News staff struggle to transcend paper’s checkered past

May 30, 2025 2

The May 19th print edition of Automotive News ran two commentaries that debated California’s ability regulate pollution caused by the automobile industry. In the first commentary, Reporter Larry P. Vellequette [...]

Did the 1956 Packard Executive represent a strategic shift?

May 29, 2025 22

(EXPANDED FROM 2/1/2022) Back in 2021 Patrick Foster suggested that a 1956 1/2 Packard model called the Executive could have “saved” the brand if it had been introduced a year or so earlier. In contrast, Bill McGuire (2020) has [...]

Why does Joe Ligo’s PBS series sanewash AMC’s mid-70s recklessness?

May 28, 2025 7

I have mixed reactions to Joe Ligo’s (2025) fourth episode of his six-part television series on American Motors. This 30-minute program focuses on the automaker’s two final big-ticket redesigns before losing its independence: the 1974 [...]

1958 Mercury Turnpike Cruiser is a monument to Ford’s failed ambitions

by Steve in Design Notes 12

(EXPANDED FROM 4/8/2022) The Edsel and Lincoln were the Ford Motor Company’s most visible failures of the late-50s, but the Mercury was also an embarrassment. The ill-fated Turnpike Cruiser epitomized both the promise and futility of Ford’s ambitious plans to capture a bigger share of the premium-priced market. When the Turnpike Cruiser [...]