Indie Auto

1969-77 Plymouth: Fuselage wasn’t so bad compared to anti-fuselage

by Steve in History 13

(EXPANDED FROM 5/3/2024) Ponderous styling of the so-called “fuselage” Plymouths has been pointed to as the biggest reason why sales were smaller than the well-regarded platform it replaced (e.g., auto editors of Consumer Guide, 2022). Output for the fuselage body, which was produced from 1969-73, was indeed lower by an average of 15 percent per year than [...]

1974-76 Elite shows how Ford was late to the party with mid-sized personal coupes

June 10, 2026 9

(EXPANDED FROM 2/27/2024) The 1974-76 Ford Elite highlights one of the Ford Motor Company’s bigger mistakes of the 1970s. The automaker was too slow in entering the mid-sized personal coupe field. The Elite was a [...]

Langworth and Norbye made excuses for General Motors’ big-car fixation

June 9, 2026 4

(EXPANDED FROM 2/27/2023) Indie Auto was partly created to spark more robust debates in U.S. auto history. As a case in point, a few years go I questioned a take by Richard M. Langworth and Jan P. Norbye about why automakers [...]

2006-2010 Dodge Charger: A cartoonish attempt at rip-roaring nostalgia

June 5, 2026 7

(EXPANDED FROM 10/2/2023) The 2006 Dodge Charger’s styling was greeted with mixed reviews when the car was introduced. Perhaps the most pointed criticism came from Car and Driver writer Larry Webster (2005), who stated that [...]

Speedreaders.info is a rare source of book reviews, but quality varies

June 3, 2026 0

(EXPANDED FROM 4/21/2023) Auto history books get surprisingly little attention in the buff media. If a newly published book is mentioned at all, it tends to be done with a modestly rewritten press release. Analytically [...]

Three videos: The death of car culture, rich people’s cars and the 1957 Nash

May 29, 2026 6

Our first video, from the YouTube channel America Revisited (2026), argues that the country’s car culture is dying off with the Baby Boomers. The video goes on to suggest that car culture was about “freedom in a specific form affordable to [...]

Patrick Foster shows how International Harvester failed to adapt

by Steve in Readings 5

(UPDATED FROM 9/4/2020) International Harvester is the post-war U.S. automaker that has received the least attention from historians. Thus, Patrick Foster’s book, International Harvester: The Complete Story, is a particularly welcome addition. The format is similar to his other recent books — an oversized hard cover with lots of big pictures (many color). The [...]