Daniel Strohl (2022) over at Hemmings has kindly shared a link to our AMC Gremlin story. This has resulted in a wave of new readers. If you are among them, welcome to Indie Auto. Do take a look around. For example, cruising through the “All Our Features” tab at the top of the page can give you a better sense of this website’s eclectic content.
Whenever we get a spike in new readers we invariably receive a few indignant missives. For example, one Gremlin fan described our story as a “hack job” and another wrote, “Buzzkill! Why so negative?”
I think that Curbside Classic Publisher Paul Niedermeyer said it best when a commentator once called a story he wrote overly negative:
“I have zero ambition to be associated with a web site that just fawns over old cars. That is deadly boring to me. I’m not doing this for the money, fame or glory. I just started writing about cars in the way I genuinely felt about them. If it isn’t stimulating intellectually to me, I don’t want to do it or be a part of it.
Everything humans have done and made has good and bad qualities; that’s the human experience. I fully accept the fact that the majority of humans prefer to extol the virtues of their favorite things/tribes, be that sports teams, politicians, women, cars, etc.. It’s a tribal thing, to a large part. Black and white. We (at Curbside Classic) like the shades of gray.
I’ve always been a bit of an outsider. I’m not the typical old car guy, in case that wasn’t blatantly obvious. I’m only interested in pursuing a more nuanced and genuinely truthful understanding of cars and their history. So yes, that puts me at odds with the typical ‘old car enthusiast.’ But that’s how I am.
I can only hope that my approach sheds a bit of new light on automotive history. What I enjoy most of all is busting the myths around many old car histories. I need to dig and get at what I perceive as the real truth, at least for me. But that’s not everyone’s cup of tea.” (Niedermeyer, 2019).
Curbside Classic inspired Indie Auto’s approach in key ways, and this is one of them. My overarching goal is to analyze why the U.S. auto industry experienced one of the most spectacular industrial collapses of the last century. That’s a pretty different mission than fawning over old cars (go here for further discussion).
If you find Indie Auto intriguing, then stick around and join in the conversation. And if this isn’t your cup of tea, I would imagine that there are plenty of other websites and social media that could meet your needs. Isn’t freedom of the press great?
Share your reactions to this post with a comment below or a note to the editor.
RE:SOURCES
- Niedermeyer, Paul; 2019. Commentator in “Ralf K Outtake: An Historical Oddity.” Curbside Classic. Posted Jan. 15, 9:48 p.m.
- Strohl, Daniel; 2022. “Four-Links – Mazda museum, Gremlin mistakes, slant six lathe, Honda Super Cub.” Hemmings. Posted April 23.
Nicely put. I discovered this website as a link in a reply to an article on another auto website that I spend a lot of time on. What I’ve been reading here (over the last 24 hours I’ve been pigging out on anything Studebaker) has absolutely floored me. Finally, some different points of view on a lot of familiar subjects.
I’m a retired (ok, then why am I still going back three half-days a week to the Honda/Yamaha/Can-Am dealership that employed me for more than a decade and a half?) motorhead, son of a Chevrolet dealer (1950-1965) with an insane history buff attitude (my three passions in life are vintage motorcycles, vintage bicycles, and 17th century reenactment) – so this site is turning out to be absolute catnip.
I haven’t been this happy since discovering Austin Rover Online, twenty years ago.
Thank you, George. Welcome to Indie Auto. I look forward to hearing any thoughts you may have on the topics we discuss.