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Year: 2023
Quotes
Hal Sperlich: Detroit made bad small cars to prove buyers wouldn’t like them
“The small cars that Detroit had produced, [Hal Sperlich] believed, had been bad ones, reluctant efforts at best. If anything the companies had brought out inferior, unappealing small cars to prove their own thesis that […]
Drive-By Musings
Automotive History Preservation Society’s new website isn’t always better
When I was updating a story today I noticed that the Automotive History Preservation Society has changed its URL. The organization’s website can now be found at autohistorypreservationsociety.org. Indie Auto links when possible to its […]
History
Late-1960s Ford car design film shows US automakers losing it
(EXPANDED FROM 10/8/2021) A late-1960s Ford promotional film offers a fascinating glimpse into the car and truck designs being worked on at the time. Perhaps more than intended, The Design Makers — Inside Ford Design, […]
Quotes
Popular Science questions Chrysler Corporation’s blame game
“Chrysler says its financial troubles are caused, in part, by safety and emissions laws that penalize it more than GM or Ford. It costs Chrysler ‘almost twice as much as it will cost GM’ to […]
Design Notes
Was the 1951 Ford the end of the sensibly-sized ‘standard’ American car?
Reasonable people can debate when the Big Three automakers stopped building sensibly-sized cars during the postwar period. For example, one might point to the 1956 Ford because it was only slightly larger than its postwar […]
Media Analysis
Road & Track magazine’s 1972 Nader attack was disingenuous propaganda
(EXPANDED FROM 10/30/2020) When Road & Track decided to go after Ralph Nader in 1972, the magazine took unusual measures. Even before an “evaluation” of a Nader report hit the newsstands, Road & Track held […]
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Speedreaders.info is a rare source of book reviews, but quality varies
(EXPANDED FROM 3/19/2021) 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 […]
Design Notes
The redesigned 1951 Kaiser was not quite anatomically correct
The 1951 Kaiser was trumpeted as having “anatomic design” — that is, it was made to fit the needs of the human anatomy. Although the car’s unusually taunt body had some aesthetic appeal, it didn’t […]