For its September 1973 issue, Motor Trend published a pro/con feature asking whether “romantic” styling was dead. In other words, did new considerations such as safety and pollution laws as well as more emphasis on […]
When I recently came across a 1975 Mercedes-Benz SL, I wasn’t nearly as enthused as when I photographed a previous-generation W113 model, with its iconic “pagoda” roof. The R107 models, which were built from 1971-89, […]
(EXPANDED FROM 10/9/2020) When I think of Mercedes-Benz, the car that comes most quickly to mind is the W123. Introduced in 1976, this was the automaker’s entry-level offering up through 1982, when the smaller W201 […]
We recently took a look at a 1958 Impala, so let’s fast forward 10 years. The 1968 Impala illustrates how much the U.S. auto industry had changed in one decade. The 1968 Impala was almost […]
(EXPANDED FROM 5/18/2022) Karl Ludvigsen has a website called Why Cars Are So Bad. A few years ago he posted on it the text of a speech he delivered back in 1989. Included in his […]
(EXPANDED FROM 2/10/2022) In the early post-war period Hudson came the closest to being an American Mercedes-Benz. The new-for-1948 “step-downs” had engineering advances that most other automakers would not pick up on for years. So […]
John Beltz has been pointed to as one of the more forward-looking General Motors’ executives of the early-70s, but he came across as rather cautious in a lengthy Motor Trend (1970) interview. He was the […]
Road & Track may be an increasingly obscure car-buff magazine these days, but it has elicited headlines in the mainstream media for pulling an F1 story by sportswriter and architectural critic Kate Wagner. The magazine’s […]
(EXPANDED FROM 12/15/2022) James A. Ward’s Packard book, The Fall of the Packard Motor Car Company, is dwarfed by Automobile Quarterly’s epic tome edited by Beverly Rae Kimes (2002) as well as Stuart R. Blond’s […]
(EXPANDED FROM 12/2/2022) Paul Niedermeyer (2014) has suggested that the 1966-67 Cutlass Supreme brought the “Great Brougham Epoch” to the mid-sized field. Oldsmobile’s top-end intermediate nameplate was one of the most iconic of an era […]
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