Jim and Cheryl Farrell’s recent series of articles about the 1961 Continental’s development got me thinking about what might have happened if Robert McNamara had succeeded in killing the Lincoln brand. Could that have ended […]
The latest issue of Collectible Automobile suggests that the “aeroback” styling of the 1978-79 Buick Century hurt its sales (Witzenburg, 2023). However, the article doesn’t compare output with previous years or other General Motors’ mid-sized […]
(EXPANDED FROM 6/16/2021) According to Ed Cray’s (1980) Chrome Colossus, in 1932 Cadillac was in danger of being discontinued when a young service manager named Nicholas Dreystadt crashed a General Motors’ executive committee meeting to […]
(EXPANDED FROM 2/12/2021) One of the most interesting aspects of the 1960s was the cat-and-mouse game the Ford Motor Company played with General Motors. Ford quite rightly adopted a new approach after its disastrous expansion […]
While updating our 1971-78 Cadillac Eldorado story, I pulled down from my bookshelf The Complete History of General Motors: 1908-1986. This Consumer Guide book written by Richard M. Langworth and Jan P. Norbye (1986) threw […]
Corey Lewis (2022) recently argued that the 1960 Lincoln’s entry-level model was “rebranded as simply ‘Lincoln,’ to compete with the new base model Chrysler New Yorker (1960-1962) and Series 62 Cadillac (1959-1960).” That got me […]
(EXPANDED FROM 11/14/2015) A point of contention in a number of Curbside Classic comment threads has been whether the last-generation AMC Ambassador had as much interior room as the Big Three’s full-sized cars. The short answer: […]
A fairly common narrative in U.S. automotive history is how Virgil Exner saved Chrysler in the mid-50s. Some historians tell a dramatic tale of how he pulled the automaker out of a tailspin caused by […]
(UPDATED 11/18/2022) The original Ford Mustang was the automotive equivalent of The Beatles rock band. The American auto industry had never seen anything like it — a small sporty car that proved so popular that […]
(EXPANDED 10/28/2022) A few years ago Richard M. Langworth argued that Ford’s aggressive attempt to overtake Chevrolet in 1954 received more blame “than it deserved” in undercutting the viability of independent automakers (2019, p. 16). […]
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