Let’s rank the 10 worst redesigns of postwar American cars that, with one partial exception, were only in production for a single year. By “postwar” I mean between 1949-79. My rankings are obviously subjective, but […]
(EXPANDED FROM 7/1/2021) The Jaguar XK-E was a remarkable car for a variety of reasons, but I would like to point out two qualities that have always been particularly appealing to me. For starters, the […]
(EXPANDED FROM 2/8/2022) Why was the futuristic-looking Studebaker Avanti given a tall, flat and small windshield? That windshield ranks with the 1964-66 Imperial in looking terribly mismatched with the rest of the car. The most […]
(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 […]
(EXPANDED FROM 4/23/2021) International Harvester went a long way toward sealing its fate with the introduction of the redesigned D-Series pickup and Travelall in the 1969. Perhaps the biggest problem was that IH waited too […]
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 […]
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 […]
A “Story Ideas Bank” request asked for more coverage of station wagons, so let’s take a step in that direction with a brief look at the 1957-60 Mercury. The Ford Motor Company invested heavily in […]
Kaiser-Frazer deserves credit for experimenting with offbeat ideas. Unfortunately, most of them didn’t work very well. This is why the fledgling automaker is a useful case study of how trying to be “innovative” can backfire […]
Paul Niedermeyer (2023) recently suggested that the 1961 Rambler American’s “two-box” styling “just doesn’t work for me.” That makes sense. The newly reskinned car represented one of the most extreme — and awkward — examples […]
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