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 […]
“I think if DOJ had cleaved GM into two companies (i.e., Chevrolet and GM), we would today have a more vibrant, competitive American automotive industry. Today, we have two domestic players in an industry that […]
(EXPANDED FROM 1/15/2021) On A Clear Day You Can See General Motors ranks right up there with Brock Yates’ The Decline and Fall of the American Automobile Industry (1983) in articulating where Detroit went wrong. Although written by […]
(UPDATED FROM 5/1/2020) American automakers have always had a penchant for extravagant designs that can look overwrought compared to imports. Of course, this has been changing of late as foreign automakers — particularly the Japanese […]
Chrome Colossus: General Motors and its Times, is one of the best automotive history books in my library. Author Ed Cray eschewed the usual focus on product minutiae and instead focused on how GM’s growth in […]
This is one of the better scholarly books about an auto company. Donald T. Critchlow achieves the rare feat of crafting a narrative that is engaging, analytically sophisticated and challenges industry groupthink in key respects. […]
The format and journalistic tone of this oversized, hard-cover book is similar to that of the Complete History of Chrysler (1985). The text includes a mix of product information, business analysis and discussion about socio-political […]
The American auto industry may not want to admit this, but Unsafe at Any Speed is arguably the single most influential automotive book of the last 70 years. As discussed at Curbside Classic (Niedermeyer, 2012), Ralph Nader […]
(EXPANDED FROM 5/16/2023) In response to the interesting conversation in the comment thread about Chrysler’s early-70s compacts, I thought it could be useful to expand on a data dive I did a while back on […]
(EXPANDED FROM 4/23/2021) A few years ago our story on Brooks Stevens’s redesign of the 1964 Studebaker generated enough debate that I decided to further flesh out an alternative scenario. To wit, Studebaker would have […]
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