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1970s
History
Was GM’s approach to 1970s car design superior to Mercedes-Benz’s?
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 […]
Readings
Foster and Glatch’s AMC book is splashy but suffers from pom-pom waving
I feel torn in writing a review about The Complete Book of AMC Cars (2024). New auto history books are rare enough these days that anyone who navigates the gauntlet of getting published deserves applause. […]
Links
Motor Trend dares to complain that 1974 personal coupes had grown too big
Motor Trend magazine’s 1974 road test of seven personal coupes may have been rather vapid in many respects, but it did offer one useful critique. Writer Jim Brokaw complained that the largest models — the […]
Data Dive
1971-74 Dodge Charger: Making the most of a questionable idea
(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 […]
Drive-By Musings
Chrysler’s Lynn Townsend in 1973: Even a compact is too small
CEO Lynn Townsend hinted at why the Chrysler Corporation arguably neglected its aging line of compacts in the first half of the 1970s. Townsend told Forbes in 1973, “The subcompacts are just too small. The […]
History
Could Studebaker have come out of the 1970s as successful as Jeep?
(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 […]
Data Dive
Which high-performance pony cars sold best in the early-1970s?
(EXPANDED FROM 5/2/2023) When car enthusiasts talk about high-end pony cars, they tend to focus on which ones were the fastest or won the most races. I would like to focus on a nerdier question: […]
Design Notes
1968 Chevrolet Impala shows how much American cars changed in 10 years
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 […]
Gallery
Why did the 1968 Imperial sell so poorly in a booming market?
The domestic luxury-car field saw output rise by a healthy 11 percent in 1968, but the Imperial went in the opposite direction — down by almost 13 points. At least on paper, the Imperial should […]