Design Notes
A frowny face
The 2010-to-present Volvo S60 has relatively distinctive taillights but they culminate in odd center brows. Share your reactions to this post with a comment below or a note to the editor.
2010s
Media Analysis
The truth about cut-and-spin journalism
We have previously discussed how the relentless pressure for content at 24/7 automotive websites can lead to basic errors (go here). A more subtle but common problem is cut-and-spin journalism. This is where a harried […]
Drive-By Musings
Is Automobile Quarterly dead?
As mentioned in a Links mini-review, this high-quality magazine appears to have died — but its ghost remains (the publication’s website is gone but the Facebook page is still online). The auto history media has devoted very […]
Media Analysis
Does the Internet dumb down auto history?
In some respects the rise of the web has been the best thing that ever happened to American automotive history. Just click on Google’s “images” tab and you instantly have access to far more pictures […]
Readings
American Icon: Alan Mulally and the Fight to Save Ford Motor Company
Bryce Hoffman, a Detroit News auto industry reporter, offers a sympathetic perspective about how Ford navigated through the Great Recession. Hoffman was given a great deal of access to company leaders and internal documents. In return, […]
Readings
Saab Cars: The Complete Story
Information is hard to find for minor imported brands such as Saab. Thus, any book on this automaker is helpful. Saab Cars is an oversized hard-cover book with a nice balance between text and large, full-color […]
Readings
‘Carjacked’ book brings up issues the buff media should address
Compared to Asphalt Nation (Holtz, 1997), Carjacked focused more on critiquing car culture and less on presenting policy alternatives. Authors Catherine Lutz and Anne Lutz Fernandez also paid more attention to encouraging individual readers to change […]
Readings
Reinventing the Automobile: Personal Urban Mobility for the 21st Century
The authors took a clean sheet of paper and sketched an alternative approach to car design that may seem mainstream today but was decidedly exotic when the book was published in 2010. They proposed a […]
Readings
Asphalt Nation: How the Automobile Took Over America and How We Can Take it Back
This is an older book but stands out as one of the most prominent critiques of the U.S.’s automotive-dominated transportation system. Jane Holtz Kay argued that the car had become to financially, socially and environmentally costly to the […]
Readings
Made in America? The U.S. Auto Industry, 1955-95
I came across this scholarly paper when looking for data on the declining market share of domestic automakers. Lorraine Eden and Maureen Appel Molot present that data in a variety of useful ways. However, what is […]