Quotes
Brock Yates: What to do about climate change
“I call forth the SUV as our savior. Want to warm things up? Easy. If fossil fuels are the culprit, burning more of them will keep Old Man Winter at bay. Thus, we must immediately […]
Auto media
Drive-By Musings
Why did it take 50 years for Nader to be inducted?
Ralph Nader has been inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame 50 years after he launched a high-profile — and highly successful — questioning of automobile safety. The Hall of Fame noted that Nader’s best-selling […]
Media Analysis
Auto media on Tesla: See no climate change
The jury is still out on whether Tesla can meet its lofty goals, but the automaker deserves credit for a paradigm-rattling marketing campaign. In unveiling its Model 3, Tesla emphasized the need for an aggressive response to […]
Media Analysis
Automotive News muffles the alarm
Keith Crain is the closest thing the American auto industry has to a minister of groupthink, so it is worth noting when the editor-in-chief of Automotive News furrows his brow. In a late-December column he criticized […]
Drive-By Musings
A paler shade of green?
Did you hear the one about the Ram 1500 diesel beating Ford’s aluminum-bodied F-150 for the 2015 Green Truck of the Year Award? “The Ram 1500 EcoDiesel exemplifies what a ‘green’ truck should be,” said Ron Cogan, […]
Media Analysis
Separating truth from spin with AMC’s Bob Nixon
Among my favorite features in Collectible Automobile magazine are the profiles. The June issue included an interview Patrick Foster conducted with Bob Nixon, who played a major role in the styling of American Motors cars […]
Media Analysis
TTAC helps Chrysler go pavlovian
The third-generation Dodge Challenger has always run a distant third in sales to the Ford Mustang and Chevrolet Camaro, arguably because of it is the most extreme caricature of a pony car. The chunky, almost […]
Media Analysis
2015 Mustang: How obesity is justified
Except for relatively rare moments of downsizing, the dominant tendency in the American auto industry is toward bigger, glitzier and more powerful vehicles. Each time a car adds poundage, the automaker — usually with the […]
Drive-By Musings
Car design conformity was the norm even before regulations
Question-of-the-day features can often result in banal flame wars. That’s why I was pleasantly surprised that a “red meat” question by The Truth About Cars — is regulation ruining car design — generated a fairly […]
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 […]