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Design excesses
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Quotes
Automotive News: Late-50s one of the best eras for U.S. car design
“But it was after he joined Chrysler in 1949 that (Virgil) Exner made his most lasting impression, with Chrysler’s ‘Forward Look.’ Exner couldn’t change Chrysler’s upright, dowdy cars fast enough. Featuring bodacious, streamlined bodies and tail fins, the ‘Forward Look’ […]
Quotes
Keith Bradsher: ‘Extreme users’ in auto media have driven SUV design
“Even some auto executives and engineers complain that media comparisons of off-road driving capabilities have put pressure on them to design ever taller vehicles with ever more expensive four-wheel-drive systems that almost nobody needs. In […]
Quotes
Vance Packard: The quality of cars declined in 1950s
“In late 1958, Printers’ Ink conceded that ‘there is a widespread feeling that ‘they don’t make cars the way they used to’ — either mechanically or from the point of view of interior decor.’ And […]
Drive-By Musings
The good and bad of William Mitchell’s 1977 Pontiac Phantom
Dean’s Garage has a great discussion about William Mitchell’s swan song, the 1977 Pontiac Phantom (Smith, 2020). I must admit feeling rather ambivalent about this concept car. Although it strikes me as one of the […]
Quotes
Vance Packard: Blurring of auto status in late-50s helped imports
“The makers of lower-priced lines, under pressure to find new buyers, had introduced longer, fatter, more expensive, more powerful, and more luxuriously designed models that competed directly with their traditional superiors in status such as […]
Design Notes
Citroen SM: A surprisingly conventional next step
In a post on the Saab 99 we briefly discussed how in the late-60s and early-70s a handful of iconoclastic automakers tried to mainstream their basic designs. A case in point is Citroen. This leading […]
Design Notes
BMW’s i3 tried entirely too hard to be cute
It’s too bad that BMW will not develop a successor to its i3. The electric hatchback showed promise as a city car that is relatively lightweight, roomy and fun to drive. Done right, the i3 […]
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