Random Shots
Foreign automakers
History
George Romney made eight big mistakes at AMC
George Romney may have been one of the U.S. auto industry’s best post-war leaders, but he made eight big mistakes while leading AMC from 1954-62. Some of his bad moves were costly enough to almost […]
Gallery
Readings
“Remember those great Volkswagen ads?”
This oversized hardback book is a compendium of Volkswagen advertisements produced by Doyle Dane Bernbach. The format is quite simple: The 364-page book consists almost entirely of ads — 500 in all. Content is grouped […]
Data Dive
Lee Iacocca got lucky with the 1964-66 Ford Mustang
(UPDATED 11/18/2022) The original Ford Mustang was the automotive equivalent of The Beatles rock band. The American auto industry had never seen anything like it — a small sporty car that proved so popular that […]
Auto Paedia
Groupthink
A tendency toward groupthink has been a chronic problem in the American automobile industry since the mid-50s. This was a key driver of the domestic automakers’ dramatic decline from the late-60s onward. More recently, foreign […]
Auto Paedia
Access journalism: Did it help fuel U.S. auto industry’s decline?
Access journalism is what the Columbia Journalism Review (2014) defines as providing “insider information from powerful institutions and people.” This is a different kind of reporting — requiring “different skills, different practices, and different sources” that “produce […]
Design Notes
Citroen 2CV driver asks for a little patience
A while back we batted around the question of what would a modern simple car look like? The Volkswagen Beetle was used as a point of comparison,  but I suppose a Citroen 2CV could have also […]
Links
Automotive History Preservation Society
This nonprofit organization has been collecting and posting on its website brochures, advertisements, technical information and public relations materials since 2010. The range of materials for American cars is less comprehensive than the Old Car […]
Quotes
Somewhere on the Internet a top-design list is wrong
“Any failure to mention the 1953 Cadillac Eldorado convertible is reprehensible.” — Stephen Smith, The Daily Drive