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Mid-sized cars
Fake Design
Was the 1973-77 Chevrolet Monte Carlo’s styling ‘honest’?
(EXPANDED FROM 12/24/2021) Curbside Classic commentator XR7Matt (2014) offered a fascinating justification for the stylistic excesses of the 1973-77 Chevrolet Monte Carlo: “Space efficiency is marketing buzz that everyone has fallen for in recent years, it’s actual day […]
Links
In 1959 Road & Track predicted front-wheel-drive big cars within a few years
Flush with enthusiasm about the Big Three’s new compacts, the November 1959 issue of Road & Track made some bold predictions about what was next. “Detroit Beat” writer Don Mac Donald stated that “Detroit, stung […]
Letters to the Editor
Paul Niedermeyer updates his thinking on origins of 1962 Plymouth and Dodge
Paul Niedermeyer stopped by Indie Auto to share his current thinking about the downsizing of the 1962 Plymouth and Dodge. This is a response to a story we ran almost two years ago entitled, “Did […]
Links
Motor Trend gushes about the 1970 Pontiac GTO — right before it tanks
Nineteen-seventy would be disastrous for the Pontiac GTO, but you’d never guess that from a Motor Trend article at the beginning of the model year. Indeed, Bill Sanders wrote that Pontiac’s muscle car may not […]
Data Dive
Did smaller cars cannibalize GM’s premium-priced big cars in the 1960s?
(EXPANDED FROM 1/21/2022) The introduction of compacts for Pontiac, Oldsmobile and Buick represented a major change for these General Motors’ premium-priced brands. Did they help sales grow in a changing marketplace? Or did smaller cars […]
Gallery
Ford gets back into the mid-sized game with redesigned 1966 Fairlane
Even though Ford came out with one of the first mid-sized cars in 1962, only three years later it was pummeled by General Motors and Chrysler. In 1965 even American Motors’ mid-sized lineup outsold Ford’s […]
Data Dive
1964-77 Chevrolet Chevelle Malibu shows growth of mid-sized American cars
Earlier this week a number of commentators discussed General Motors’ mid-sized cars (go here and here), so I thought I would add a new layer to the conversation by sketching the evolution of the Chevrolet […]
Media Analysis
Hudson became a badge-engineered Rambler and other tales by Over-Drive Magazine
We haven’t checked in with our friends at Over-Drive Magazine lately, so what’s up? Welp, they’ve got a third “issue” that doesn’t appear to be a magazine anymore — just stories posted on their website. […]
Letters to the Editor
1973 Buick Century looked better than Olds Cutlass
DB stopped by to offer a response to our story, “1973 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme: Monument to a fading dream.” There was no downsizing which hindsight would have been the right direction. I have owned three […]