(UPDATED 6/26/2024) If you subscribed to car buff magazines back when you were a kid, do you do so anymore? As a young lad I subscribed to up to five different magazines, but I wouldn’t […]
(UPDATED FROM 2/19/2021) Histories written by practicing automotive journalists are usually engaging reads with lots of behind-the-scenes anecdotes. However, they can also be analytically superficial and grounded more in access than accountability journalism. In other […]
(EXPANDED FROM 10/30/2020) When Road & Track decided to go after Ralph Nader in 1972, the magazine took unusual measures. Even before an “evaluation” of a Nader report hit the newsstands, Road & Track held […]
Here’s an idea I would invite Indie Auto readers to test drive: Hudson’s demise had the biggest long-term impact on the U.S. auto industry of any independent automaker that merged or died in the 1950s. […]
A recent feature story by The Detroit Bureau illustrates the dangers of a current events website trying to get into the automotive history business. Executive Editor Larry Printz’s (2022) ode to the Chevrolet Corvair included […]
(UPDATED ON 10/14/22) The second-generation Chevrolet Corvair was one of the best cars General Motors has ever built. Its styling was exceptionally clean for the mid-60s, which were dominated by fussy gingerbread designs. Meanwhile, the […]
Chrome Colossus: General Motors and its Times, is one of the best automotive history books in my library. Author Ed Cray eschewed the usual focus on product minutiae and instead focused on how GM’s growth in […]
“Some of the commentary (in the 1960s and early ’70s) was so absurd as to invite permanent satire. Whoever writes the history of this will, I’m sure, be able to comment on how the automotive […]
When Chris Poole (2019, 2013) waxed nostalgic about 1965’s “groovy” cars, he also revived an ugly auto buff media practice of yore: Let’s vilify Ralph Nader! Poole is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts. Poole blamed […]
“‘People of conscience inside the industry, they take their conscience to work. They’re up against the bean counters, the shut-up-and-work conformists, the bureaucrats,’ he said. Those people see a problem and then, after bumping against […]
Copyright © 2022 Olympia, Earth Media, LLC | All rights reserved