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 […]
(EXPANDED 10/28/2022) A few years ago Richard M. Langworth argued that Ford’s aggressive attempt to overtake Chevrolet in 1954 received more blame “than it deserved” in undercutting the viability of independent automakers (2019, p. 16). […]
“Raymond Loewy, who along with his industrial design firm, had been involved with Studebaker since the 1930s, was enlisted to help with designing the new small Studebaker. In the oral history interview Churchill confirmed that […]
(EXPANDED ON 9/30/2022) Once upon a time Robert Murray (2018) posted at Curbside Classic a photograph of his 1958 Packard two-door hardtop during restoration. The shot showed the rear fenders without the tacked-on fins. Commentator […]
“I convinced (Studebaker) management to de-emphasize the Lark term which had its own connotations, just as I finally got Roy Chapin to dump Rambler for AMC cars, when we were involved with them on the […]
A circa 1987 Avanti coupe still looks remarkably contemporary even though the basic design was roughly a quarter-century old when this car was built. This photograph highlight’s the Avanti’s Coke-bottle curves. I’d suggest that the […]
Curbside Classic recently posted an unusually detailed discussion in a comment thread about why a merger did not occur between Hudson, Nash, Packard and Studebaker (Shafer, 2015). While the speculation is interesting, I’d question the underlying assumption […]
This is the Olympics of automotive history books — 800-plus pages of detailed business analysis, production information and photography. Its 32 chapters are written by a handful of writers with varying analytical styles. For example, […]
If I were to own only one Studebaker history, this would be it. As with Richard M. Langworth’s other books written in the 1970s (e.g., Hudson, Kaiser-Frazer and Chrysler), this is a refreshingly “old-school” automotive history. Unlike all […]
What’s fascinating about the mega-merger hype is the degree to which it downplays obvious questions. Was not the over-consolidation of the U.S. auto industry after World War II a major reason for its subsequent humbling […]
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