(EXPANDED FROM 11/1/2018) “Grosse Pointe myopians” is a pejorative term that automotive journalist Brock Yates (2018) gave to the management class of domestic automakers in a groundbreaking essay published in the April 1968 issue of […]
Motorcade is among the more obscure magazines included in the Automotive History Preservation Society’s digital archives. A supposed preview of the 1969 models may hint at why the magazine apparently did not survive the early-70s. […]
“General Motors would have the most remarkable year of the four major manufacturers, selling two out of three new 1980 model year cars on the road. In fact, GM was down only about 3 percent […]
CP sent in the following letter, which may have been in response to our story, “Brazilian Volkswagens show automaker’s struggle for a post-Beetle look.” I have been following the Brazilian car scene for a few […]
Jim Dunne, Popular Science’s Detroit editor, made a number of predictions in the first half of 1972 that didn’t pan out. For example, in the January issue he stated that for 1973 both AMC and […]
(EXPANDED FROM 11/1/2019) The dominant tendency of the U.S. auto industry has been to make its vehicles bigger, glitzier and more powerful. In recent decades both domestic and foreign automakers have embraced this practice. Indeed, […]
(EXPANDED FROM 4/2/2021) Newly declassified intelligence documents show how a crash program by American automakers to switch to eggcrate grilles for their 1972-73 models thwarted a space alien invasion. The strategy worked so well that […]
Our discussion about the Volkswagen Scirocco (go here) got me to thinking about my car design biases. Two of them heavily influence how I write about automotive history: My harshest criticisms have been leveled at […]
The June 1967 issue of Popular Mechanics may have been published only a few months prior to the beginning of the 1968 model year for U.S. cars, but it had a few amusingly wrong predictions. […]
(EXPANDED FROM 9/18/2020) “Detroit Mind” is the label Brock Yates gave to the worldview of U.S. automakers from the 1950s into the 1980s. This was epitomized by a focus on cars that were “too large, […]
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