The Ford Mustang: The Right Car at the Right Time
Jan 20, 2021
“The sporty look of a Ferrari, the economy of a Volkswagen, and the appeal of a Thunderbird” That’s what Ford vice president Lee Iacocca had in mind for his “youth car” His hand-picked team refined those seemingly contradictory guidelines into more specific goals in early 1961 The new car needed a room for four and an ample trunk It
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The Citroën DS 19: Radically Different
Aug 07, 2020
The Citroën DS 19 was one of the most innovative production vehicles of the 20th century It’s “glass escargot” design evoked French philosopher Roland Barthes to remark in 1957 that the DS 19 had “obviously fallen from the sky” The DS 19’s origins can be traced to back to the 1930s, and the work of sculptor and designer Flaminio
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The Mini: An Automotive Transformation
Sep 03, 2019
In 1990, my wife JoAnne and I traveled to England for a wedding Afterward, we toured the UK for another four weeks in a rented Mini Mayfair The car was an absolute joy to drive—peppy, tight, responsive, roomy and thoroughly comfortable Tooling around England, the thought struck me how much the Mini had transformed the automotive world For
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The Beetle and Tante Kiki
Aug 27, 2019
My mother is from Breslau, Germany She had a privileged youth growing up in the 1920s and ‘30s: she had a governess, house keepers and long summer vacations on the Baltic sea And her father, George Skiebe, my Opa, had a car collection He had a Mercedes 540 and a Horsch, but he loved American cars He had a Chrysler, a Ford sedan and a
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The Toyota Prius: An Elegant Solution
Aug 19, 2019
For most of automotive history, the main impediments to the electric car have been battery technology (limited range) and cheap oil The energy crises of the 1970s awakened interest in alternative propulsion, but range and utility remained elusive goals The family car was expected to go 300 miles or more without refueling, and to carry at least
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Why the Chrysler Minivan Changed the World
Aug 15, 2019
Of all the automobiles that changed the world, the Chrysler line of minivans is likely to win the award of “least exciting” by most automotive enthusiasts But that was never the point; the minivan was not intended to be flashy, instead it was a car with a purpose that fulfilled the needs of millions of Americans
Lee Iococca and Hal
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Ford’s Model T: Mass Automobility
Feb 28, 2019
The Model T ranks with the airplane, radio, television, and the digital computer as one of the key inventions that helped shape the twentieth century Historian David Hounshell called the Ford Model T “the only revolutionary automobile of the twentieth century,” because what it did could be done only once “Its design and mass production
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The 1912 Cadillac: A Self-Starter
Feb 13, 2019
In a major way the advent of the autonomous vehicles today compares closely with the arrival of the controversial horseless carriage over a century ago Initially neither innovation was broadly embraced by the general public
The debate at the turn of the 20th century was why buy one of those new-fangled gas-powered, horseless carriages that
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The Jeep in World War II
Feb 11, 2019
The Jeep was the result of a request by the Army in 1940 for a general purpose vehicle that was small, lightweight, had four-wheel drive for cross-country travel, and capable of carrying a light machine gun Initially, only two companies provided vehicles to meet this requirement: American Bantam (the Bantam Reconnaissance Command or BRC) and
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The Curved Dash Oldsmobile: Putting America on Wheels
Jan 28, 2019
R E Olds was born and raised in Ohio and eventually settled in Lansing, Michigan where he founded the Olds Motor Company on August 21, 1897 The company was bought by a copper and lumber magnate named Samuel L Smith in 1899 and renamed the Olds Motor Works The new company was relocated from Lansing to Detroit, where Smith became President while
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