The Ford Fairmont was Dearborn’s first “downsized” car. Unlike GM, Ford started at the middle of its lineup post-OPEC and worked outward. But like GM’s “Project 77” cars, what became the Fairmont actually started off…
Browsing Category American Cars
Willys CJ-2A: After Demobilization
It’s 75 years and one day since WW2 ended (technically, it’s “victory day” in several countries today), and one of the defining vehicular legacies of that time is the Willys Jeep. The war changed far…
1980 Pontiac Yellowbird: Birds of a Feather
It sure is yellow! And appropriately so, since this is a Pontiac Firebird “Yellowbird,” a one-year-only special model for 1980, obtained by checking off RPO W73. By this time the 2nd-gen Firebird was ten years…
1978 Oldsmobile 98 LF9: Distressed Diesel
By 1977 it had plenty of hsitory. Oldsmobile’s flagship Ninety Eight dated back to 1941 (spawned to replace the 1940 series 90) and had ridden GM’s big C-body with Cadillacs and primo Buicks ever since….
1930 Essex Challenger: The Little Hudson
It lasted just 14 seasons, but the Essex was one of the most successful cars of its era; and era which just happened to be a huge boom in car production and a cutthroat war…
Ford Bronco Mk1: A Horse Untamed
It could be fairly said that 1964 was Ford’s year of the horse. That April, Ford’s epoch-defining Mustang debuted at the New York World’s fair. The Mustang not only created an entirely new market, it…
Rambler Ambassador: The Nash Legacy
American Motors was born on May 1, 1954, with the merger of Nash-Kelvinator and the Hudson Motor Car Co. By 1960 it was a very different company than Nash or Hudson had been, defined by…
Buick Apollo: Stuck in the Middle
You’d think that a “smaller” car launched just before a fuel crisis would be almost a sure fire hit, but not so with the Buick Apollo. It might have been smaller but it wasn’t “small,”…
Twilight of the Giants: Buick Roadmaster
After planning for permanently high fuel prices in the early eighties, GM watched as oil prices cratered just as its new front-drive full-sizers were introduced in 1984-85. Following a very strong 1983, Buick sold over…
The Bustle: 1986 Lincoln Continental
Sometimes you lead, and sometimes circumstances dictate that you follow. In the case of the mid-eighties Lincoln Continental – the first “small” Continental – Lincoln was often labeled a follower. But after being caught out…
Are the Stars Out Tonight: Studebaker Starlight
“The first by far with a postwar car!” the ads trumpeted. It was pretty much true, although the cars didn’t actually get into customers’ hands until very late in the year and they housed mostly…
SUV Mania: 1993 Ford Explorer Limited
The year was 1985. Just a year earlier, famous auto exec and future Chrysler and GM product Czar Bob Lutz had returned to Dearborn, Michigan. He was still working for Ford then, and fresh off…