Even in the long evolution of Mercedes-Benz style, few cars have looked as timeless as the W111/W112 coupes. They were designed 60 years ago, but they don’t look like a car of 1960. The coupes…
Posts tagged Luxury Cars
BMW L6: The Luxury Liner
Everybody knows BMW’s M cars. Those fastest and most electrifying of Bimmers, date back to the M1 in 1978 and the M535i that soon followed, are of course more well-known and varied than ever today….
1982-87 Lincoln Continental: The Bustle
Sometimes you lead, and sometimes circumstances dictate that you follow. In the case of the mid-eighties Lincoln Continental, the first downsized car to wear that name, Lincoln was definitely a follower. In 1975, Cadillac’s “internationally…
Cadillac Seville Mk1: Arriving in Style
Usually, big corporate decisions aren’t made on the Friday before Christmas. But in the case of the Cadillac Seville, that’s exactly what happened. Circumstances dictated the urgency. On December 21, 1973, a breezy, cold and…
Infiniti M30: The Leopard’s Different Spots
It was new to Americans, but the Infiniti M30 was almost half a decade old when it first appeared in what were then brand new Infiniti showrooms in 1990. Baseball-loving Japanese would refer to the…
Peugeot 604: Sochaux’s Chief Executive
The 604 was Peugeot’s first “executive car,” and the first time in 40 years that it had fielded a large car at all. Though the 402 was a fairly big car for a pre-war European,…
Reversal of Fortune:
Audi A4 Mk1
In 1992, Audi struggled to move less than 15,000 cars in the United States. Ten years later, it moved more than 85,000. Although Audi reinvented its entire lineup in that time, one car more than…
The Japanese Jaguar: Infiniti J30
“Let`s just say that Jerry Hirshberg is a real fan of Jaguar,” said Nissan USA CEO Thomas Mignanelli in 1992. The Infiniti J30 that Mignanelli was being interviewed about hailed from the opposite side of…
Prosperity to Peril: 1929 Packard 6-33
Prosperity was definitely not shared by all Americans in the decade that roared – but on the whole the 1920s were, in the U.S.A. at least, a consumer-spending bonanza driven by new technologies and newly-flush…
Too much is not enough: 1961 Imperial
There had always been “Chrysler Imperials” – with the very first series debuting in 1927, just three years after the birth of Chrysler itself. That first Imperial was a badge addition to Chrysler’s existing E-80…
Fuel Crisis Fleetwood: 1981’s Cadillac V-8-6-4
The excellent downsized GM full-sizes of 1977 were reworked with a more formal look in the late fall of 1979 as 1980 models. The more upright looks belied better aerodynamics which, in some cases, yielded…
The Calm Before the Storm: 1951 Packard
In 1934, longtime Packard President Alvan Macauley watched as the depression destroyed Packard’s sales and rivals alike. For survival, radical change would be necessary – so he brought in New York area manager Max Gilman…