Many discussions of automotive history center around what historians call “counterfactuals”: trying to envision what might have happened if certain things had turned out differently than they did in actual fact. For automotive enthusiasts, this often boils down to a simple question: “Why didn’t they just … ?” The answers are often equally simple — and sometimes depressingly mundane. In this editorial, I’ll talk a little about the most common reasons enthusiasts’ favorite counterfactuals never came to pass, which also reveals some of the general lessons I’ve learned about the auto business through my years of doing Ate Up With Motor.
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Category: Editorials and Commentary
Editorials and thoughts on various automotive topics and current events.
A Shocking Omission
The other night, I was browsing through Brian Heiler’s Plaid Stallions website, as one does, and had a minor epiphany. When I wrote about the FWD GMC Motor Home a few years ago, I mentioned that it had been part of the Mattel Hot Wheels line for a while, but I neglected to mention that it had also been the basis for the ne plus ultra of seventies girls’ toys: Mattel’s Barbie Star Traveler Motor Home. Blogger Laura Moncur has previously written about her Star Traveler toy and how it even tempted her to invest in the real thing.
Brian Heiler also noted a particularly obscure connection: Mattel used what were clearly the same molds as the Star Traveler for the Big Jim Super Car, part of another, now largely forgotten seventies toy line.
A Historical Note: Ford General Managers
As I’ve said before, one of the things you notice when you do a lot of research in a particular field is that certain pieces of information are repeated over and over again even though they’re wrong. I’ve made those mistakes myself — some times that I know about and probably others I have yet to discover — so I can’t claim any particular moral high ground here, but when I recognize one of these errors, I try to rectify it as best I can.
One common misconception I’ve noticed recently regards Ford in the late fifties and early sixties and the careers of Robert McNamara and Lee Iacocca. Let’s see if we can set it straight:
Behind the Scenes at Ate Up With Motor, 2011 Edition
This time last year, we stepped out of our usual format to examine the making and methodology of articles on Ate Up With Motor. As 2011 draws to a close, we present a different kind of behind-the-scenes look: how we decide what to write about.
Continue Reading Behind the Scenes at Ate Up With Motor, 2011 Edition
Behind the Scenes at Ate Up With Motor
As we come to the end of 2010, we present a special behind-the-scenes look at the making of Ate Up With Motor.
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Oscar Banker, the Automatic Safety Transmission, and the Art of Research
We’re going to take a different approach for this week’s article. Instead of presenting another history, we’ve decided to give you a look at the way we approach the research for these articles, and tackle a challenging comment posed by one of our readers: did inventor Oscar Banker design the 1937-1939 Oldsmobile/Buick Automatic Safety Transmission, the predecessor of Hydra-Matic?
Important author’s note: Much of this article, originally written in 2010, was speculative and thus many things turned out to be off-base or wrong. I’ve opted to leave the article up for the time being (having removed some of the more glaring errors) until such time as I can more thoroughly revise it, but please keep in mind that this is NOT an authoritative piece on Oscar Banker. Caveat lector!
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Falling Empires Part 3: Wither Detroit?
It will not have escaped even the casual observer that the companies formerly known as the Big Three automakers — GM, Ford, and Chrysler — are in bad, bad shape. GM lost $37 billion in 2007. Ford’s operating losses were $2.7 billion overall, but they lost $5 billion on their automotive operations. Chrysler, which is now owned by Cerberus Capital Management, is not obliged to share their annual results (not being publicly held), but they aren’t doing a lot better. As of this writing, the three companies are asking for at least $34 billion in federally guaranteed loans, a new bailout. In this last installment of our series, we weigh in on the state of Detroit.
Falling Empires Part 2: The Road Back
In 1981, Chrysler had $1.2 billion in federally backed loans and an array of new products. Problem solved? Not exactly. In the third installment of our series on the Chrysler bailout, we examine the corporation’s rocky road back to solvency — and how it ended up on the ropes again less than a decade later.
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Falling Empires Part 1: The Chrysler Bailout
Throughout its 85-year history, the Chrysler Corporation has often found itself engaged in a coquettish flirtation with doom. Although Chrysler sometimes led the American industry in engineering innovation, a combination of ill-considered product choices, quality problems, and misguided management have put it on the ropes more than a few times. The list of disasters is long: the brilliant but commercially moribund Airflow of the 1930s; the catastrophic quality-control issues of the late 1950s; the ill-fated “downsizing” of 1962. The one on everyone’s mind of late, however, is the late-seventies financial crisis that sent ostensible free-market conservative Lee Iacocca to Washington, hat in hand — looking for a bailout.
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Living in interesting times
Owing to the intrusion of other projects, this week’s regular article is going to be delayed until next week. So as not to leave you too wanting for content, though, I thought I would discuss a little more about the philosophy of this site.The brief of Ate Up With Motor is to discuss the history and design of interesting cars. That inevitably leaves you all at the mercy of what your author considers interesting, which bears some explanation.
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CAFE and Cream: The Rules about Corporate Average Fuel Economy
There’s been a lot of talk in the U.S. in the past year or two about the prospect of raising the requirements for average fuel economy. Current plans call for raising that average from 27.5 to 35.7 mpg by 2015, which has caused considerable alarm in some quarters. To make sense of all this, let’s talk about how the corporate average fuel economy rules work, where they came from, and what they’re designed to do. Also, your author weighs in on the merits of these regulations.
Author’s Note: This article was written in 2009 and is now out of date — it has not yet been updated to reflect subsequent regulatory changes. Reader beware!
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