If you ask the average person to name an American sporty car of the late sixties, you probably won’t hear “Plymouth Barracuda” unless the person is a dedicated Mopar fan. In a way, that’s curious, because the Barracuda was the first of the so-called pony cars to hit the market (even before the Ford Mustang) and in some areas it was arguably superior to its Ford rival. So, why was the Barracuda doomed to be a perennial also-ran? This is the sad story of the 1964-1969 Plymouth Barracuda.
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Tag: American cars
The People’s Packard: The Packard One Twenty and How NOT to Build a Brand
The bread and butter of most modern luxury car companies is their “near-luxury” models, moderately priced but still expensive cars aimed at buyers who are enticed by the badge, but can’t afford the company’s real luxury cars. It’s big business today, but it’s not a new idea. Back in the mid-thirties, beleaguered Packard jumped into the mid-priced fray with its affordable One Twenty — the car that saved Packard and set the stage for its eventual demise.
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Rocket Bomb: The Oldsmobile Rocket 88 and the Dawn of the American Horsepower Race
In the mid-1950s, American automakers were engaged in a ferocious horsepower race. By the time the battle reached a temporary ceasefire at decade’s end, the average power of the typical passenger car had (at least on paper) more than doubled. The starting gun of that race was sounded by Oldsmobile, with its advanced new overhead-valve V8 and the new mid-size model that shared its name: the 1949-1950 Oldsmobile Rocket 88.
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Everything Olds Is New Again: The 1960-1961 Oldsmobiles and the Age of Planned Obsolescence
We recently happened upon a pair of nicely restored, early-sixties Oldsmobile hardtops. Oldsmobiles of this vintage aren’t necessarily rare or unusual, but what intrigued us was the fact that one was a 1960 and the other a 1961, giving us a rare opportunity to compare the 1960 and 1961 Oldsmobile years side by side and to consider that long-standing automotive custom, the annual model change.
Gaudy but Glamorous: 1958–1966 Ford Thunderbird
Like its younger sibling, the Ford Mustang, the Ford Thunderbird enjoys an impressive and loyal fan base whose adulation is somewhat out of proportion to the car’s tangible virtues. Admittedly, any model that survives for 50 years and 13 distinct generations has to have something going for it, but the T-Bird lacks many of the qualities that tend to make a car a classic. Particularly in their later, four-seat incarnations, Thunderbirds never had blazing performance, they’re hardly rare, and as for their styling, let us just say that they often flirted with the ragged edges of good taste. Still, people loved them and these cars inspired a host of imitators, so they were doing something right. Let’s take a look at the tumultuous and occasionally tacky history of the 1958-1966 Ford Thunderbird.
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Requiem for Misterl: The 1959 Cadillac and the Winter of Harley Earl
Even if you know nothing about cars and your only exposure to American automobiles is TV and movies, you probably recognize this shape. It’s been featured on everything from T-shirts to postage stamps, a quintessential icon of Fifties Americana in all its grandeur and absurdity. It is, of course, the 1959 Cadillac.
The ’59 Cadillac emerged from a seismic shift at General Motors and marked the transition between two very different eras in automotive design. This week, we look at the history of the 1959 cars and the final days of legendary design chief Harley Earl.
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More from Less: The Pontiac Grand Prix and the Politics of Downsizing
Thirty years ago, the watchword of the auto industry was downsizing. Driven by high oil prices and ever-increasing emission standards, American automakers were forced to dramatically reduce the size and weight of their cars. Today, with spiraling oil prices and concerns about global warming, a new wave of downsizing can’t be far off. However, downsizing can be risky. Customers have been indoctrinated for decades in the idea that bigger is better, and you have to be careful that smaller size isn’t perceived as poorer value. Do it wrong, and you can end up with a sales disaster that could put you out of business. This week, we take a look at an early example of downsizing that succeeded. This is the history of the 1969 Pontiac Grand Prix.
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One Hundred from Zero: The 1936–1942 Buick Century
While the Pontiac GTO is often considered the first muscle car, 25 years earlier it was Buick, not Pontiac, that set the pace as America’s leading purveyor of speed and style, offering the fastest production sedan in America: the 1936–1942 Buick Century. This is its story.
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The Unlikely Studebaker: The Birth (and Rebirth) of the Avanti
Once upon a time, a venerable and well-known automaker, realizing the end was nigh, tried desperately to show the public that while they might be down, they were not yet out. They called on the world’s most famous designer and asked him to design them a sports car: something so striking and unusual that buyers would come running back to dealerships just to see it and thus breathe life into a dying business. It failed, but the designer’s sports car rose from the ashes and went on to outlive its parent company by more than 40 years. This is the story of the Studebaker Avanti.
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Getting the Lead Out: The 1970-1981 Chevrolet Camaro and the Rise and Fall of Leaded Gasoline
Pity the second-generation Chevrolet Camaro. Born late — a delivery fraught with complications — it was nearly snuffed out in adolescence. Although it survived to a ripe old age, the second-gen Camaro has never inspired the same nostalgia as its beloved 1967-1969 predecessor, perhaps because it arrived in the fray of one of the most contentious public debates of the 20th century: the battle over automotive emissions and the use of lead as a gasoline additive. This is the story of the 1970-1981 Chevrolet Camaro and the rise and fall of leaded gasoline.
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Dollar-Store Decadence: The Luxurious Ford LTD
The epoch-making success of the Ford Mustang and Thunderbird tends to leave other Ford cars of its era looking like poor relations, but in the 1960s Ford really led the pack when it came to new product development. One of the least-acknowledged — but most lucrative — new concepts was the Ford LTD: Ford’s cut-price luxury car.
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The Strange Tale of the Buick Special, Buick-Rover V8, and 3800 V6
From the “what tangled webs we weave” department comes this odd tale of how Buick’s efforts to build an economy car in the early 1960s gave birth to the premier British hot rod engine and a V6 that was still powering new GM cars some 45 years after its original demise. This is the story of the 1961–1963 Buick Special and Skylark, the aluminum Buick / Rover V8, and the long-lived GM 3800 V6 engine.
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