Archive for Items Categorized 'US', only excerpts shown, click title for full entry.

COPO Camaro, Chevelle & Nova

by Matt Avery

No corporate ban on racing keeps a good man down. A loophole in GM’s COPO fleet-sales program became a back channel of sorts and today is recognized as the origin of GM’s top muscle cars

Lost Muscle Cars

by Wes Eisenschenk

A departure from the “barn find” theme, this anthology is about noteworthy cars that in quite a few of the cases related here are still MIA. There is some tradecraft discussed but mainly this is more of a mini history of specific cars.

Studebaker and Byers A. Burlingame

by Robert R. Ebert

As CEO, Burlingame, an erstwhile bookkeeper at Packard, was given the hard job of turning around one of the oldest names in the automotive field when the company was in deep trouble. He did, for a while.

Streamliner

by John Wall

Combining salesmanship and media savvy, Loewy created brand images for major corporations but also made himself into a national brand by courting journalists and tastemakers to become the face of both a new profession and a consumer-driven vision of the American dream.

The Cadillac Northstar V-8, A History

by Anthony Young

First seen in the Pininfarina-designed Cadillac Allante, the technically complex Northstar has powered cars as diverse as grocery-getters and a Le Mans prototype. Phased out in 2011, without a direct replacement, this long-serving powerplant gets a good look here.

The Tasca Ford Legacy: Win on Sunday, Sell on Monday!

by Bob McClurg

How did Tasca become the premier Ford performance dealership in the US? By being way more than a retailer. Fielding their own race cars, developing their own performance parts, and offering excellent customer service gave them the sterling reputation that is the company’s currency even today.

For the Love of Old Cars: The Jack Passey Story

by Ken Albert

Too few people outside the hardcore collector community seem to know Jack Passey. He may be “Mr. Lincoln” but many other makes found in him a good custodian and early champion of the old-car movement.

American Automobiles of the Brass Era

by Robert D. Dluhy

Not exactly bedtime reading, this book is brimming with data but for those who want to skip the raw numbers it also offers insightful Big Picture analysis in the form of text and graphs.

Built to Better the Best: The Kaiser-Frazer Corporation History

by Jack Mueller

Cars pretty much sold themselves in the years following WWII. K-F, the new kid on the block, had the ideas, the product, the manufacturing capability, motivated workers, government loans—and still failed. This book takes a stab at laying out the complex reasons why.

Hurst Equipped: More Than 50 Years of High Performance

by Mark Fletcher & Richard Truesdell

Don’t pass this book by just because it has muscle cars on the cover! Hurst was so much more than performance parts and racecars. This is the first-ever look at the company and its many products and, at least a little bit, the man himself.

GM’s Motorama: The Glamorous Show Cars of a Cultural Phenomenon

by David W Temple

Lower, longer, wider. Often outrageously designed—and often enough outrageously impractical for real-word use (David Davis calls them “comic book fantasies” in his Introduction)—these show cars were the most American of American cars and American lifestyle.

Kar-Kraft

by Charles Henry

Ford beat Ferrari at Le Mans. But FoMoCo didn’t do it alone. Kar-Kraft was a key contributor and Ford was pretty much its only customer. The author worked there and so can offer an inside look.

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