#driven to write

There are three things you can do with an intersection of two distinct surfaces. One is a really sharp edge like two edges of a box. The second is a smooth blend — cars are covered with them. The third is the chamfer. That’s where a distinctly separate surface in the form of a strip makes the junction between the two primary surfaces. Why might one want to use this form of sculptural…

Compact cars: General Motors, with all the engineering and design facilities at its disposal, could never really master the concept. From the interesting but flawed Corvair, followed by the oil-burning and rust-attracting Vega to the recall plagued X-Cars, they all ended up failures — if not commercially((The Corvair actually sold very well in its first few years until the Ford Mustang and Ralph…

In 1957, then-Senator John Fitzgerald Kennedy won the Pulitzer Prize for his book[1], “Profiles in Courage”, an effort to raise his image in political life. A similar soubriquet could easily apply to this, the seventh overall model of Chrysler’s newly separated luxury division — Imperial. Virgil Exner’s Forward Look certainly causes one to prevaricate, if only due to the time it takes to drink it…

Celebrating Buick’s most enduring and prolific engine. No, not that one… Buick’s aluminium 215 cubic-inch (3.5-litre) V8, sold to Rover and used to power a host of different vehicles, enjoyed a long and prosperous life, but its less well known but equally widely used V6 derivative lasted even longer. Positioned slightly above the rear-engined Chevrolet Corvair that bowed in for the 1960 model…

The car nameplate Stutz lived two distinctly different lives: one innovative, sporty and distinguished before the Second World War, the other thereafter less so. In 1898, a twenty year-old young man built his own single-cylinder car equipped with forward and reverse gears — which he named Old Hickory — from discarded agricultural equipment on his family’s farm in Ansonia, Ohio. Harry Clayton…

I can only begin to imagine the palpable enthusiasm of a 1960’s American car show. A gamut of manufacturers vying for your attention and bucks, with razzmatazz and new styles. Whilst the bigger players always had something new, the outliers often had to make do and mend with results that could fall either toward fish or fowl. The Corporation of American Motors’ coffers were rarely in the Big…

We did not all come over on the same ship, but we are all in the same boat. (Bernard Baruch) Serendipity and shared interests brought two automotive figureheads together while travelling aboard the liner RMS Queen Elizabeth in late 1949; Donald Healey was on his way to Detroit for a meeting with then Cadillac CEO Ed Cole with the aim of securing a supply of Cadillac V8 engines for his…

Plymouth’s Road Runner, whilst hardly denting the Mustang’s impact, had generated the necessary attention and cash to make Chrysler a little more flush. However, sibling Dodge, primarily known for their more sporting attributes, had no immediate answer. With noses out of joint, management sought results which manifested into a ‘Runner clone, the Super Bee. The Super Bee name derives from yet…