Ate Up With Motor

As we saw in our first installment, Kaiser-Frazer's initial success in the postwar automotive boom came to an abrupt end in 1949. The debacle that followed ended the partnership of Henry J. Kaiser and Joseph Frazer and left the company more than $43 million in the red. Things were bad enough that Henry Kaiser and company president Edgar Kaiser seriously discussed liquidation. They decided to stay the course, betting that they could turn things around with a stylish new '51 Kaiser and a new compact car called the Henry J.

This week, the second half of our history of Kaiser-Frazer.



( The 1951-1955 Kaisers and the fall of Kaiser-Frazer. )

It seemed like a sure thing: an alliance between the auto industry's most dynamic and respected salesman and one of the 20th century's most visionary industrialists. It was a partnership that promised to transform America's wartime production might into a new automotive colossus, but by the time the end came, less than ten years later, it had become a cautionary tale of the perils of challenging Detroit on its own ground.

This week, we present part one of our history of the Kaiser-Frazer Corporation.



( The formation of Kaiser-Frazer and the 1947-1950 Kaiser-Frazer cars. )

The 1930s were full of fascinating experiments and exotic multicylinder Classics, but few cars of that era were more important or more influential than the humble V8 Ford. Cheap, pretty, and fast, it launched the American fascination with inexpensive V8 engines, and spawned countless hot rods and customs.

This week, we look at the origins of Ford's famous flathead -- Henry Ford's final triumph, and the beginning of his downfall.



( The flathead Ford V8 and the 1932-1940 Fords. )

"Success is more dangerous than failure," author Graham Greene once wrote. "It breaks over a wider shore." Our subject this week was a case in point. This car, Detroit's first response to the growing popularity of imported luxury cars, was an immediate hit, earning a handsome profit and inspiring numerous imitators. But it marked the beginning of the end of its maker's credibility as "the standard of the world," and the start of its long, ugly decline.



( The 1976-1985 Cadillac Seville. )

We're taking a break this week, but here is an index of all the articles we published during 2009, so you can catch up on anything you might have missed:

( 2009 Index. )

With its smooth curves and clean lines, this week's subject could easily have been a prop on Space: 1999. Car and Driver called it "1974's best-styled car," but some critics still consider it one of the ugliest designs of the seventies, and it remains one of the most controversial. It was a bold move for struggling American Motors, and ultimately became a financial disaster.

This week, we consider the question once posed by AMC TV commercials: What's a Matador?

SPECIAL NOTE: Through special arrangement with Torq-O.com, we are pleased to offer three exclusive clips from the AMC archives, unseen in over 30 years.



( The Rambler Classic, Rambler Rebel, and AMC Matador. )

Designed as a Volkswagen, powered by an Audi engine, Porsche's entry-level 924 rubbed many fans the wrong way. In 1982, a new look and a new engine transformed it into an eighties icon, a favorite toy of affluent Yuppies on both sides of the Atlantic.

This week, we look at the history of the Porsche 944 and its often-forgotten successor, the 968.



( The Porsche 944 and 968. )

A car's weight has a dramatic effect on its performance, ride, handling, and fuel economy. Figuring out how much a car weighs should be simple, but the weights listed in brochures, road tests, and other sources can be contradictory and confusing. A vehicle's specifications may list shipping weight, manufacturer's curb weight, and gross vehicle weight ratings, all of which are quite different.

To sort out this confusion, let's look at what each of these terms means.

( Shipping weight, curb weight, and gross weight. )

Although Porsche and Volkswagen hadn't exactly set the world on fire with their first joint-venture sports car, the 914, the two companies decided to try again in the early seventies. Developed by Porsche as a Volkswagen, the new model ended up becoming Porsche's first front-engine, water-cooled production car, and launched a new line of "volks Porsches" that lasted into the nineties.

We begin with a look at the tangled origins of the Porsche 924. (We'll tackle the 944 and 968 in part two of this article, next week.)



( The Porsche 924. )

Popular Mechanics once dubbed Chevrolet's peculiar hybrid of passenger car and pickup truck "the Cowboy Cadillac." Ford and Chevy prosaically described these crossovers as sedan pickups, while our Australian readers would call them coupe utilities, utilities, or simply "utes." Never overwhelmingly popular in the U.S. market when they were new, they have become curiously iconic, presaging America's infatuation with trucks.

This week, we examine the origins of the Ford Ranchero and Chevrolet El Camino.



( The 1957-1979 Ford Ranchero and the 1959-1960 and 1964-1988 Chevrolet El Camino. )

There was a discussion on The Truth About Cars recently about why GM always seems to kill its most interesting models just after it finally gets them right. The pattern is familiar: the company rolls out a new, exciting product or feature to great fanfare, only to have it turn out to be seriously flawed. After the company finally fixes most or all of the flaws, it decides to cancel the product anyway, leaving aggrieved fans and puzzled observers scratching their heads.

There are many examples of this sad tendency, notably including the Chevrolet Corvair and the Cadillac Allanté, but the poster child is the Pontiac Fiero. Launched in 1983, the Fiero promised to be a good-looking, affordable mid-engine sports car, introducing exciting new techniques in production and design. Alas, it proved overweight and underpowered, and alarming reports of engine fires tarnished its reputation. By 1988, more power, better looks, and a $30 million new suspension brought the Fiero closer to its original promise -- just in time for GM to bring down the ax.

This week, we look at the origins of the Fiero, and the reasons for its fate.



( The 1984-1988 Pontiac Fiero. )

Sophisticated, glamorous, gorgeous, and fast, this car is on everybody's short list of the greatest cars of all time. Its flaws are well documented, but there are few automobiles that still command more loyalty or more all-out lust.

This week, we examine the history of that favorite sixties icon, the E-Type Jaguar.



( The 1961-1975 Jaguar E-Type. )

Certain cars become emblematic of a time and a place, perfectly encapsulating the values, priorities, and obsessions of their eras. For America of the fifties, it's the 1955-57 Chevrolets and the '59 Cadillac; for the sixties, the Mini, the Beetle, and the Mustang. For the seventies, we'd make a strong case for this week's car. Generally reviled by critics, staggeringly popular with the public, and much imitated, the Chevrolet Monte Carlo remains as powerful a symbol of the period as disco balls, platform shoes, and The Brady Bunch.

This week, we look at the origins of the Monte Carlo, and consider the reasons for its immense -- and ultimately ephemeral -- popularity.



( The 1970-1977 Chevrolet Monte Carlo. )

Note: This is a bit of a rerun, since we ran an earlier version of this article in July 2008. We've revised it with new photos and new information while preparing next week's story on the Grand Prix's cousin, the Chevrolet Monte Carlo.

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.

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.

Let's look at an early example of downsizing that succeeded: Pontiac's sporty 1969 Grand Prix.



( The 1969 Pontiac Grand Prix. )

For most people, the words "Ford Mustang" evoke one of two things: the original 1964-66 icon of sixties Americana, or the boxy Reagan-era "5.0s" so beloved of amateur hot rodders. This week, we consider how one evolved into the other, examine the origins of Ford's ubiquitous Fox platform, and take a look at the most unusual of all Mustangs: the high-tech, turbocharged, four-cylinder SVO.



( The 1979-93 Ford Mustang and 1984-86 Mustang SVO. )

If you're an American over 30, you may have some hazy, not necessarily happy memories of Renault's "Le Car," sold here from 1976 through 1983. To Europeans, who will need little introduction, it was known as the Renault 5, the ubiquitous French subcompact that helped to popularize the supermini genre. Although it never sold very well in the States, Renault moved more than five million of them in other markets, making the "Cinq" one of the best selling French cars of all time. It also spawned a fearsome little rally car, the entertainingly deranged Renault 5 Turbo.



( The Renault 5 and Renault 5 Turbo. )

You've probably heard it said that modern cars are designed as much in the wind tunnel as on the drawing board. This week, former GM designer Gary Smith, webmaster of the site Dean's Garage, takes a look at the insides GM's own wind tunnel. You can read about it here.

Dean's Garage is a very interesting site, with a lot of first-hand recollections from Gary and other automotive designers about their work and careers; last week, for instance, he presented some of the cartoons the GM design staff drew during his tenure there, like Andy Hansel's caricature of former Styling VP Irv Rybicki.

We think that primary histories like these are invaluable. Automotive designers are among the world's least-known artists; their work reaches millions of people, but many are little known outside the field, and when they retire or pass on, memory of their contributions quickly fades. (We should also mention that Gary has been very generous in helping us research some of our upcoming articles, putting us in touch with surviving designers to help sort out how certain designs came to be.)

If you're interested in the people behind the machinery, check out Dean's Garage -- we recommend it highly.

By 1963, Studebaker was already doomed, but its dynamic president, Sherwood Egbert, was not yet ready to admit defeat. Not only did he launch the Avanti, he hired Andy Granatelli to develop a series of hot engines that transformed Studebaker's humble compact Lark into a ferocious -- and unlikely -- performance car.

This week, we look at the final days of Studebaker and the birth of the Super Lark.



( The 1959-1966 Studebaker Lark, Commander, and Super Lark. )

New article this evening, but in the meantime, you can now follow Ate Up With Motor on Facebook.

It sounded so promising at the time. After years of dismissing imported compacts as cars for kooks, GM was finally going to build an attractive, sophisticated small car, featuring the latest advances in manufacturing technology. To follow that, Chevrolet going to offer a sporty version with a racy twin-cam engine built by the legendary English firm Cosworth. It was the car that was going to save America for American cars -- that is, until it all went wrong.



( The 1971-77 Chevrolet Vega and 1975-76 Cosworth Vega. )