When I first moved from the East Coast to California, I paid attention to the whispers of “hi-riders” I kept hearing at car shows in the East Bay region of the Northern California San Francisco Bay A...
As the 24 Hours of Daytona approaches in a few short months, along with the Daytona 500 — the first race of the annual NASCAR season — chances are you might have wondered, from time to time, how the ...
Pirelli’s newest tire, the cross-ply Stella Bianca. Photos courtesy Pirelli. In 1927, Pirelli debuted its first modern automobile tire, developed from the lessons learned in racing. Dubbed the Stella...
Streamlined trains and divided highways, but oddly no airplanes, represented state-of-the-art transportation in 1941. If you’ve seen those blue “Eisenhower Interstate System” signs with the General-t...
There was a time, in the not-too-distant past, when drag racing was really, really cool. Drivers were gladiators, teams were small bands of nomads, motel parking lots were all-night parties, and the ...
1967 Rambler Rogue advertisement, courtesy of the Automotive History Preservation Society. American Motors’ print ad leaves little to the imagination with its depiction of young adults reinstalling t...
The generations that have gone before give us the tools we need to survive in the world. Sometimes those tools are very literal tools, and handed to us in an oil-stained box. Like these my dad just g...
American Racing Equipment ‘s magazine ad for its new pizza-cutter 4 x 15 magnesium frontrunner. Here at Hemmings, we’re nothing if not steeped in history. Comes along with the territory, right? Becau...
Vintage ads courtesy of the Automotive History Preservation Society. Many automakers diversified their advertising content for the same car to reach more potential buyers, and Pontiac was no differen...
1964 Buick LeSabre two-door convertible. Magazine advertising courtesy of Lov2XLR8. Introduced as a new line in 1959, Buick’s fullsize LeSabre models were completely restyled for 1961. Three years la...
1968 Plymouth Road Runner. Ad courtesy Lov2XLR8. A casual observer may have said that Mopar had all the muscle cars it needed in 1967, but Chrysler’s market research indicated that simply wasn’t the ...
Images are from the brochure collection of Hemmings Motor News, courtesy of Bruce Zahor. In its heyday of the 1960s, Volkswagen’s advertising was famously–and cleverly–self-deprecating, the brilliant...
Magazine ad courtesy of LOV2XLR8. Introduced for the 1975 model year, Ford’s Granada was initially intended to replace a pair of aging mid-sizers: the Maverick and the Torino. In marketing its newest...
The Shelby GT500 KR’s 50th birthday? It’s as good an excuse as any to put on a movie night and car show at Carroll Shelby International in California this Friday and Saturday. According to organizers...
Ads courtesy of the Automotive History Preservation Society. Add dirt, add drama! It was a simple and effective recipe for 1960s new-car ads at General Motors and some other automakers. A dirt road o...
1977 Omega V-6 Sports Pack Ad. From the author’s collection. If you didn’t need your mid-to-late-1970s ride to be particularly fast, but still found a sporty look and precise handling alluring, autom...
Back in the 1950s and ’60s, the most entertaining marketing for automotive products was issued by the gasoline companies. Their display ads were amusing, engaging, and many times downright funny. Tho...
Vintage print art courtesy of oldcarbrochures.com Back in high school in the mid-1980s, when I was driving my ’67 Chevelle SS 396, my good friend Joe, who was also a classmate, bought a Hialeah Yello...
You can’t beat the old Sears catalogs as reference material. Photos by the author. One of the neatest references for everyday-material culture of the past is a Sears, Roebuck and Company Catalog. Sea...
The 1990 Acura NSX debuts at the 1989 Chicago Auto Show. Photo courtesy Honda Motor Company, Ltd.; ad photography courtesy the author’s collection. For decades, Japanese cars were about simple reliab...
Through the years, hundreds of coffee table books have honored the sporting marques of twentieth-century Great Britain. Until now, not one of those has brought together the roster of talent we find b...
Video and photos courtesy of Ford Motor Company. Advertisement images courtesy of the Automotive History Preservation Society. Ford’s new-for-1969 response to the budget-muscle Plymouth Road Runner w...
Brochure images are from the collection of Hemmings Motor News, courtesy of Bruce Zahor “The shape of things to come.” Indeed, the styling of Triumph’s final sports car would remain timely more than ...
“Ask the Man Who Owns One: An Illustrated History of Packard Advertising” by Arthur W. Einstein, Jr. Imaginative advertising sells. And few automobile companies were better at the task of getting the...
“Ask the Man Who Owns One: An Illustrated History of Packard Advertising” by Arthur W. Einstein, Jr. Imaginative advertising sells. And few automobile companies were better at the task of getting the...