Tag: Brooks Stevens

Brooks Stevens: The Seer Who Made Milwaukee Famous

Brooks Stevens: The Seer Who Made Milwaukee Famous

Picture Stevens, trailing a silk scarf, driving a very loud open sports car with what the British call “assurance.” Picture an army of gendarmerie, including aircraft. Failing to catch him, they block the road ahead. Now picture the nearest constable (seven feet tall as they all are). Jerking his thumb at the Excalibur’s sartorially splendid driver, he shouts: YOU—OUT! Kip paid his fine. It was substantial.

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Why Studebaker Failed: In the End, It is Always Management

Why Studebaker Failed: In the End, It is Always Management

Why did Stude­bak­er go out of busi­ness? I have your book Stude­bak­er 1946-1966, orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished as Stude­bak­er: The Post­war Years. I worked for the old com­pa­ny at the end in Hamil­ton, Ontario. Your book brought back mem­o­ries of many old Stude­bak­er hands. Styl­ists Bob Doehler and Bob Andrews were good friends about my age.

I am look­ing for­ward to the last chap­ter dis­cussing how Stude­bak­er went wrong, espe­cial­ly since I also have the­o­ries. It would fun to com­pare notes. I often quote from your book: “For many years, Ray­mond Loewy Asso­ciates would be the only thing stand­ing between Stude­bak­er and dull mediocrity.”…

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Bill Tilden 1935-2013: Tribute to a Friend

Bill Tilden 1935-2013: Tribute to a Friend

Writ­ten for the Soci­ety of Auto­mo­tive His­to­ri­ans Journal

U.S. Coast Guard Base, Glouces­ter City, New Jer­sey, July 1965: A call from the Ops office—“Sir, there’s a civil­ian here ask­ing for you. He’s dri­ving the weird­est car I’ve ever seen.”

It was Bill, of course. We clicked from the start. With­in a week he hied me off to north Philadel­phia to help strip the odd­ly attrac­tive, faux lizard skin uphol­stery out of a rusty old car. It turned out a bad mistake—we’d junked an ultra-rare 1951 Kaiser Emer­ald Drag­on. They built maybe six….

Bill’s auto­mo­tive tastes were catholic, rang­ing from the E-type Jaguar he bought new and raced—probably the old­est in the hands of its orig­i­nal owner—to a 1941 Cadil­lac Six­ty-Spe­cial, sev­er­al Con­ti­nen­tals and late-mod­el Mopars, which he acquired as “future col­lectibles” from Chrysler, where he then worked, build­ing deal­er­ships.…

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