Adam Icenogle

The Studebaker Story
In 1852, brothers Henry and Clem founded H & C Studebaker in South Bend, Indiana, intent on building wagons and carriages. Their first contract arrived in a few weeks, yielding $175. Nearly a year passed before the second came.
Sir Alexander Arnold Constantine Issigonis was known as “Alec” for obvious reasons. Unlike his rather long name, his designs were typically quite small and simple.
Route 66 is known as “the Mother Road,” but those who first navigated the Lincoln Highway called it a mother, too. It was America’s first transcontinental passage, and it changed everything, the way the railroad had 50 years earlier.
In the last three decades, automotive technology has come a long way. However, the brilliant folks at Q-branch have made certain that one man stayed ahead of that curve.
It has been said that no matter what you accomplish, someone helped you dot it. Automotive design is no exception. The results are almost always a collaborative effort, and it becomes difficult to credit any one person with a particular innovation.
Ransom Eli Olds was born on June 3, 1864, and raised in Geneva, Ohio. His father, Pliny Fisk Olds was a blacksmith who moved his family to Lansing, Michigan in 1880.
Preston at six-years-old, he saw his first car while riding in his grandfather’s buggy. It scared the horses, and captured his imagination forever. As a boy, he disassembled his mother’s appliances, occasionally even repairing them.
As manufacturers of incandescent lamps and electrical transformers, brothers James Ward and William Doud Packard were well-prepared to build their own automobile. In 1899, their first chugged out of humble Packard Electric in Warren, Ohio.
Two years and more than a quarter-million sales later, Cougar convertibles made the scene for 1969. The 428 “Cobra Jet” V8 was the weapon of choice with or without Ram Air induction, and the new “Eliminator” paralleled Ford’s Mustang Mach I.
Lee graduated from Lehigh University in just three years, with an “A” average. A fast-tracker from the start, he was hired by Ford as an executive trainee, but took an immediate leave of absence to obtain his master’s degree at Princeton.
After graduating from the Art Center College of Design in Lost Angeles, Larry Shinoda worked briefly at Ford, then Packard. He also designed winning Indy racing cars before moving to General Motors
In the Fifties, American car buyers expected bright colors and bold ideas, and Detroit delivered. Influential stylists like Harley Earl at GM and Chrysler’s Virgil Exner nearly became household names.
In the summer of 1962, George Lucas was 18, an American boy, enjoying what he calls a Midwestern adolescence in rural Modesto, California.
Two inventions that have changed our lives profoundly are the automobile and the motion picture. This is especially true for George Barris.
Buick has not been in the truck building business since 1923. But in 2001, the Rendezvous will be Buick’s first truck in nearly eighty years, and it was designed by General Motors’ first female Vehicle Chief Designer, Elizabeth Wetzel.
He had big shoes to fill. His father, Henry had made automobile production practical with his Model T. Through hard work and stubbornness, Ford had become a household name.
Car culture is so full of colorful people and interesting stories, that I never expected to repeat a topic.
Before there were Buick automobiles, he was known for his bathtubs. As a young man, David Dunbar Buick owned a lucrative plumbing business.
In 1961, three brothers, Brian, Carl, and Dennis Wilson, their cousin Mike Love, and friend Al Jardine became pop music pioneers.