Perhaps Richard Langworth’s tendency toward purple prose in this profile of Brooks Stevens in SIA #71, October 1982, is appropriate, given the picture he paints of the legendary designer: cordial, well-mannered, even elegant. The profile is no biography or compendium of Stevens’s designs (for that, turn to Glenn Adamson’s book, “Industrial Strength Design“), rather a […]

As much as the automobile has changed since the days of the horseless carriage, one thing has remained the same – they all run on gasoline. But gasoline today is far different from the gasoline that was used decades ago, as Jerry Heasley wrote in his Half-Hour History of gasoline from SIA #70, August 1982. […]

Pretty much all we ever see anymore of L’Universelle, the GM concept truck of 1955, is the same color photograph and the same brief one-paragraph description, usually contained within broader articles about GM show cars. We almost never see any in-depth treatment of L’Universelle, establishing the concepts behind it and the parties involved in its […]