Willys Aero
This week CC will celebrate the American independent car makers (anything other than the Big Three, for those of you in Sri Lanka, Iran and other distant locales where our many far-flung readers are). There were of course dozens of independent manufacturers in the early years of the industry; probably more like hundreds in total. The Great Depression wiped out many of those still going at its start, and then after WW2, it became a game of attrition. Who would be the last independent manufacturer left standing? Checker, it turns out, which built its last car in 1982 (full history here), since AMC was already partnered with Renault by then.
Well, that is if we don’t include smaller and more recent makes like DeLorean and other even smaller outfits. And Tesla, with a market value of over $20 billion certainly is a viable independent. Are we going to see more in the future?
We’ll have posts on a variety of independents, and like always here at CC, it will be a pot-luck. We don’t coordinate events like this in detail; someone suggests it, and we’ll just have to see what our Contributors come up with. Pot Luck.
Speaking of food, you already have and will be seeing re-runs here at CC. I just can’t fill every day with new content, and the inflow from our all-volunteer corps of Contributors ebbs and flows. There is a huge archive of very high quality posts here that is too good to just hope that someone stumbles on via a Google search or the Portals. In particular, we have some great posts on independents that deserve a second showing this week. So if its more than two years old, it may well get recycled eventually. CC has cultivated a lot of new readers in the past year or so, so odds are they’ve never seen it. And if you have, you might like it again…or not, in which case we’ll refund you your subscription 🙂
When posts are re-run, I do it with all the old comments too, because they’re an important part of the whole exercise here. You are also Contributors, adding to the content with your insight, experience and knowledge. But feel free to keep adding to the old ones too. It’s like warming up the leftovers.
Paul – When you repost an oldie (but always a goodie!) could you add the rerun verbiage at the beginning? I tend to re-read them and often don’t realize it is older until I read the comments and then am shocked to see MY own comment from a couple of years ago…Not a big deal but would be nice. I see you do it on some, maybe you are trying to do it on all and some get away from you?
Right now before opening a CC article link, I can always tell if it’s a repost of an older biography if it already has numerous comments showing in the comment bubble in the upper right corner. And the post itself is relatively new, based upon the article hierarchy and date it appears on the website. But I do understand not everyone could recognize this.
Perhaps if you prefaced the article title with “CC Rewind”, “CC Archive”, or “CC Revisited” for example, it would let regular (and new) readers know it is a reposted biography. And/or you could perhaps have a small blurb in italics at the start of the article indicating it has been posted previously.
or … “CC Classics” ?!
Sounds better than leftovers or re-runs, but “Curbside Classics Classics” won’t win any marketing prizes.
I like the re-runs. I’ve been here for awhile but there’s still lots of stuff I’ve never seen (including almost all of Paul’s articles that are only on TTAC) despite occasionally going on binges in the archives. Plus, there are even more articles I’ve read but never got a chance to comment on before they disappeared off the front page.
I enjoy the reruns, too. They’re all too good to just languish unread, so yes, please, bring ’em back!
Perhaps after the author’s byline and the article’s current date, you could have in brackets:
(Originally posted June 2, 20XX).
I would suggest this as a compliment to having it noted in the title and/or with a short blurb noting it is an older article re-entered into the fresh posts, before the article.