cars – past, present, future – the case of automotive heritage

On Wednesday evenings this quarter I have been hosting a series of conversations with colleagues at Stanford and beyond about the world of cars – past, present and future. Sponsorship has come from our Revs Program and Stanford Continuing Studies [Link] With a very sharp and expert audience we covered a tremendous amount of ground,…

designing for difference? Chris Bangle at Revs

Chris Bangle, car designer, was at the Stanford Revs Program this evening. He’s a superb speaker and came with some great stories, on the back of his notorious leadership of the BMW design team, about how cars might begin again to look more distinctive, when so many today look so bland, just the same as…

automotive archaeology and the physiognomy of a car

Fred Simeone’s new book about the conservation and preservation of cars is out today, launched at Bonhams’s “Preserving the Automobile” auction at the Simeone Foundation Automotive Museum, Philadelphia, – [Link]. Fred is prompting a reevaluation of car collecting with his support for sensitive preservation rather than restoration. There have been two preservation classes of cars…

automotive connoisseurship

Palo Alto Concours d’Elegance – . Taking a tour with Jon Summers. What are the values and principles that govern the collection of cars? Just what are the values applied to these extraordinary artifacts? Age, elegance, finish, rarity, historical significance, market value … These are questions of automotive connoisseurship.

Paul Ingrassia – 15 cars for America

Pulitzer Prize winner Paul Ingrassia was with our Revs Program yesterday at the VAIL Facility of CARS (the Center for Automotive Research at Stanford). He was sharing with us his superb new book: Engines of Change: A History of the American Dream in 15 Cars.   Written in his crisp and elegant prose, the book…