Outdoors Cars Redux

Eric Sharp points out that U.S. automakers seem to pay less and less attention to features that might appeal to those actually participating in outdoors activities like hunting and fishing, and suggests that there’s plenty of room for lower-priced, well-thought-out designs. Remembering a recent auto show, he says “Why not build a vehicle that’s really designed for outdoors people and instead of tarting it up with leather seats, high-end stereo systems and similar useless bling, give us stuff we can really use while keeping the price down.” In the Detroit Free Press.
Sharp’s comments reminded us of last spring’s terrific article by Kit Kiefer in The New York Times about the 1940s Nash Airflyte and its connection to humorist Ed Zern. “Fly-fishing in the Catskills was the preferred sport of the outdoor writer Ed Zern, and the Au Sable was where Nash’s chairman, George Mason, persuaded Zern in 1950 to write the ads that did as much for Nash’s reputation as an outdoors vehicle as its comfy convertible beds.”