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Phil Patton

Phil Patton is a writer and a journalist who primarily writes about automobiles. He is a contributing editor at Departures and Esquire magazines, and writes on automobile design for The New York Times, serves as a consulting curator, and published Bug: The Strange Mutations Of The World's Most Famous Automobile, in 2004. 

Articles by this Author

The Ford Mustang changed the industry when its creator realized “people want economy so badly they don’t care what they pay for it”
What we spent to get through 1964
Highway, October 2002 | Vol. 53, No. 5
Hidden agreements have made all business workplaces remarkably similar.
From Berlin to Washington to Area 51, landmarks of the era are opening up to tourists.
IN THE WORLD OF ALTERNATE HISTORY, IT ALL CAME OUT DIFFERENTLY—AND IN AN ERA WHEN REAL HISTORY IS TAKING SOME VERY STRANGE TURNS, THE GENRE IS FLOURISHING AS NEVER BEFORE
Invention, May/June 1999 | Vol. 50, No. 3
Growing up on a Cold War air base in the shadow of the big one
Bill Mitchell’s imaginings brought you the cars of Detroit’s ultimate classic era
You’ve probably never heard of them, but these ten people changed your life. Each of them is a big reason why your world today is so different from anyone’s world in 1954
BORN IN SLAVERY AND RAISED IN ITS PAINFUL AFTERMATH TO BECOME ONE OF THE MOST POWERFUL AMERICAN ICONS, SHE HAS BEEN MADE TO ENCOMPASS LOVE AND GUILT AND RIDICULE AND WORSHIP —AND STILL SHE LIVES ON
Made in U.S.A., April 1992 | Vol. 43, No. 2
The Secret Histories of the Things That Made America

"WEB ONLY STORIES" BY THIS CONTRIBUTOR

Innovation With American Heritage approaching its fiftieth birthday in December 2004, we asked five leading historians and cultural commentators to each pick 10 leading developments in American life in the last half-century. In this fifth installment, Phil Patton—whose books include Made in USA:…