From Depression to Recession, have automakers learned nothing from history?

Classic car events have taken on a slightly elegiac tone, as the big, easy money that sustains the hobby has gotten harder to find. At the Greenwich Concourse in Connecticut last weekend, there seemed more than a little irony in all the wealthy car owners dressed in Depression-era outfits.

It's fascinating that the suicidal strategy pursued by prestige carmakers such as Packard, Pierce Arrow and Duesenberg in the late 1920s and early '30s — leading with big luxury cars powered by V-12 and V-16 engines — mirrors the reliance on gas-guzzler SUVs that's gotten Detroit into its current pickle.

Here's a particularly elaborate Greenwich Concours period piece, with some commentary about what it all means. Norman B. Hathaway and his wife Lorraine Janus Hathaway (the friendly "flapper" interviewed) own a 1928 Rolls-Royce Phantom I Springfield Newmarket:

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