image courtesy automobileandamericanlife.blogspot.com
(First Posted October 30, 2013) I’ve had a couple of dream jobs. Nah – take that back. I’ve had quite a few dream jobs, one of which was being the guy who decides how many stars and diamonds a restaurant, tourist attraction, resort, hotel, motel or campground would get in an annual travel directory. My territory was Colorado and Utah. I had to dine, ski, raft, balloon and horseback ride. It was hard work, especially the helicopter skiing.
I wore out cars. So, I got a new one every year. The company bought a fleet of GM X-cars and it became time to trade in the Citation assigned to me the year before. It was so undependable, we had to lease another car, while it was in the shop. After the X-car fiasco, I was allowed to once again, choose my ride. The car needed to get outstanding gas mileage. It had to represent the company with flair and elan. It had to be an American brand. And – it had to be within budget. I asked for the Motor Trend Car of the Year – the AMC/Renault Alliance.
To sell the Board on it, I got it stripped, yet customized, for the job. Radio reception while driving in Colorado was poor once you left the Front Range – so no radio. I wanted the System Sentry feature. Manual transmissions with four cylinder engines were better in the mountains than automatic, and gave better gas mileage. Finally, I made a deal. No air conditioning in exchange for the largest sun roof available. When the new car arrived, I was the happy guy with a boner. It was new! It had the hugest honking sun roof between Las Vegas and Kansas City! It wasn’t the Citation!
The Alliance was simple formal-looking two door sedan. In keeping with the more upscale appearance, it also had dual headlights and color coded Federal bumpers. It didn’t look cheap. Not only was Motor Trend impressed with the Alliance, so were much of the auto critics of that day. Over a half million Alliances were sold in the US before Chrysler terminated the Renault deal when they bought AMC during the 1980s. Chrysler didn’t want it competing with their own products.
The interior was light gray velour cloth, better than what was offered in the GM J cars. The interior was roomy for four adults. The seats were amazing. Renaults used pedestal bucket seats, which meant that they had a center rail, leaving both sides of the seats wide open. These seats not only reclined, they also tilted upon the pedestal and were very comfortable. I discovered that I could take a boom box that had detachable speakers and place each speaker perfectly under the seats while leaving the cassette and radio unit in the center console to operate. I could play all my favorite punk rock. The dashboard was legit. Unlike the joke dashboard I stared at in the Citation, the Alliance presented a thoroughly modern dashboard with full instrumentation. The System Sentry display appeared at the top left of the dash next to the A pillar. When shutting the car off, the System Sentry display would flash green for a second or two, then display a green light next to the six fluids it checked automatically, or if a level was low, a red light. It was good to know when I was getting low on a fluid and have the garage tend to it.
The customized tinted sunroof was huge, but also heavy. Skeptics said it could leak, but they were wrong. It took up a lot of trunk space when removed. I usually drove the Alliance without the roof so I could enjoy the Colorado sun and mountain scenery. It was nice to be able to see up while driving along canyons and within the forests. It made the car seem even larger. I never regretted not having air conditioning. On long trips across Colorado I usually didn’t dress up and with the sunroof open, I could just wear shorts and work on my tan. It was awesome!
The five speed coupled with the 1.4 liter engine worked well together. The engine delivered excellent gas mileage as well – about 40 mpg. The ride was amazing. I raced through the Rockies and the Uintas, over the High Plains and the San Juans without feeling that the steering or ride was too soft to hug the roads on sharp curves. It rode better than anything in its class. Mountain driving can be hard on cars. Climbing steep mountains, hills and dropping down Floyd Hill on I-70 can wear out a car’s engine, brakes and transmission. Having a trouble-free dependable ride for a year on this job was unusual. The car didn’t fail. I picked up one scratch on the front bumper in Golden Colorado, and needed to replace one of the sun roof braces I snapped off in Canon City. I was actually sad to see it go when it was time to move on.
I replaced the Alliance with a Cougar. The Board made a fleet deal with Mercury and it was either the Cougar or a Lynx. Once again, I chose wisely. I needed to be across state to review a Victorian bed and breakfast in Durango where there would be a limo to take me a heliport to fly into Purgatory for some skiing, so I had to get going or I couldn’t be in Aspen the week after. Hard work, but someone had to do it!
Thanks for a great write-up! Seeing that interior picture brings back a lot of memories, My mom had a 1983 Alliance 2 door, black with tan interior very smart looking car. It was terribly un reliable, and gutless, partly because of the automatic my mom required. But it Was a very tossable, fun handling little car.And I loved watching the sentry LED’s do there thing!
The Alliance was front drive? Was going back to a rwd Cougar tough in snow country? I’ve usually been impressed by how well Colorado does snow removal, so maybe it didn’t matter?
The cars were incredibly different. What I liked about the Cougar was it’s speed, size and luxury. It was a gas pig compared to the Alliance. After spending years being pampered wherever I went, I got to a point where I believed I deserved the extras found in the Cougar. I worked hard to save costs throughout the year, so I splurged that year and got the Cat.
The biggest challenge driving in Winter Colorado was staying on the road going downhill. So I didn’t have problems going uphill in the rear drive Cougar. I knew the roads so well across the states that I always took precautions wherever I drove.
I never had an accident with over eight years on the road, and every day I expected that luck to run out – hence my luck. As a matter of fact, I haven’t had a ticket since 1991. I discovered that when, last year, I was ticketed for running a stop sign at an intersection that didn’t exist, so I contested it and the County Attorney was shocked to discover my flawless driving record since that time.
And that ticket – well – that’s another Autobiography waiting to be written!
This was a “teacher” car where I lived. Rarely saw one outside the teacher lot at my high school. I think there were at least three of them.
Very nice article on a car rarely seen today. I’m glad yours was reliable, because everyone I knew who bought one said it was the least reliable car that they had ever owned.
I carpooled with someone who owned a sedan, and the ride and interior comfort were terrific compared to other small cars of that time. The car’s reliability, unfortunately, wasn’t so great.
Chrysler didn’t discontinue the Alliance just because it was concerned about in-house competition with the Dodge Shadow and Plymouth Sundance. Alliance sales were strong for the first two years. In 1983 it was the second best-selling small car in the country after the Ford Escort, if I recall correctly. Alliance sales sagged in 1985, as word of the car’s atrocious reliability spread, and fell off a cliff in 1986. Strong competition from the all-new 1984 Honda Civic and a greatly improved 1985 1/2 Ford Escort didn’t help.
Falling Alliance sales were a big reason why Renault was desperate to sell AMC in the first place. The old AMC Kenosha plant was also badly outdated. Renault needed to build a whole new plant for the next-generation Alliance. Renault either didn’t have the money for this, or the French government, which held a substantial stake in Renault at the time, didn’t want to invest money in an American factory. This car’s failure ended Renault’s American ambitions.
The key to having a reliable Alliance was to have traded in an X-Car for it. Had he traded in a Toyota, it wouldn’t have seemed so dependable. The Alliance sold in big numbers for a short period. As stories about ownership experiences spread, demand evaporated. Chrysler wasn’t worried about competition from the Renault 9, but they were worried about one of the most costly recalls due to the Renault’s habit of scalding passengers with coolant from blown heater cores.
FWIW, he did only have it for one year.
Agreed.
VanillaDude had it long enough to appreciate the car’s good points, without experiencing the heartache.
The Alliance I rode in as part of a carpool really was very comfortable. The ride was head-and-shoulders above anything else in that price class, and the seats had a “premium” feel to them. Too bad AMC and Renault didn’t work to address the reliability issues, as the car did have its strengths.
I remember reading the Motor Trend COTY issue at the time, and getting the impression the Alliance was going to win because AMC and Renault seemed like they were trying so hard to produce a mass market winner.
The car looked fragile to my eyes, but it seemed to be an advanced design at the time. I didn’t find it attractive, but it seemed the car most directed towards the future.
Renault wasn’t desperate to sell AMC, in fact, the deal almost didn’t happen, there were three years of negotiations. Chrysler wanted only to buy Jeep, but Renaults position was they they had to buy the whole company. AMC took a bit longer than the other three USA car companies to get back to profitability during the 80’s, everyone was in trouble. Renault’s President didn’t want to sell because they had invested so much into AMC and felt that Jeep and the Premier to be launched in 1988 were going to pay off in big dividends. It was only the Assassination of the President of Renault in December of 1986 that triggered the sale. There was much uncertainty in France with Renault and it’s leadership. They were having their own issues. The price Chrysler Paid ended up giving Renault all of it’s money back and more. They made a profit on the deal. AMC was cut off financially from Renault in 1985 and AMC was able to independently raise 200 million dollars of cash from Carl Icahn to keep the company in good operating condition. You are correct that Alliance Sales were down and so were the Encore, but Jeep was strong and Renault (wrongly) thought the Premier was the answer for the North American Market. This is all documented in the book, “The Last American President” by Joseph Cappy, the last President of AMC before Chrysler took over.
Renault was shopping the corporation after having plowed a ton of money into it to keep it afloat, and then bring the Alliance and Encore to market. That sounds desperate to me…particularly since Renault realized that the Kenosha plant was woefully outdated and would need to be replaced.
Vanilla dude must have lucked out and got a good Alliance; I drove an ’85 Encore( the hatchback version of the Appliance), it was certainly more reliable than the X-car I traded in one it(what wasn’t?), it had excellent handling, good fuel economy but enough mechanical and electrical glitches in it that after four years of ownership I never wanted another French car.
There was at least one other good Appliance – my wife’s cousin bought one and drove it until pretty recently. It was probably one of the last on the road when she gave up on it.
Hey Vdude, nice article. Miss you over at TTAC.
We had one of these abandoned at our dump where I worked in the CO mountains, maybe your old one, lol. It had been sitting over ten years when we decided to revive as a forest road bomber. Cranked right up and ran very well once some vacuum leaks were addressed. The build quality of the car was atrocious for the long term owner excepting the engine. The speedo and tach needles were reverse boners from sun exposure. The rest of the interior had the melted chocolate bar effect going on. All the tactile parts were falling off or needing attention.
Of course none of this stopped me from taking it on extended trips on my day off. Never insured or registered it as I figured the fines would be less, lol. Fines have changed due to this sort of skulduggery but it never left me stranded. Definitely not a “dead guy car” to quote Jerry Seinfeld.
Best,
Jeff
I’m better off here than at TTAC, I get into less trouble here. Now – I didn’t say no trouble – less, and I appreciate Mr. Niedermeyer’s excellent work, don’t you?
The epicness of your tirades is missed. Good writing, don’t forget the salsa picante.
Agreed!
Ah, this makes me a little sad. I wish that French cars had been reliable enough to survive over here. So many clever touches, not to mention their interstate-friendly philosophy for seat comfort and suspension tuning.
A long time since I’ve seen one of these on UK roads,the British climate destroyed them.
Cool to learn a little about the man behind the handle…strange to read a positive report about the Alliance, then again ANYTHING after a Citation was a step up!
Interesting a car not seen here. Renault has an [appalling reputation here for making junk its nice to see it isnt all like that.
My dad being one of the last stalwart AMC guys almost bought an Appliance. Almost. And his (and my) world was better for it. Until he bought the Medallion…
My dad, who owned a trouble-filled Alliance, seriously considered buying a Medallion wagon – until my mom yelled at him to the effect of “what the hell are you thinking, wanting to buy another shitty Renault? I’m not driving it!”
Other vehicles purchased by my dad include a Simca, a Gremlin, and an Eagle Summit
I assume this is the Renault 9 (the sedan) – Renault 11 (the hatchback) from the eighties.
A colleague had one in the early nineties, it had 350,000 km (about 220,000 miles) on the clock when he sold it and bought his first brand new car, a Renault 19. He still works with me and he still drives Renault, he never drove anything else since he got his driver’s license.
These Renault models from the eighties sold very well, comfortable no-nonsense and fuel efficient cars at a fair price. If I recall correctly the 9 and 11 were the first Renaults with a decent rust proofing, after all the pre-1980 rust buckets.
I had an ’83 Alliance. It handled ok but was terribly, terribly slow, even with its 5-speed manual. It was reliable enough for the times, right up until 75,000 miles when it began rapidly self-destructing. But damn, was that car comfy and good looking.
Slow….slow….slow….
Apparently there was no Alliance 1.4 turbo that did 120 mph.
We got this over here. Really quite nice too: https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-european/curbside-classic-1987-renault-gta-an-alliance-of-a-different-stripe/ 2.0L, 90hp, lots of torque. Faster than a GTI.
This is a great article, fantastic work, I look forward to seeing more Vanilladude pieces on here.
Also, did the company go out of business, or why would you ever quit a job like that? If I had to envision what I’d do if I won the lotto, it sounds like you were paid for?!? Awesome
Thank you!
I left for a better job that paid me a salary triple what I was making and instead of just Colorado and Utah, I covered the entire country and the Caribbean. Instead of a sweet little Alliance, I flew first class and chose my pick of cars.
More later.
We used to come back from uni on my friend’s R11 (Encore over there, me thinks). Same platform.
Agreed on the ride and seats, very stable car. The engine however, a 1.4 lt, was hopeless.
80’s Renaults had 2-3 characteristics that made them lovable: they glued to the road and their seats were terrific. Sadly they overheated, rusted and were expensive as hell to fix.
I wonder what the American car market would look like today had these things been reliable. They were hugely popular for about 2-3 years and then the reliability did them in. My guess is that some of the lesser Japanese automakers like Mazda and Mitsubishi would never have gained a foothold and VW would have suffered mightily. I wonder if some of the reliability problems stemmed from the fact that a vast number of them began life as rental cars and then AMC dealers had no idea how to fix the things. They were used to dealing with antediluvian cast iron things that hadn’t changed in nearly thirty years and were suddenly confronted with ADVANCED EUROPEAN TECHNOLOGY FROM THE FUTURE!!!! AMC also probably did not have the money to train the mechanics like GM, Ford and even Chrysler did.
My Father never owned one of these, but did own both of its “parents”, as he had a 1968 R10 (air cooled) and actually two Ramblers (a 1961 and a 1963). They were all 3 “no nonsense” basic cars that got the job done. I think he got rid of the R10 because it had a manual transmission despite the timing (during the first gas shortage) mostly because he wanted my Mother to be able to drive it too (she never really learned to drive manual, though the car she learned to drive on was a semi-automatic Chrysler)…it got really good gas mileage. I think he would have had the Ramblers longer, but the ’63 was t-boned in an accident in 1965 near Catonsville, MD. I never asked him why he got the ’63 so soon after the ’61 (two Ramblers in a row).
I remember seeing an Alliance in the parking lot at a party I went to early in 1983, they had just come out. One of the other guys at the party (someone I worked with) had bought a Concord and I remember him looking it over. They must have been pretty scarce in my circles, I don’t remember seeing any others up close after that…too bad, they look like they would have done well (especially if the price of fuel hadn’t gone down in the mid-80’s).
My dad bought a red 1986 Alliance when I was a kid… despite the fact that the Encore he test drove broke down on the test drive.
It was a nice car when it ran – cushy velour interior, self-reversing tape deck, sharp looking. But it had a ton of problems, mostly electrical – the computer had to be replaced several times, it stalled a bunch of times, ect. He finally got tired of it, bought a stripped Eagle Summit (rebadged Mitsubishi Mirage) and put it in the garage to give to my brother when he turned 16. The second time my brother drove it, the interference timing belt went and took out the engine, and that was the end of our Alliance with the Alliance. Older brother ended up getting a used ’87 LeBaron, which became mine when I turned 17.
My mom’s family were Renault people in the late 70s-early 80s. My grandmother had a LeCar (replaced a Dodge Coronet) and I believe an uncle had an Encore. They each went to Mazda by the mid-80s, she to a GLC hatchback, he to a 626 coupe, which was a pretty cool car.
I remember seeing Alliances around (often in black or grey) in the late 80s, very early 90s. I don’t think I’ve actually seen one on the road since Clinton was elected president.
I’ll chime in that the seats in these cars were superb. My family had a (related) ’85 Encore hatchback that we had purchased new. That car was outstanding in many ways – super-reliable, responsive, comfortable, and it hauled a lot of stuff.
I’ve read horror stories about the Alliance and Encore, but apparently, we got a good one. It remains one of my favorite cars my parents had purchased.
Didn’t the XJ Cherokee still use basically the same seats until it was discontinued? It’s easy to forget now, but the XJ and Alliance were contemporaries and shared a LOT, especially at first.
Dave, I think you’re right – same seats!
Same seats in the earlier versions. By the time I owned my two 2001’s, the seats had been changed to something ordinary.
In 1985 I purchased an Encore GS, I traded in a 1980 GM X car and I was not sad to see it go (absolutely the worst car I ever owned). The GS had decent acceleration with the 1.7 engine and the 5 speed and handling with the 60 series tires was quite good. Unfortunately soon after I bought it things started going wrong-nowhere near as bad as the X-car but rather irritating nonetheless. First a radiator hose, then a teflon bushing in the steering column, problems with the front break pads squealing. When I took the car in for the bushing replacement they reinstalled the steering wheel upside down. The dealer had enough problems with repairing problems I finally gave up and started taking the car to an independent repair shop.
I traded it in 1989 for a Mercury Tracer which turned out to be vastly better vehicle in terms of reliability; after the Encore I never wanted another French car again.
problems fixing things properly
Wow nwflvr, I think we lived parallel lives. I had a maroon 83 Alliance DL that I traded in for an 89 Tracer as well! And my Alliance also had issues with the radiator hoses and repeated brake pad issues. There were a lot of cool features about the Alliance–one of them was that at least on the DL trim, there was an outside trunk lid lock that could either be locked or left in a position where you could open the trunk without the key. Also, like some Fords of that era, it had the horn on the turn signal stalk. I got used to moving my hand quickly to the side if I needed to hit the horn and made that motion for a little while after I got the Tracer. At least you had the 1.7 though, the 1.4 did get amazing gas mileage, but was really weak especially when the AC was on. Also, the car was about as aerodynamic as a brick. Crossing over a bridge with cross-winds was nerve wracking.
I’m in the ’89 Tracer club too! I bought it new, 3 door 5 speed. But I never had an Alliance…
I had one, an ’86 coupe, base. 1.4, four speed. Nothing significant went bad with mine, but I only kept it three years. 38 mpg, iirc. Controls were so light & easy even with manual steering, decent ride and handling, very comfortable, great visibility. Adults could use the back seat. A vast improvement over, say, a Chevette or a Pinto. A friend had an Escort. That was truck-like in the driving experience and the seats were nowhere near as comfortable.
I wanted a Honda Civic but made the mistake of letting my wife convince me we should buy a new 1983 Alliance because she wanted an “American” car. My post would be unreadably long if I listed all the problems we had with that piece of crap from the very beginning of ownership. Absolutely the worst collection of unreliable spare parts to roll in the same general direction (some of the time, i.e., WHEN it rolled). Garbage, absolute garbage. After two frightful years of trying to dump it for more than the loan value I pushed it to the Honda dealer and begged for mercy. Had our state’s lemon law been in effect prior to this fiasco it would have been gone long before that.
Sorry you were forced to drive something you didn’t want. Sorry it wasn’t a Honda Civic. Sorry your wife wanted to drive something “American”. The moment you started by saying, “I wanted a Honda Civic but” – I recognized a possible problem at the root of your story.
You sounded like my brother.
My brother hated my first car. He wanted something else, but when I left for university, he was given my car to use. He complained every time he had to drive it. He wouldn’t take car of it. He complained whenever he had to service it. He wouldn’t vacuum it. He wouldn’t wash it. He wanted everyone to know that the car he was driving wasn’t what he really wanted to drive. He wanted something else so bad, he couldn’t handle being seen in it. We all got sick of his behavior. Every time I returned from university, he would tell me what a piece of junk my car was and how it fell apart whenever he drove it. Sure it needed some attention, but it wasn’t a bad car.
It was a good car. It’s just that he wanted something else. He, to this day, still bitches and moans about that nice, simple little car.
So, sorry you didn’t get your Honda Civic.
Oh, give me a break. I’ve owned lots of vehicles. Some I “wanted’, some were simply filling a need. Most of them were reliable, certainly far more so than the Alliance. The Appliance was a total piece of garbage that we treated well. We serviced it, we vacuumed it, we washed it. It did not return the favor. It was horribly unreliable. It was not a nice, simple little car. It was the worst, that is, most unreliable, vehicle we have ever owned. Period. That’s the problem at the root of our story.
My only associated with the Alliance was that we had one as a rental car on a vacation trip to Chicago in 1985.
I thought it was a fair attempt at an economy car, and I did note that the back windows rolled all the way down, as that was one of my things back then!
It served us well, but never saw myself buying one. Good thing!
One of the best cars to own or drive for only a year. Best friend in college was gifted a new first year Alliance by his parents to replace his 71 Nova. Very sharp burgundy on burgundy little rig with white wall tires. Gutless with automatic transmission and the a/c on but it would blast through snow like a snow leopard. I believe they chose it because his Mom’s six month old Olds Firenza spent most of it’s time at the dealer under repair. Three years and two transmissions later he bought a Honda, Alliance sold for a fraction of the cost
I think I was in the sixth grade the last time I saw one of these plying the streets under its own power. The remaining ones since then have been in abandoned lots or rotting in a junkyard somewhere. Its equally sorry sibling the Encore has a similar fate in my memories.