posted by canadiancatgreen
I do have a real thing for the early Ramblers. Partly it’s that I find their bathtub styling and covered front wheels refreshingly different. But mostly it’s because the whole concept of the Rambler was so different than others at the time, being strictly an upscale, high-trim car, designed to appeal to sophisticated and affluent women most of all. That was a bold strategy, and one that got the Rambler off to a good start in 1951. Well, that and its advanced unibody construction, heating/ventilation, and some other aspects.
But by 1954, that small niche was becoming satiated, and Rambler sales had been dropping. 1953 was a cruel year, given the devastating price war initiated by Ford and Chevy. Rambler had to drop its prices, and that started the brand towards the direction of becoming a genuine low-price competitor. Although this Super Country Club hardtop was now 15% more affordable than the hardtop had been in ’53, Nash was still billing these as “The World’s Most Luxurious Compact Cars”. Um, maybe “America’s” might have been more accurate?
There’s some name-dropping here at the bottom “Among Famous Rambler Owners”. I do wonder if this brochure was created before AMC decided to drop its prices substantially for 1954?
Although women were still very prominent throughout the 1955 brochure, the name dropping was gone, and now it was “never before have cars so fine been priced so low!” Reality check.
All this and much more in my in-depth article about the Rambler and how it saved AMC in the 1950s:
Junkyard Classic/Automotive History: 1955 Rambler Cross Country – How Rambler Won The Compact And Price Wars Of The 1950’s And Saved AMC
Americans just weren’t buying smaller cars at this time, Buick was number 3 in sales.
I wonder how the sales trajectory would have been if Nash/AMC continued selling the Rambler as a small but upscale car. They could have even subtly pushed both luxury and economy by noting you could buy a Rambler with air conditioning (new for 1954) for the same price as many large cars without A/C. Thus marketed, they may not have exploded in popularity in the 1958 recession as much as they did, but the upscale image would have come in handy in the 1960s. Instead, they had to run away from the Rambler’s image as a car for tightwads.
I think the death knell for positioning the Rambler as an upscale model was ultimately the decision to abandon the big Hudson and Nash in favor of Rambler. At that point, there was no longer anything to be an upscale companion TO (unless you want to count the relationship between the later Rambler American and the Rambler 6, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone describe a Rambler American as “upscale” or “upmarket” with a straight face.)
Why is it so essential to have a “companion TO” larger car? I don’t see that the initial success of the high-content, high-price Rambler had anything to do with the large Nashes/Hudsons also in the showrooms.
The appeal of the initial Rambler was because it was a completely new and unique concept (compact, stylish convertible-sedan, wagon with upscale interior and image). It appealed to buyers (many women) who undoubtedly also bought the latest clothing, decorating and other fashions. It was the hot new little thing in a certain upscale-leaning demographic. And I’m sure they couldn’t have cared less about the big Nashes and Hudsons in the showroom.
The reason Rambler sale deflated after a few years was that its initial demographic’s demand was satiated, and because after a couple of years, the Rambler wasn’t new or fashionable anymore . The “latest fashion” demographic can be very fickle! By 1953-1954, there were a very large number of import cars available, and imports were now the hot new thing.
So AMC had no choice but to change the target demo, to a larger but less affluent one, which necessitated lowering prices and offering lower trim versions. That actually turned out fine, as the mass shift away from overly-large Big 3 cars took off by 1957-1958, big time.
In reality, no, it didn’t, but the latter helped to make the former palatable to dealers and the sales organization, which would have balked and squirmed otherwise. Saying “Here’s our new second line, which we’ve positioned to be chic and profitable” is one thing; betting the farm on it is quite another. For that matter, I don’t think George Mason anticipated that the Rambler would ever replace the big Nash, and I honestly don’t know if he would have gone for it had he still been alive when Romney proposed it. (And of course the Rambler they consolidated around was bigger and more ordinary than the original.)
Did AMC really have any other choice? Sales of the big Nashes and Hudsons essentially collapsed from 1955 through 1957. There wasn’t any money to give the cars the complete redesign they desperately needed (and it might not have worked in the long haul, given that the medium-price segment was hit especially hard by the 1958 recession).
Mason was an astute leader, so I can’t imagine him fighting to keep two cars in production when their sales were rapidly evaporating. At the most, I could see him demanding that the 1958 Ambassador be badged as a Hudson and Nash, with minor grille differences, to keep the nameplates alive.
Arguably not, but that’s not the point I was trying to make, which is that continuing the Rambler specifically as a chic upmarket compact as a sole product line would have been a hard sell for the sales force. Obviously, AMC did consolidate around the Rambler, but their primary product was neither as small nor as upmarket as the original, and never would be again because AMC wanted it to be a volume product rather than an interesting niche item.
> The “latest fashion” demographic can be very fickle!
If the Rambler were to maintain its initial upscale rep, it was crucial it be perceived as not merely fashionable, but desirable. Fashion as you said is fickle, but desirability can last for decades and allow a product’s coolness to be passed down generations, as with a Rolex submariner watch or a Fender Stratocaster electric guitar… or a BMW 3 series, a small-but-upscale car that has been popular since the late ’70s. That’s why I suggested making A/C a selling point – it speaks to desirability rather than fashion, plus the Nash air conditioning was much less expensive than GM’s or Ford’s making it more difficult for them to quickly hop on the same bandwagon. If anything, Nash and AMC should have concentrated their efforts on the Rambler much sooner than they did, using profits from the early fashionable Ramblers to improve the car and keep it unique and ahead of the competition.
The problem with that is that the early Rambler didn’t have the chops to be more than a passing fashion. By the time a/c was available in 1954, the fad had already passed, and it’s questionable if it would have helped a year or two earlier. Let’s not forget that the bulk of the Great Import Boom of the 1950s was essentially a fad: import’s market share plummeted from over 10% in 1959 to some 3+% in 1961.
The only imports that really survived that were the ones that truly excelled on their virtues. The little Rambler didn’t have them, for the most part. Compare a 1961 Rambler with a 1961 Monza coupe: there’s no comparison as to which one appealed more to this demographic looking for the next new stylish/sporty thing.
Standard a/c sure didn’t help the 1969 Ambassador any. 🙂
I’m afraid the media has gotten to me, to the point where I’m unable to look at any Rambler without wondering, “Hey buddy, how do I get this car out of second gear?”
I’m not getting that; I guess the media hasn’t gotten to me yet.
“Beep Beep” by the Playmates.
Lyrics:
https://genius.com/The-playmates-beep-beep-lyrics
I wasn’t born yet in 1958, but that record (featuring a Nash Rambler that somehow could outrun a big Cadillac to the Caddy owner’s chagrin) made me assume any notion of Ramblers as upscale cars was gone by the late ’50s. It’s different nowadays when there are all sorts of small but fast cars on the market, some of which are prestigious as well.
I never knew this song was about a Rambler as the name meant nothing in the UK. So it was re-recorded with a bubble car instead doing the beeping. Also, the BBC wouldn’t play anything that mentioned a brand name. Which killed off the only genuine British R&R tune Vince Taylor’s Brand New Cadillac, but that’s another rabbit hole.
https://youtu.be/iBfoXqt7w1M
Sorry I never owned one. What a great car to impress my girlfriends! Well, for one who was dating driving International Travelalls, what can I say? I scored. I was also selling IH’s. It looked good to show up at potential and extant IH buyers in the product.
The initial sales success of the Rambler made sense, but by 1960 GM brought out the Corvair and followed that with a stylish trio of compacts from Pontiac, Oldsmobile, and Buick. These were quite up scale, with colorful interiors that could be filled with options. And GM restyled them every year. Though the Rambler was a good car, AMC just couldn’t compete with GM’s new fashion models. Planned obsolescence by styling was hard to compete against. Few buyers wanted to buy a new car that looked like a several years old design.
…and yet, most of the imports, everything from VW Beetles to Jaguars to big Mercedes sedans to British and Italian roadsters sold well despite going a long time without styling changes. Amongst the US auto manufacturers, there seems to be an unbreakable notion in the ’50s and ’60s that GM’s way was the only way to succeed.
You know what they say about familiarity breeding contempt. Outside of some major metropolitan areas, Americans of the fifties and sixties didn’t see a Jaguar or a Mercedes all that terribly often, but even kids could often distinguish a ’62 Chevrolet from a ’63, and depreciation was such that a domestic car being out of season probably also meant its value had taken a big hit.
I grew up in an area with enough Jag’s and Mercedes that they were regular sights, but as a kid I could ALWAYS distinguish a ‘62 Chevy from a ‘63, as well as pretty much every year from ‘55 to the early seventies. By then I just didn’t care.
I’m not a fan of the ‘creeps-along-the-ground-on-no-wheels’ hovercar look.
I don’t think that shade of yellow is doing this car any favours either. While I like the colour in isolation, it just doesn’t seem to work on this shape.
And surely by 1954 the no-wheel-arches look was passé. Nobody else had copied Nash in this stylistic dead end, and the narrow track necessitated by the lack of wheel arches was antithetical to good handling. You’d get even more interior room by pushing the wheels out. Give it a open wheel arches and a wider stance and it would be quite a…. but, maybe not, you’ve still got that funky windshield shape.
It’s a Nash design – guess that says it all!