I’ve just spent five minutes staring at this picture, trying to make sense of it. Yes, I know; nobody ever spent that much time closely looking at a 1969 Ambassador’s rear end cap, garnished by a heraldic crest, or whatever that is. Well, at least not since it was approved by Dick Teague, AMC’s design chief.
I wonder what he thought of it. Just another desperate attempt to make a two year-old body look different by covering up what had originally been the taillight. And we think that it must have been exciting to be an automotive stylist back in the good old days.
Ok, now we can move on to the rest of this car, shot and posted by William Garret.
Of course that was a minor detail compared to the most fundamental stylistic nightmare of these Ambassadors: their absurdly long noses grafted to the Rebel body. If you spend five minutes looking closely at this one and have any sense of proportion, you’ll likely start feeling a bit queasy about three minutes in. Or less.
This kind of thing sort-of worked back in the ’40s and early ’50s, but by the mid-late 60s, a more cohesive and organic approach to design had become increasingly widespread. This is just embarrassing; a bad Photoshop.
And that’s without even considering the ultra-tacky strip of plasti-wood along the bottom.
My eyes naturally gravitate to that gen2 Corvair in the back; talk about a study in contrasts.
Here’s a wider shot of the rear end. I’m guessing the ’67 Imperial’s rear end had some influence here.
Another look at the vertical radio and the odd ignition switch position.
No wonder these sold so poorly; what a mess. The ’67 Rebel body was a pretty decent starting point, but it just got buried in more and more kitsch.
I think the only styling home run ever hit by AMC was the Javelin and its AMX version.
But that’s just one man’s opinion.
(Edit: I actually have a soft spot for the ’63 Rambler Classic, too. 😉)
I would add the original 1970 Hornet.
Yeah, I can see that JP… sort of a spiritual successor to the aforementioned Rambler Classic.
The Hornet looked great until they bobbed its tail to make the Gremlin. 😉
But in AMC’s defense, they didn’t have the deep pockets of GM or Ford.
The ’79 Spirit was also a Hornet/Concord with its tail lopped off, but was actually nicely proportioned; if I’d never seen a Hornet i’d wouldn’t suspect the Spirit wasn’t a clean-sheet design. I think it would have sold well had they offered it in 1970 rather than 1979 when it already seemed obsolete.
The Spirit was based on a 1974 show car, the Gremlin G-II. The basic design therefore existed well before 1979.
It’s a shame AMC didn’t bring out the Spirit for 1975 as a new-generation Javelin. Instead, it wasted scarce development dollars on the Matador coupe and Pacer.
The Hornet Sportabout was very handsome – the best-looking wagon since the original Chevrolet Nomad and Pontiac Safari, in my opinion. The Hornet hatchback was also very attractive.
The 1973 and later Hornets were also one of the few existing designs not ruined by the adoption of 5-mph bumpers. Teague did a good job of adapting the basic design to the 5-mph bumpers.
That lead photo is exactly the picture that came to mind when we were discussing the odd styling quirks on the Rebel recently. This was always just bad.
I always thought the 1977 Buick Electra had some of this going on too – a big tailfin-like filler panel where a taillamp obviously belongs, but isn’t there. Or wasn’t until the ’78 and ’79 models which is how it should have looked all along. It’s almost like they designed the 78/79 rear end first, then decided to save them for later.
Yup, it’s dreadful. The chrome wheels don’t help at all either. And that insipid green that 80% of AMC survivors seem to be painted.
The crisp vs kitschy balance on Teague’s work really fell off the scales by 1973, makes you wonder what he was thinking or what was really going on in his life..
Teague still had the XJ Cherokee going forward at that point. It’s hard to believe it was the work of the same guy who designed the Pacer.
These always got my attention and not just because they were rare. For their size, they do have some presence. Personally, I warm to the lean-forward front clip and the short front overhang…I actually thought the nose looked pretty good, notwithstanding the 7/8ths scale of the car attached to it. Then it does indeed go completely haywire in back…not only an unforunate mess, but nothing to do with the rest of the car. They were defintely smoking some good stuff.
I don’t think it looks so terrible in this 2-door hardtop…the example found in this article is probably the worst color combo someone could have ordered. Being from Kenosha, I do have a soft spot for AMCs…the 1967-68 designs are their best, in my opinion.
Pretty harsh words,coming from a website so enthralled with Peugeots.
+1
+2
YES YES YES!
No doubt AMC was especially desperate by the time they came out with that model.
I enjoyed your article which although it rightfully pointed out many of the cars garish design flaws, managed to be humorous.
Unless maybe you had the misfortune of marrying dick teague’s ugly stepdaughter and were religiously defensive about the increasingly homely grocery-getters.
It was even said back then that people that owned these models only shopped for their groceries late at night when no one could see them.
Being a hopeless- romantic car lover and collector I’ve had some of these models so I like to end off by saying:
AMC really tried! Remember they made the nifty little AMX for a few years. I had a black one with go-pack and all performance options, and a red 70 with white stripe and all luxury options, which were pretty cute cars –with the 390 they were even contenders in a few informal street races we participated in– happily but quite illegally.
Long live bathtub nashes oddball ramblers Gremlins and AMC!
The Rebel looks the best balanced of the 1967-1969 Rebel and Ambassador lines. The 3 box design of engine compartment, passenger compartment, and trunk looks better balanced and proportioned. The hood looks too long for the rest of the body on the 1969 Ambassador. Kind of like the late 1970s LTD II but not as bad. I also like the cat without the upcurve in the rear fenders that the “1970 on” Rebel, Matador, and Ambassador had. Would have loved to see AMC bring back the straight line from the back of the car to the rear on the mid 70s Matadors. AMC was trying to make the Ambassador bigger on the cheap. So a longer hood and longer rear end made sense. They were also trying to stretch the use of a 1967 body when the big three had new full sized and intermediate cars being introduced. The 1969 fuselage Chryslers came out, Chevy and GM full sized cars were restyled in 1968, and Ford restyled its cars in 1968 and again in 1971. The odd upward radio is also strange. Something AMC could have fixed. Probably for the volume of the Rebels and Ambassadors it was hard to justify putting a lot of money into them for restyling. It had to be done on the cheap. Shades of the early 1960s Ramblers or the 1953 Studebaker being turned into the Lark compact but maybe not quite so desperate as the Rambler and Lark. Still a decent looking car. Better than the over styled 1970s Ambassadors, Matadors, and other full sized cars. Longer, lower, and wider were still in in 1969. At least it was pre Mailaise era! :)!
It is often said that AMC’s purchase of Jeep from Willys in the mid-60s is what kept AMC alive. After all, when AMC went looking for partners and/or buyers in the 80s, all anybody really wanted was the Jeep line and no potential buyers were concerned about the passenger car lines.
But I’m left wondering if the purchase of Jeep was a double-edged sword. I don’t recall what AMC paid for Jeep, but I bet it was a chunk of money they could have used for continuing development of the passenger cars.
Off-roading was coming of age around the time of the Jeep purchase, and the market was starting to get hot. Buying Jeep was the smartest thing they did with what little money they had. They could have sunk $500 billion into passenger car development, and still nobody outside of Kenosha would have noticed or cared.
Without Jeep, AMC would have went under like Studebaker and IH light trucks by 79-80. No 4×4 Eagle would have been made, since no Jeep mechanicals. Jeep may have gotten bought by one of Detroit 3?
With Jeep, instead of trying to win NASCAR, better off doing personal lux coupe off Matador in ’74. And bringing Concorde out instead of Pacer in ’75. But Renault was eager for more foothold in US, so would have still came in….
The purchase of Jeep by AMC was dubbed “Chapin’s Folly” at the time, but he – and AMC – ultimately had the last laugh.
If AMC had not purchased Jeep, it still would have been in dire straits by 1980, as CAFE regulations and rising Japanese competition would have required a complete, top-to-bottom redesign of its passenger car line-up. Even Ford and Chrysler strained meeting that challenge.
AMC purchased Jeep in 1970.
It was only 19 years earlier that AMCs predecessor, Nash did the same front clip trick to distinguish their senior range Ambassador model from the mid range Stateman model. The extra 9 inches of wheelbase was entirely in the front clip, forward of the firewall.
I guess some Nash product planners were still wandering the halls in Kenosha in the late 60s .
I like AMC products but the extended hood isn’t such a good idea. If one has to make it longer, I prefer the Ford preference of extending the wheelbase to distinguish the upmarket Mercury from the plebeian Ford.
I would rather see the entire front of the car extended, instead of just the “nose”, as they did soon after on the Matador.
I vote that this Matador is one of the worst front ends ever created. It make the car look hundreds of pounds heavier.
Some say “AMC’s boxy cars were ahead of time, like GM’s 1977 B body”. Yes, boxy styling, but GM had true full size interior and cargo room. Can’t sit in the Amby’s engine area!
I don’t think any car was mutilated as badly by subsequent updates as the 67 Rebel, the 69 updates were a mixed bag, the 70 with the revised coke bottle hips worked ok on the coupe but badly on the 4 door and the 74s look like they were designed by who bought most of them – the government. The closest vehicle I can think of designed so deliberately ugly is the MV-1 I see at airports sometimes. It’s legitimately hard to figure out what the designers were going for, the 69 Ambassador may have been a swing and a miss but you can figure out it’s influences at least, it’s not even bad looking, it’s just uncompetitive.
Back then, Nash had some justification making room for a straight eight in place of a straight six. Post 1955, that was pretty much unjustifiable anymore.
Nash dropped their straight eight after 1942.
They did have two different sixes, one of which was a small flathead designed for the 1941 Nash 600, and the other a much older ohv design, but I doubt the larger engine needed all that much of a hood stretch.
You’ve showed me an American car from the ’60s that I’ve never seen before!
In the styling studio, someone put two cigarette packs on the ends of the rear view drawing and said, “Hey, that looks pretty good!”
My first thought was that it looked like a door knocker.
…or a belt buckle, or a shield from a European soccer club.
Thanks to Roy Abernathy, AMC was down to selling this.
George Romney was a tough act to follow for Roy. Abernathy didn’t understand why the Rambler was successful. He didn’t understand that what Romney and Mason, before him, successfully did to keep AMC viable. Romney sold America on the Rambler. He lived it. His lifestyle lived it. Romney was a compact car apostle, because it was the compact car that would save AMC. Romney wanted success and I believe his later government career showed that he wasn’t ideology-focused, but results focused. He was not ideological.
Mason and Romney knew AMC needed to mine niche vehicles. Why Romney passed on the Jeep is a mystery because that turned out too late to be the greatest niche market AMC had access to. Abernathy didn’t understand niche marketing. Or AMC stock holders pressured him to go from niche market vehicles to mainstream mediocre products.
Within two years, AMC ended up surviving only through chance. Studebaker’s death opened a way for AMC to cut a deal with the US government on fleet cars. What momentum AMC had after Romney was gone under Abernathy. A niche-focused AMC would have had a pony car in 1964. A mainstream-focused AMC however, gagged on the AMC Marlin and didn’t field a pony car until it millions of them were already sold by their competition.
Why AMC, with its history of the Metropolitan, wasn’t ready for the subcompact cars popular by 1970, is a disappointment. The Gremlin was not a planned product. It was a happy accident. The Gremlin did not break new ground or build on AMC’s legacy as a planned Metropolitican replacement would have. Toyota already was showing the way by 1968 with its near-perfect Corolla. Datsun had the 510. No reason AMC didn’t have a similar product by 1970.
Sadly AMC was running on fumes by 1970. It was nothing more than a “me-too” bargain basement brand driven by the US post office. That it survived another decade is amazing.
A recent photo, based on the Jan 2020 registration sticker. Probably somewhere in the south San Francisco Bay Area, judging by the street scape and the “Santa Clara” front license plate frame. And a CC-friendly neighborhood; in addition to the Corvair there’s a RWD A/G Body coupe in one of the photos. I think this was a decent looking car which suffered from low budget styling updates over the years. AMC was the worst of the domestics in this regard, but Chrysler wasn’t immune. In my opinion the worst example was the evolution (devolution?) of the Volvo 140 from its crisp early years, through an OK refresh as the 240, until its final years with weird bits of trim tacked on all over the exterior. Though at least no fake-wood body cladding.
I took the picture in December 2019 in San Jose. Like Eugene, the weather is generally very favorable in all of the Bay Area, so almost every neighborhood is a CC-friendly neighborhood. The Corvair? That’s mine. I happened to be driving by that day, and I swung around to take some pics of the AMC. I parked close enough to catch my car in one of the shots, but far enough back to feature the AMC.
Please tell us about your Corvair. They are much more interesting than AMCs.
I was looking ‘longingly” at that Corvair as well!
They’re excellent pictures! You’ve got a good eye.
Good eye on the Santa Clara front license frame, I could barely make out the words. It is indeed in the South Bay – more specifically, San Jose – the clue is the green street sign in the background in the 3rd picture.
Agreed on the lackluster styling or trim updates by AMC – they just didn’t have the resources to do something substantial…
The poorly concealed former taillight. The homely looking plastic strip along the bottom. The grille that looks as if it’s ready to swallow a double decker hamburger. The instrument panel that mimics the grille. This is just not a well put together car. Why is that leading edge of the rear bumper end prefaced by a body widening useless looking bulge? All in all, not their best effort.
AMC spent $$ restyling the Ambassador annually in the 60’s, only sold to loyalists. Rebel was also ran compared to the hot mid size market. Trying to sell 1963 styling into the mid 70’s [sedans/wagons]. Then betting the farm on ’74 coupe, thinking NASCAR would help sales. But, formal roofed coupes sold better then some family cars in 70’s.
Agree that this rear end is silly looking, as if trying to out do Buick/Olds/Mercury mid-lux.
Had no where to go but Renault and Chrysler…
Javelin line was nice looking, but then couldn’t get GM F body sales numbers.
Reality, there just wasn’t room for a 4th domestic car company, especially after Japanese got established.
The 67-68 Ambassador front end lengthening was much better, it improved the proportions of the Rebel body if anything, but the lengthened 69s are just plain bad. it’s amazing AMC bothered to increase the wheelbase another 5 inches rather than make the sedan a true hardtop to actually make the passenger compartment a bit more premium than the Rebel.
I like the dash though, I can’t critique the vertical radio too much given we’re living through the dearth of form over function ergonomics with fashionable touch screens. I had to look up pictures to confirm a question it raised, but, yeah, the Rebel Machine came with the regular Rebel horizontal strip instruments. You’d think they’d throw in the Amby round dials since that’s kind of hand and hand with performance cars, but nope, not AMC of course.
Ambassador, I admire the ’67 Imperial. I desire the Imperial. The Imperial is a favorite of mine. Ambassador, you’re no ’67 Imperial.
Kidding aside, it’s not a bad looking car. A bit awkward here and there. I agree with Paul that using the Rebel clip and putting stainless in the place of the wood would look better.
I agree, this car’s proportions are faulty, but I’m having difficulty reconciling that obvious fact with the long-nose/short-deck philosophy that held such sway—Mustang, etc. I can’t finish figuring out why that doesn’t work here.
I also agree this car’s random-ass facelift is an abomination. Kind of a hobson’s choice, eh? The car would’ve looked better left alone, but Americans had been carefully trained to expect this year’s model to look different to last year’s. But on the other hand, Volkswagen. But on the other other hand, American makers who tried to exempt themselves from the annual model change (Checker…) didn’t sell many cars.
Yeah, eh? They were people who were just doing their damn job. With rare exception there wouldn’t have been a sense of making history; no where were you when the ’62 Plymouth (or whatever) launched?!, nothing like that. Bent metal, motors and wheels, different than last year and next year, engineered and built to tight cost constraints, handed off to the marketers to do their thing, then focus on the next one. Lather-rinse-repeat for however many years. It must have been grindingly tiresome to work on ashtray lid designs, or fuel cap doors (or doorhandles, since we’re talking about an AMC here).
Or, at least as bad and probably worse: try being a good designer tasked with crapping up a good design because annual model change.
Not the greatest looking car from that era. Not so bad though. Agree about the poorly placed extra length, which harkens back many decades. Studebaker, for example had 4 and 6 cylinder models back in the teens that were pretty much identical from the cowl back. Back then, there was a good reason for the different lengths. The general shape of the grille on this era Ambassador seems to be Richard Teague’s tribute to Packard. I just love it.
Speaking of Studebaker, at last weekend’s Cars and Coffee carshow at the SNM, someone actually had a 1965 Ambassador (one of those with the weird stacked headlights).
What caught my eye was the air cleaner pie tin announcing that the engine was ‘Tri-Poised’. I wondered what the hell that was about and the owner kindly informed me that rather than using the prior engine attachment to the frame of ‘four’ engine mounts, AMC was announcing they were now using a more modern ‘three’ mount system (or ‘poise’).
That seemed like a rather strange thing to be proud enough to put it on the air cleaner but maybe they were trying to play off some sort of ‘Tri-Power’ (three carburator) affiliation.
My grandfather had one of those in the same shade of green but with no vinyl roof and a plainer interior. 5 year old me mostly remembered the dozen rubber bands on the column shifter and the size since my parents had a Valiant with push button shifting and later a Mercedes with floor shift automatic. The Ambassador was quite a bit larger and in those days kids still rode up front. The only thing in my young life with more snout was the neighbor’s Pontiac Grand Prix.
The best place to have lengthened the Rebel into the Ambassador would have been the rear door area, but I guess that would have cost too much money.
What I remember American Motors making the most of about this vintage Ambassador was that it had air-conditioning as standard equipment as pointed out in this commercial with a well known actor.
What a great find! I’ve never seen that before.
I love seeing examples of later-famous actors performing in the bread-and-butter things that anyone in their profession would need to do to pay the bills…before things like bills become a matter of no concern to them.
Little of which explains De NIro’s more recent performances in Kia ads. But hey, I guess anyone could use some cash if the offer is right.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPJRcXsr5ec&ab_channel=ConceptKia
The three 27 year old guys that bought a 1970 Amby sedan were more likely to be greeted with: “Ya finally got two nickels in your pocket and you bought THAT?”
Ya gotta give the marketing folks their due. They had to try.
Yes, I remember when AMC made air conditioning standard on these. Don’t think it was standard on any American car yet, and it was still considered a luxury feature mostly on cars down south at the time. Nowdays, it would be tough to find a car without air conditioning, back in 1969 my Dad bought a new Country Squire wagon, but it didn’t have air conditioning, that would have to wait until his next (1973 Country Sedan) car. But we still lived up north back then, and the premium for air conditioning was still pretty stiff on most cars.
It was a pretty good marketing idea, since it probably brought in some customers who valued air conditioning and made the car seem more upmarket than it was…though top of the line for AMC, it didn’t quite match that of the big 3. I’m not a fan of the styling, and guess you could find the same space in a Matador for less, but now that I live in the sunbelt, air conditioning is a requirement for me, but I’d probably go for a Matador and add it as an option. Better yet a Hornet, which was kind of like what the Concord became at the end of the decade…I know it didn’t have air conditioning standard, but they eventually went another way and added 4WD which I guess is not quite “luxury” but another premium feature that differentiates it from other compacts. Too bad they got distracted with the Pacer and the Matador Coupe, and were late in getting the Hornet transformed to a higher end car…could have been the equivalent of the K car for AMC.
I like AMC.
I like Ramblers and Rebels and Matadors and Hornets.
But this is a rolling metaphor for GOUT.
With regard to those capped-off taillights on the 1969 Ambassador, Virgil Exner did the same thing with the 1956 Imperial (and put the taillights on the fender tops with those silly gunsights).
I remember these. My detachment had one, OD green of course, six, three speed, no air conditioning, no radio, power steering or brakes, vacuum wipers (that worked surprisingly well), and an industrial vinyl interior. The Army version was NO luxury car.
BUT, it ran surprisingly well on the low-test mo-gas. I don’t know how fast it would go but I had the speedo over 100 on the autobahn and never felt unsettled. (Oh, the stuff we got away with)
MY dad had an AMX, nice underappreciated car. The Army Amby, just a car.
AMC was probably doomed, but had they stuck to compact, intermediates, and maybe the Jav/AMX lines they might have done better.
One of the great auto history topics that has been debated endlessly is Roy Abernethy’s decision to go model-a-model with the Big 3 in the sixties. The argument goes that he should have stuck with George Mason/Romney’s focus on spending money to develop superior small cars.
I, however, don’t disparage Abernethy’s decision quite so much. By the time he took over (1962), the Big 3 had effectively encroached on AMC’s forté of compact cars with their own, more modern versions. The main issue was simply profit margins. In effect, the cost was nearly the same to build a large car as it was to build a small one, yet it was easy to charge more for the bigger car, something GM and Ford knew all too well.
Abernethy knew this, and wanted to get in on some of those big car profits, too. Had he stayed with simply improving the compact AMC American, the car might have been better and more competitive, but it would have cost more, as well. That would have been a hard sell up against the compacts of the Big 3 who could spread out the development cost over much higher volume of other model lines.
So, I’m not quite as down on Abernethy’s plan as most. For the time, I just don’t think sticking with Mason/Romney’s small car focus would have worked any better and AMC would have ended up in the same place, regardless. Frankly, Abernethy’s plan was worth more of a shot, small as the chance of success it might have had.
Agreed, Romney got out of American Motors right when the domestic compact market got saturated, and all were better cars than the ancient American, and soon intermediate cars from Detroit were on the horizon which would challenge the Classic’s place in the market, Where was AMC to go with continued Romney leadership? Cut loose their existing lines and put all their capitol into a new subcompact the imports and D3 will eventually catch up to and blow them away with too?
I don’t even really get the criticism of Abernethy going toe to toe with the big three, because the American, Classic(renamed Rebel) and Ambassador that made up the lineup were all continuations of Romney era cars, and their sizes weren’t excessive and their updates were necessary to be remotely saleable. The Ambassador’s firewall forward wheelbase stretch from the Rebel to make it “full sized” is silly, but it was when Romney did it with the Classic body too. If Abernethy spearheaded a truly full sized car I’d get the criticism, but that didn’t happen
I think Mason’s idea was to build small cars that he could get more money for. Studebaker had been doing this for a while as did Willys with the wagon and the early Jeepster. Seems like he succeeded for a while despite those silly enclosed front fenders. The Ford, Chevy race for number one really put an end to all the independents eventually, in my view. Stageway built a stretch version of the ’69 Ambassador. Beautiful, rather awkward though with the center door. Would have liked to see the factory sponsor a less ambitious, lower priced and shorter version using the original rear doors. Here’s an article: https://www.hemmings.com/stories/article/1969-amc-ambassador-limousine
In this marketing shot you can see the effect they were trying to get. Finless fins maybe.
With less gingerbread on the rear end, this lower trim version looks better.
Still the capped off taillghts remind me of a middle school project that I worked on while trying to watch the “Wizard of Oz” on TV at the same time. The cover page ended up looking like this when I entitled my opus “Cells of our Cells” and then had to make an awkward correction (it was written in red crayon).
I was young when my father special ordered an Amb, 327, three speed overdrive wagon. All I remember was my older 16 year old brother outrunning big three midsize cars (and a few mustangs,camaroes, and goats on the straight stretch in front of our home on Saturday nights. Later in life my first car was Dad’s 70 sst 390 AMB. It more than held its own with the locals, plus AHAdkins lives in my home townd and a guro on AMC power