(first posted 3/25/2018) The Hornet was a very significant car for AMC. Not only did it finally put the Rambler brand behind itself, the Hornet would go on to have a much longer life than undoubtedly anyone at AMC would ever have imagined, morphing into the Concord and Eagle, as well as having its hind-quarters clipped to become the Gremlin and Spirit. The Eagle would live on until 1988, and become the last remnant of the pre-Renault AMC. Or in other words, the last true…Rambler.
The Hornet’s story has been told here by Jim Cavanaugh, so I won’t go into much depth here. I will say that it was a rather fresh styling job for the flamboyant times; surprisingly clean and unfussy. Which undoubtedly explains how it could have survived so long. But under its taut skin, things were not quite so fresh. The suspension was shared with the larger AMC cars, which didn’t do much for its lightness, or handling.
But then that was just never going to be an AMC strength. Rambler’s legacy was hard to shake off fully.
It’s been nice to go back in time with these 1969 C&D issues. Do you have the ones which feature the project car that they built using a 1969 Camaro SS?
Also, speaking of Rambler/AMC, I have a habit of reading old Life Magazines on Google Books. It just so happens that the March 24, 1958 issue had a feature on George Romney that talked about his success in the then-current recession. I think that it may be of interest to @ least a few people around here. Here’s the link:
https://books.google.com/books?id=PlYEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA69&dq=life+magazine&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=2#v=onepage&q=life%20magazine&f=false
The reviewers are too hard on the handling. My parents had a ’70 Hornet, bought in an emergency situation after their ’67 Valiant was flooded. They hated the Hornet because hating Rambler was OBLIGATORY for cool people. I drove both cars fairly often, and the Hornet was unquestionably better than the Valiant. Tighter steering, better throttle response, better automatic shift points, better seats, better ride.
Sure, the legendary Torqueflite vs whatever was in the Hornet. The legendary Slant Six vs whatever was in the Hornet. The Valiant’s better handling and lighter weight torsion bar suspension vs whatever was in the Hornet.
The Hornet was a good car, a different car, but certainly not as good as the Valiant. The Sportabout was the Hornet to buy and it owned the small wagon niche.
There is irony here regarding the auto transmission; AMC switched to sourcing Chrysler Torqueflites in 1972 for the remainder of the run in place of the original GM Borg-Warner unit.
The Borg-Warner automatic was not a GM product, though it does have ties to Studebaker and Ford.
Thanks for the correction, as I was under that impression for years!
Never had any time in a Hornet. Did ride around for several days, in a coworker’s Concord. Couldn’t get over how much smoother and quieter the Concord was than Ford’s latest science, my POS 78 Zephyr.
We rented a Concord a few times in the late 70s and liked them pretty well. Even my father, a die-hard import buyer by that time, thought they were okay, and that was saying something.
I think the Concord was sort of like the early 90’s GM A-body FWD card (Buick Century, Olds Ciera). Ridiculously dated in engineering, but in production so long that all of the bugs had been worked out, Not cutting edge but surprisingly competent. Those early Fox body sedans were built to a price and weight goal, and if they had to use tinfoil and tissue paper to get there, so be it.
Good comparison. If you go back an experience a GM fwd A-Body now, you still find that they are very competent drivers/handlers. Nothing earth shattering, but good. Almost satisfying. The V-6 X-Bodies are the same way.
The Concord was a car that was never going to make you fall in love with her looks, but, oh, if you tasted her cooking, you just knew that this could work.
Every time I see an early Hornet (which is not often) I am again struck by what an attractive little car it is. I still say this is the best styling job AMC ever did.
Reading between the lines it seems that the CD guys were trying to be fair and nice and all, but that the car just did not really do anything for them. Of course, this segment was not where CD road testers’ hearts were, but you would think that they could have been a little more enthusiastic about what a nice car it was. Unless it just wasn’t. Which was my impression of these early Hornets. I found them a real let-down from inside.
As this topic about the AMC Hornet, I recently bought 81 Concord DL coupe from USA. I was Never an AMC fan but being classic collector I liked have piece of AMC history. Its blue exterior with light blue interior, 2.5 4cylinder, Auto, PS, PB, Factory AC, Factory AM/FM radio, rear defrost. has 50K original miles. I paid 6,500 for it.
I dated a gal in the very late 90s who owned a circa-74 Hornet as a $200 beater. Someone had spray-painted it with the cheapest blue paint they could find, which came off whenever it rained, or anyone leaned on it.
My best memory was the AM radio; the thing was miraculous. I could sit in that car and listen to New York Mets games, and we were living in Michigan at the time.
Say what you will about the domestic’s poor build quality back in the day but, for some reason, the AM radios that came with them were typically exemplary.
I wonder if it was due to some kind of government mandate related to conelrad capability.
I’m not so sure parts per say interchange between the hornet and “full size” Ambassador line. AMC’s platforms were very much the recently brought up Ford Falcon platform, in that there was a narrow version and a wide version of the same basic design, and the Hornet was still narrow like the previous Rambler. I know for 1970 AMC switched all their cars to upper ball joints, and relocated the shock absorbers inside the springs, replacing the rather ancient trunnion design, but I can’t imagine that being detrimental. I seem to recall that this redesign stemmed from racing experiences gained from the Javelin program, which the Hornet chassis seems to have the closest relation to.
I really liked the Hornet design, it had all the cleanness and sleekness of the 68-70 Javelin in a more pedestrian package. Despite lasting to 1988, I don’t think the body ever *looked* outdated, it had that same inherent trait Saab with their 99/900 body.
They do interchange – I’ve worked on the front suspensions of Gremlins, Hornets, Matadors, and Ambassadors. The parts on all of them are identical, aside from spring rates to take different vehicle weight into account and narrower steering linkage in the small cars. As you say it is very similar to the 1960 Falcon front end design, but reversed so the strut rods are towards the rear of the vehicle. During the 1970s the only AMC passenger car that had a really different front suspension design was the Pacer.
For that matter, aside from the switch to upper ball joints there was very little difference chassis-wise between a Rambler American and a Hornet. The Hornet had more modern styling but the interior was pretty much a disaster until the late 1970s Concord remake. (The Hornet/Gremlin dashboard was a horrid mashup of multiple, ill-fitting plastic panels, and calling the standard seats atrocious is being charitable.)
Overall though it was a decent enough compact for the time and could be optioned out to be pretty nice, you could even get halfway decent bucket seats. Not much you could do with that dashboard, though.
Thanks for the clarification! Would I be correct in saying the chassis different widths though(wide/narrow)? Just eyeballing it it seems the Rebel/Ambassador/Matador have more space in between the towers than the Rambler/Hornet/Javelin, as well as some other differences. It makes sense that the suspension components could still interchange that way.
It still doesn’t strike me as detrimental to performance that the compact used the same parts as the full sized(which the Ambassador really wasn’t, by big three standards it was a long intermediate ), as suggested by the writers. I think the inherent design and geometry would be the true root of whatever deficiency they found with it’s handling.
Yes, the big cars are definitely wider but the suspension pieces are the same. It may seem bizarre that a Gremlin or Hornet would have the same front suspension as the much larger and heavier Ambassador, but there it is. Aside from geometry issues this made the smaller cars heavier than they might have been had something like MacPherson struts had been used instead, with all that weight in the front adding to understeer.
These cars didn’t handle well in stock form but could be greatly improved with heavy-duty springs and shocks along with good tires. (Remember, cars at this time usually came with crummy, undersized bias-ply tires from the factory.) Power steering is a must unless you want to spend all your time winding the wheel 6 turns lock-to-lock. Since AMC used dead-stock GM Saginaw power steering boxes you can install a quick-ratio box from a Trans-Am into your Gremlin, Hornet, Matador, or Ambassador for even faster steering and better road feel. You’ll want disc brakes too so you can stop! But from the factory they’re just made for going back and forth to the grocery store. Slowly.
It’s not that odd really, the big three compacts shared all their core designs, the Ford Torino was as big or bigger than the Rebel/Ambassador, which the Falcon shared running gear with, the Valiant/Dart’s torsion bar suspension was just like the B body(though I don’t know if anything interchanges) and I would actually venture a guess that in terms of weight the 68-79 Nova was the shared the heaviest front suspension design of them. Certainly didn’t hurt their handling potential.
MacPhersons would have been well suited for the Hornet, or the Ford Falcon and earlier Rambler for that matter with their high mounted spring design, in hindsight. But in reality struts were still very much uncharted waters for American automakers in 1970. Unless I’m missing something the first to adopt them was the 78 Fairmont, which wasn’t even a true MacPherson layout(spring mounted above the control arm, rather than around the strut), and then the Citation for 1980. Plus a poorly engineered MacPherson strut suspension is arguably inherently inferior to a poorly engineered SLA design. Yes there’s some weight saved in eliminating an upper pivot, but with all due respect to AMC, I think they made the right choice by not innovating here. Better tuning just like you suggested would have been far more fruitful.
AMC outsourced the Saginaw 800 steering box from GM – when the company acquired Kaiser Jeep it was also used with several Jeep products (the XJ, YJ, and ZJ used the same box but the ZJ (Grand Cherokee) steering box was a 12.7:1 quick ratio similar 2 the one used in the GM B body and S10 (usually sought after by GM A body restorationists); also with the IFS it was similar 2 the Falcon/Mustang (and Chevy II 62-67) with the radius rods flipped and the steering linkage up front similar 2 a second gen Camaro and/or A-body); also the AMC differentials (AMC 15 and AMC 20) were the last to have a 2 piece design (hub and axle were separate until AMC ended its production of differentials – its AMC 15 was sold to the Dana Corporation and rebadged as the Dana 35 later used as a Jeep and/or Ford axle)
AMC built respectable small cars! Compare the Hornet to the 1970 Maverick, and you find that you could get: 4 doors, base 199 CID engine (to Maverick’s 170); options (NA on Maverick:) PS, PB, PDB,a V8, reclining seats; with a real glove box standard! (Mavericks didn’t even have a glove box!)
The hatchback version starting in ’73 and the Sportabout version starting in ’71 were great evolutions of this design.
Were they a great car? No. But they were a good compact for the money.
I’m still enjoying the ’74 Hornet Hatchback X I’ve owned since 1977!
For a brief time, both Ford and AMC offered ultra-strippo, loss-leader versions of the Maverick and Hornet for under $2000, designed to compete with the Beetle. That ended when the Pinto and Gremlin arrived.
the base 199 was a short stroke version of the 232 – the following model year the deck height was raised where the 232 used the connecting rods from the 199 (which was later revisited in late 1986 when the 4.0L was phased into production); also the pre-1972 AMC six (1964-71) had the small bellhousing and 153 tooth flywheel which was updated in 1972 to the AMC V8 bellhousing pattern and a 164 tooth flywheel (same dimension as a Ford Windsor engine (260 – 351) – this was retained with the six until the 4.0L went into production and continued production by the Chrysler Corporation 4 Jeep products (the 2.5L was based on the 258 design but used the GM 60 degree V6 bolt pattern)
Down Under in Australia, where the Rambler name survived a couple of additionals years for local Hornets and Javelins. One guy swapped the AMC 6 with a 351 Ford engine stroked to 430ci.
https://www.streetmachine.com.au/street-machine-tv/1703/blown-430ci-amc-rambler-at-powercruise-–-video
When I worked as a mechanic in the early ’80s at a Rent-A-Wreck franchise these were one of our fleet staples. Cheap to buy and run, reliable and dull as dishwater. Perfect for our “eclectic” customer profile. We usually put them in our second tier, which was 8.95 a day and 8 cents a mile. The trick to making money at this was to reach triple the purchase price in rental revenue before the car expired, was wrecked/disappeared or it had been in the fleet for a year. The more expensive/fragile the car the greater the risk.
We soon learned what the “earners” were and what to avoid. These were in a league with top earners such as early six cylinder Mavericks, early Pintos, ’70s full size Impala 4 door sedans and early ’70s Dart/Valiants. The smaller the engine the better. Older 6 cylinder Hornets, in 4 door form, could be had for maybe 500 cash in decent shape, run for a year and sold running for 3 or 4 hundred with little outlay in between. The boss did call them Ramblers, and they did drive suspiciously like the mid ’60s Ramblers we kept around for the bottom tier (6.95/day 6cents a mile) cars. Numb and slow would be the best description, but they were also cheap and tough. They had reasonably decent heater/defrosters and started well on cold mornings, something we take for granted today but which wasn’t universally true in the ’70s.
Perfect for our needs, and probably for their original buyers as well.
I miss Rent-a-Wreck. At least around here, there isn’t really anything like it now. Back in the day, had a good experience with a Citation hatchback sedan I used to haul new furniture home from the store. Those had huge cargo room with the rear seat down. On the other hand, once rented a mid 70’s Torino wagon that stranded me.
No Rent-a-Wreck chain, but there are independent local places that can be hard to find using internet search engines. If you are under 25, the majors have a big surcharge and under 21 forgetaboutit. Five to seven year old Nissan’s seem to be the common cars for these companies, a combination of depreciation and durability, similar characteristics to 1970’s AMC products.
I love that the Hornet came right out of the gate with so many optional configurations, including higher-end, V8-powered models. No doubt, the relative success of the Hornet SST must have contributed to the green light decisions for the Maverick LDO, Plymouth Valiant Brougham, and Dodge Dart SE.
I have always considered the early Hornets a stylistic “greatest hit” for AMC. The ’73 Hornet hatch (’74 mentioned above by Paul Mittermaier) remains a genuinely beautiful compact from the ’70s. It just looks so right from so many angles, even from a few that make the ’73 Javelin (which I also love) look a bit wonky.
Fascinating pair of articles. The Hornet’s success, indeed, did prolong the life of its parent company.
C&D was mostly being kind as AMC was replacing the most dated compact on the market, the 6 year old American. The Hornet was a catch up car on most accounts, including options and trims.
I’d agree that the big three had their eye off the compact ball a bit in the late ’60s, the pony cars and booming mid-size market were a distraction and generally more profitable. Compact sales were down from the early ’60s.
Even with that, Plymouth still moved 30% of its 1967 Valiant with the higher Signet trim.
The Hornet flew into an almost unbelievable head wind in 1970, and barely outperformed the 1969 American.
The 1969 Maverick was just a warm up act for the 1970 which moved a mind blowing 450,000 copies. The Duster came out for 1970, including the Duster 340, and moved almost 200,000, along with 75,000 Valiants. 1970 Nova moved about 312,000 copies and offered an SS package with a 350 small block. The Hornet might have had a much more interesting year if it had made it out in 1969.
Hornet moved 95,000 in 1970 and a pretty awful 66,000 in ’71. It did save AMC’s bacon with the small car boom that followed, and saw some impressive sales gains as the early ’70s progressed, but it sold primarily as a low cost stripper, AMC buyers usually were not option buyers.
Your Hornet production numbers seem off; I’m finding 101,092 for 1970, and 123,304 for 1971.
From the Standard Catalog of American Cars. The 1970 numbers seem within a margin of error, but something may be way off for ’71.
IIRC fully half the ’71s were Sportabouts which had a market niche to themselves.
(503’d out of having an edit window) I wonder if the Standard Catalog somehow got a ’71 number that excluded wagons?
This strikes me as a very typical initial review of a new model where positive comments are made and the real hornet venom is saved for after the car has been out for a few years and enthusiast readers already know the weaknesses of a car.
The only Hornet where I thought at least the style worked was the wagon, and quite well at that. The sedan is stumpy and the coupe is rather awful from most views. The competing Duster and Valiant were the beauty queens of the segment, the Nova and Maverick are also generally easier on the eyes.
The summary for the 1973 Hornet in my Standard Catalog contains this; “Often regarded as one of the least comfortable compact cars, the Hornet had harsh springs, hard seating surfaces and was noisy.”
Having put some wheel time in a rental stripper 6 Hornet with automatic and air, they were being kind.
Objectively, the Maverick was probably this car’s weakest competitor, and it handily squashed the Hornet on the showroom floor and sprayed it with Raid for good measure. Even the Maverick’s sister, the Mercury Comet, competed fairly well with the Hornet.
The Hornet did generally out perform sales of the Rambler American that it replaced, but likely also soaked up some sales that previously went to the larger Rambler Classic.
Dusting off the competition is no hyperbole here…………
I kind of agree with the sedans and initial coupes. The thing the Hornet lacked that the Rambler American had was it’s sporty hardtop Rogue bodystyle, as the Hornet coupe was really just a 2-door sedan. The 73 liftback however was a looker, it did for the sedan Hornet exactly what the Duster body did for the sedan Valiant. AMC probably didn’t want to cannibalize Javelin sales with a stylish 2 door Hornet, and by 73 the writing was on the wall for the Javelin.
That is a huge improvement.
I agree with your theory regarding the Javelin; the Hornet hatchback handily outsold each year when they overlapped.
AMC flat got the market wrong with the original Hornet. The Hornet two door was intended to be a cheap adaptation of the same four door sedan shell. The market went hard to sporty two door compact coupes: Maverick, Duster, Nova. They sold multiples of the corresponding four door sedans. The two door Hornet didn’t.
The Gremlin was presented as AMC’s subcompact, but the market saw it as AMC’S sporty compact coupe. Total Hornet/Gremlin sales reflected the same two door/four door split as Nova, Valiant, and Maverick.
The Hornet Hatchback had great styling, but the price premium made it uncompetitive as a volume product.
I had a ’75 Hornet with the 232 ci 6/auto combination. It was painted Ohio dirt tan with a matching interior.
Not a particularly exciting car, but it was okay for basic transportation.
The Hornet had nice styling and a really neat sportabout wagon introduced in ’71. But it was a letdown in terms of quality and interior appointments, with lots of bare metal showing, a disjointed dash layout and base split bench seats that were seemingly designed for no known human anatomy. The Concord was a thousand times better if you stayed away from the base models which still had that awful bench seat (I had a base model ’80 Concord with that seat and I know). My Dad and I had a number of Concords in the first half of the ’90s and the best one I owned was an ’82 2-dr, silver with burgundy cloth interior.
Agreed on the awful bench seat. Owned a ’70 SST, a ’79 Concord DL with the bucket seats, and an ’82 Concord base model. Spent the most wheel time in the ’82. All the thrills and excitement of a taxicab. Ran and drove well. Handled great, kept me out of two collisions thanks to inattentive drivers. In the end had to sell the car due to that seat, caused me back problems that disappeared after I got rid of it.
It is interesting to note that when it debuted for 1971, the Sportabout SST wagon was by far and away the most popular model, with 73,471 sold (72.6% of total production). AMC really found a market segment that the domestic competition had abandoned that clearly still existed. The wagon continued to be the most popular model, year after year, until 1976 when Chrysler came out with their own compact wagons. The hatchback also was significantly more popular than the 2 and 4 door cars during 1973 and 1974, then dropped off considerably once the GM X-body hatchbacks surfaced. Proof AMC only really succeeded when they were the only player in the game.
The figures I have for ’71 are 66,000 calendar year total cars produced, 74,685 model year sales. The breakdown I have shows about 26,000 wagons. Unless the Standard Catalog of American Cars is way off, the Hornet and Hornet wagon really didn’t do anything to move the needle at AMC.
Adjustments to the line with the addition of Gremlin in ’72 and a new coupe in ’73 along with a market wide strong sales year finally pulled the Hornet platform out of the complete doldrums, scoring around 230,000 sales in ’73, half of that thanks to the Gremlin.
I wouldn’t have believed it until I looked it up, but the Gremlin is the first real success story of the Hornet platform.
My numbers come from the Standard Catalog of American Motors, 1902-1987. Other online resources match the numbers I see.
My Catalog is probably the first edition, published in the early / mid ’80s. I see that all of these are Krause publications, they may have revised the numbers for the AMC book.
The variance in the numbers is interesting. My book may have mistaken wagon production for total ’71 production, in which case the wagon was initially a breakout hit. Or, the later book may have punched in 73,000 wagons instead of 23,000, which would bring the older book back into line with the correct figures.
From Wiki, the wagon was down to 34,000 cars in ’72 (presumably a Krause originated number), which seems more in line with what I’d expect from the trend lines.
Wiki shows two spikes in the wagon in ’72 and ’74. That are rather odd in light of the big picture, but certainly not out of the question.
I think the hornet was a reliable competent car. the car was around for so long you know problems would be minimal or non existant. that said…….i think the eagle 4 door and wagon(4 door is my fave)is the best looking of all hornet variants. not to mention the ground breaking 4 wheel drive system and look of the car. and these are definately the most luxurious amc vehicles (besides the matador)that amc ever produced!!!
In a previous post I talked about how I saw lots of Ramblers being driven by senior citizens when I was a kid in the 1960s. In the 1970s a lot of these same seniors traded in their Ramblers for AMC Hornets. Hornets seemed more popular with these people because the mid-sized Matadors had grown a lot in size since the cleanly styled models from the early 1960s.
The Hornet was solidly mid-pack along with the Maverick and Nova, where Chrysler’s A-bodies were the compact market leader. It’s a shame that AMC couldn’t have put more effort into the Hornet’s interior and can see a lot of potential customers buying a competitor after a test drive between all of them. I get the feeling that those who bought a Hornet were buying them entirely on price, alone.
As it is, with no one else in the field, they still sold a lot of Sportabout wagons. Imagine how many more they’d have sold with a more cohesive and comfortable interior.
No, this is the car that killed AMC. The REAL last Rambler was the 1969 American. As antediluvian as its trunnion-based front suspension was, the car was roomy, economical and easy to enter and exit – not one trait which applied to the Hornet. The Hornet looked more timely. Otherwise, it was cheesy plastic, cramped up front, more cramped in back, carried fewer pieces of luggage and got worse gas mileage.
And people wonder why AMC started to go down the tubes. I owned two 1965 Ambassadors up until 1993…I wouldn’t own a Hornet had I been paid to do so. I test drove a few, as well as a couple of Gremlins…damn. No, thank you. These were as bad as Mavericks or Novas. I’d take a Valiant before one of these.
AMC Hornet is a nicely penned automobile . Meanwhile U.S. Americans spent their time discussing whether a Ford a GM or a Chrysler’s had always a best competition model against Ramblers – AMC , the fact is that Latino countries and Europe quoted the Hornet as the best American value since it had the correct size and proportions for the global general measures of their streets , so the AMC Hornet and derivatives Spirit and Concord could still be a valid choice for the others 189 countries around the world . Just think large dinosaurs or hyper big engines of 427 cubic inch displacement are completely a garbage . In some way or another , these nicely designed AMC Hornets anticipated the global average size standards in decent automobiles , but it seems mid American consumers just couldn’t appreciate it but 30 years later on .
What was the competition in 1970?
Valiant/Dart
Maverick
Nova
Compared to them, the Hornet was acceptable to the market. When it needed to be replaced in 1974 – it wasn’t. Instead AMC used the money the Hornet earned to waste on the Matador Coupe and the Pacer. A stunning error both times. They let their most important product go stale. Imagine if AMC spent the money it spent on the Pacer on a new Hornet!
The Matador Coupe was needed, but it missed the Brougham Styling necessary to compete, which was really stupid by 1974. No one wanted an intermediate styled like a sports coupe. Ask Chrysler how it sucked having those Satellites and Coronets looking like they were lost in 1970. Brougham was in and AMC screwed up.
So compare the Hornet to the competition before 1974. It was fine in comparison.
A major update of the Matador sedan would have served well too, maybe even more important than an update of the Hornet. Mid-sized sedans were big business in the mid to late ’70s.
The market was two door coupes, not sedans. Cutlass in particular was several multiples of sedans, even before the sale proof fastback sedans.
These actually were still called Ramblers until about 1977 in Mexico and Central/South America.
I recall some people referring to any AMC car as a “Nash” when I was a teenager, but didn’t learn why until many years later.
I usually liked C&D in that period but reading this piece was like a horse tranquilizer. It seemed like the first 65 percent of the article was a rambling mess on the semantics of whether or not is a car is small, compact, subcompact, cheap. Who cares? I was practically yelling “Enough! Just get to the review of the @%&^$ car already!”
As it turns out, after being strung along with what I consider to be arguably filler, they meekly admit it’s just a superficial overall impression. Their later ‘Short Take’ pieces were more concise than this blather.
That “green Hornet”, in the leader pic, is same color as our “70 Rebel” was..We didn’t have the wheel covers though.
What’s the deal with it being tail-heavy in the picture? – It doesn’t look right
I have always wondered – what really improved between the Rambler American and the Hornet? Interior room seems like a wash, weight was maybe higher on the Hornet and exterior visibility worse. HVAC? Is it really just styling and the switch to ball-joints from kingpins?
I could ask the same thing about the difference between the Valiant/Dart and the Aspen/Volare. At least the latter had a wagon version which was missing on the Valiant/Dart.
The Aspen/Volare had modern styling and various new modern touches. The Valiant and Dart had been scheduled for replacement in 1972 and Chrysler recognized that they would continue selling without the update. The new cars were big hits until the bad news got out, and they still sold ok after that. It’s scary to think how bad they had they’d have been if the drivetrains had been all new too.
CC just keeps listing my childhood cars! My folks had a Hornet around 1981-1982. It was loud and rusty, we called it the yellow bomb. It had basically no brakes unless you pumped them a million times. One time we couldn’t stop when my bus was stopped dropping off kids, dad was like “sorry Maxine”. I was in kindergarten which was half days, so I was out of school already. But what do you do when you got no money and there’s no public transit, you do what you gotta do. It was a stick, and dad would let me sit in the middle, call out gears, and I would shift it for him. One time I just couldn’t get it into reverse when we needed to back out of a parking spot at the store. After 2 tries he took over. My grandpa built me a stick shifter in a box so I could practice. Rural Michigan, seems like every guy either farmed or worked in a steel shop. Another time mom tried turning around on the back road and dropped the back wheels off the edge. My sister and I in the back seat. Seemed like forever watching dirt fly equally from both back wheels until she got it back up onto the road. Could it have been a posi? Who knows.
As a tween, I really wanted to like the Hornet. The 4-door looked good and the latter wagon and hatch looked very good. While my folks drove “nicer” cars, I knew economy compacts from my grandparents’ stripped 3-speed ‘66 and’73 Darts.
Our assistant scoutmaster had a fairly basic, near-new Hornet sedan with power steering, automatic and not much else. As his shotgun passenger on a 1-hour drive home from summer camp, I was really disappointed. The car was coarse and noisy at speed on secondary highways, the seats were thin and unsupportive, the glove box door looked like it didn’t fit, and the hard plastic shelf under the dashboard with embedded eyeball vents seemed to have no purpose. The horn buttons on the steering wheel seemed ready to detach themselves. Everything was usable, but nothing seemed desirable. The driver seemed tentative, as if not entirely sure he could handle the car. Later, after reading reviews, I wondered how much of that was him and how much was the car itself.
And yet I kept hoping that there was a way to equip a Hornet to make it a nice car. That styling seemed to promise so much. I didn’t much like the exterior changes on the Concord, but by all accounts they did polish off a lot of the crudeness with that one.
From what I’ve read, refinement seemed to be AMC’s biggest hurdle. They could design a car that was every bit as good as something from the Big 3, if not better, but they couldn’t finish it properly. I’m way too young to have any experience with AMC products but their position in the late 60s/70s reminds me of Hyundai/Kia in the 2000s and early 2010s. They made cars that looked and drove like Toyotas, but then they would do very un-Toyota things like rattle trim pieces loose or throw a rod because the oil wasn’t checked religiously.
When I was a teenager, anything American Motors was seen as the least cool car possible, which really wasn’t fair as the Hornet was as good as anything out there at the time.
In grade 9, we had a math teacher, Mr Judd, who drove a green Hornet. Guess what we nicknamed him?