We like theme weeks at CC. Now they tend to be a bit chaotic, as we (clearly) don’t orchestrate these automotive history orgies. It’s a free-for-all; show off what ya shot and wrote up. Well, maybe that’s the right spirit for honoring the last of the independents, as its product line tended to the chaotic and unexpected. Two-seater pony cars and two-seater V8 economy cars? Why not? Desperation is the mother of invention. And disaster. AMC was certainly quite familiar with both of those.
P.S. It won’t be 100% AMC this week, thanks to the Big Three who will use any opportunity to sneak in and take market share away from poor old American Motors.
Can’t wait for this Paul,thanks
I lol’d at the last sentence.
+1
Waiting with anticipation.
Will send wordless AMC outtake later today……
Cool!
Any chance there is a 63 Rambler 440-H write up coming?
LOVE IT!!!! I have a very soft spot in my head for AMC vehicles. I’ve owned several and would love to have another one!!
I’m honestly very excited we’re having AMC week. AMCs probably occupy the largest gray area of my brain when it comes to cars. Even 20 years ago, they were virtually nonexistent around my parts, so I never really had much desire to build my knowledge on them. I’ll be turning my brain on this week!
Yay! This makes me happy. I have always loved AMC.
Nice! Looking forward to it!
Cool!….I think I have that 70 brochure in my collection
This should be good they arent long forgotten here
Ah “Also Ran” week is finally upon us. AMC the car company that 90% of customers turned their backs on after the Renault Alliance came to Wisconsin. What surprises me the most was not that it took till 1987 for AMC to die but that it lived to 1987.
There seems to be a myth that the reason AMC failed was because of the fact the competition of the Big Three was so tough but the true is that bland designs, ala carte styling, 6 cylinder engines that got just as bad gas mileage as a V8. AMC bungled the Jeep marquee(If you ask me they should have killed off the unpopular and ugly cars that AMC offered from 1970 to 1987 and simply sold Jeeps(and maybe that Eagle 4×4) the SUV craze(which was invented overnight by that XJ Cherokee) would have sustained them for years at a profit(without the waste of making cars nobody wanted)
Look at VW, Toyota, Honda. All had small amounts of money during the first several years that they made cars and all were making cars during the same time that AMC was and all of them not only made profits but are still here today and still profitable.
I say good riddance. You make a crap car that nobody wants then you deserve to fail.
They did deserve to fail. We all know that. But before they failed they made some of the quirkiest cars of all time, almost universally disliked in their times yet enjoyed by some of us decades later for their quirks. AMC was the little company that could, always trying, always punching well above their weight class, inevitably failing, yet making their mark on history anyway.
Tell me you wouldn’t want to be the only guy at a car show rocking a Javelin 401 when everybody else has a Boss Mustang, only a thousand made with five thousand still in existence? Or a Matador coupe in among the Impalas and Torinos? How about the teenager that doesn’t know anything about cars yet knows the Pacer because they saw Wayne’s World last week?
That’s why I love AMC. Anything that’s still around is going to be rare, and so obviously different that you can’t help but smile, even if you think the car itself is ugly as sin (like the Matador coupe).
I’ll take one of everything, if you please. Thanks for having this week, even though it’ll be hijacked by more B-bodies, Panthers, and brougham-mobiles. Every car has a story, and AMC’s stories are usually off-the-wall.
+1. Well-restrained & well-said.
When my family moved to Long Island in the early 1980s, our new neighbors on one side had a bright yellow 1978 Gremlin and the neighbors across the street had a white over blue Pacer and they both loved and worshipped those cars. I thought we had moved into the Twilight Zone. New York was a strange place.
That being said, Im very much looking forward to AMC week.
I have a soft spot in my heart for AMC products, with a touch of masochism thrown in too!
AMC products that I have owned and used as daily drivers.
1962 Rambler Classic Wagon
1973 Javelin AMX
1965 Ambassador Coupe
1987 Eagle Wagon
1976 Pacer
Excellent! Looking forward to it!
How about that AMC of Australia, Chrysler Australia?
Could have kept the Nash name as it was the main company behind the AMC creation in 1954, and be called “Nash Corp”.
Hudson was dying. And another ‘what if?’ is if only Packard merged with them instead of Studey, which was terminally ill.
Hudson was dying. And another ‘what if?’ is if only Packard merged with them instead of Studey, which was terminally ill.
Nash President George Mason had proposed that Nash, Hudson, Studie and Packard all merge together. Nash and Hudson started the ball rolling and announced their merger in January 54, and closed the deal that June. Mason died suddenly in October of 54, and George Romney was promoted to President of AMC.
iirc, Packard merged with Studebaker in October 54, but with Mason’s death, the final step of merging Studebaker-Packard into AMC was held up.
Packard President Jim Nance and George Romney apparently did not get along. Both wanted to be President of the merged S-P/AMC.
Mason had arranged a technology sharing agreement with Packard which was why 55/56 top line Nash and Hudson models had a Packard V8 and Ultramatic. Romney started to chafe though, as he was paying a rather high price for the Packard engines, and Packard was not buying anything from AMC. As soon as AMC was ready to go to production on it’s own V8, Romney terminated the technology sharing agreement with Packard. If it wasn’t dead already, this friction between Romney and Nance buried any chance of a merger. The realisation just what terrible condition Studebaker was in, and that Studie could drag down AMC, just as it burned through Packard’s cash and dragged it down, was just another nail in an already well sealed coffin.