(ED: Welcome Jim Grey, who is starting a new Saturday COAL series today)
During my 1970s kidhood, lots of dads on my block had two-door cars. Moms, on the other hand, were relegated to the four-doors and the wagons. My dad certainly followed that trend. He said that he drove them because he didn’t want his two young boys to open the rear doors while he was flying down the highway, but I think that was a ruse. No, Dad just wanted to look cool.
Or what passed for cool to him, at any rate. He brought me home from the hospital in a pale yellow 1966 Ford Galaxie 500.
Next he owned a 1971 Chevy Impala Sport Coupe, midnight blue with a white vinyl top. My chief memory of that car, after the time I shut my younger brother’s fingers in the door, is that Dad spent as much time under its hood as driving it. That may be why he got rid of it so soon, and bought the coolest car our family ever had.
Dad rolled up in a 1974 AMC Oleg Cassini Matador. I swear our Matador had a white vinyl roof, but photos all over the Internet show this car with a copper roof. I was ten; memories do grow dim. Whatever, the vinyl topped a swoopy white coupe. Up front, its copper-trimmed grille matched the copper-colored insets for the coffee-can headlights. Tail lights out back were large, round, and low-slung. A copper-colored trim strip led to the car’s tail, where four large, round, low-slung tail lights dominated, separated by a wide copper-colored inset panel for the license plate. Every exterior detail was unconventional and cool, from the giant federally-mandated bumpers that seemed to float apart from the body to the turbine-style wheel covers that were trimmed in copper.
Suddenly, Dad’s past Fords and Chevys were mundane and mediocre. Wildly styled Matador coupes stood out anyway, but Oleg Cassini Matadors went beyond. Our car got noticed everywhere.
My brother and I spent a lot of time in the Matador’s back seat, of course. Despite all the glass, the mostly black interior made it pretty dark back there. The seat fabric had a broad, slightly nubby weave. Copper buttons festooned with the Oleg Cassini crest rested in the center of each tuft. In the summer, that black interior sweltered our family; our Matador lacked air conditioning. And those buttons got red hot in the sun, branding Oleg Cassini’s mark into my legs south of my shorts.
Shortly after Dad brought the Matador home, rust began to appear along every seam. I grew up in northern Indiana, not far enough from Lake Michigan; winters were hard and roads were salted six months of the year. It’s funny now to think about how normal it was then to see a little rust on cars, even those just a few years old. But oxidation cancer soon racked our Matador’s body, and our distinctive and youthful car increasingly looked like a beater. When a large hole formed aft of the driver’s door, Dad decided to do something about it. To start, he issued my brother and I sheets of wet-or-dry sandpaper and buckets full of water, and told us to get sanding. I’m sure that this unpleasant memory suffers from both the impatience of youth and the exaggeration of thirty-plus years of telling this story, but I swear we spent weeks sanding that car every day after school and on the weekends. When Dad, the perfectionist, was finally satisfied we’d erased every bit of surface rust, he had the hole cut out and new sheet metal welded and faired in. Then finally he had the whole car repainted. The copper-colored rub strips along the body’s swoopy hipline didn’t survive; the car always looked naked without them.
Within a year or so of the repaint, rust began to appear again. Dad declared that he’d had enough. He was also building a business making custom furniture and wanted a vehicle that could haul lumber as well as his family. So one dark day in 1980 I came home and found he’d sold the Matador for a van. I was in a funk for weeks. But I didn’t know that van would become the first thing I’d ever drive, and so would have its own special place in my automotive history. Its story is next.
OMG! I remember those! Yeah, it wasn’t the most attractive car. Big and goofy looking. Like most AMC’s. But if I see one at a car show, I go right for it because you don’t EVER see them anymore, because of the rust issue. But it’s usually surrounded by other enthusiasts wondering how it survived. Great story Jim!
Thanks Irene! 🙂 In the ’70s this was just different enough to attract a lot of attention. Some of the comments weren’t positive, but overall it was well received. It’s interesting what designs wear well over the years and which don’t; this one didn’t, really — it continues to appeal to me only because of my good memories of our car.
I look, and I look, and I look, and still can’t picture ANYONE looking cool in that car. The ’66 Galaxie, on the other hand…
I never understood why AMC did these cars. The most confusing thing was the choice of the name. Why would you attach the Matador name, previously associated with blocky, dowdy sedans on such a swoopy coupe? It isn’t like the Matador name was some storied portion of the AMC brand, nor that successful. I kind of understand GM’s attaching the Cutlass name to largely unrelated cars as it was the best selling car in the US at one point. The other thing I don’t understand is why given their financial situation why they justified tooling up for this car, given the curves and all the tooling couldn’t have been cheap so why spend so much for what couldn’t be more than a niche car for a niche manufacturer?
Overall they are interesting though. There is a customized one running around here, the bumpers have been removed and roll pans made to fill in. It also has what has to be custom made fender skirts too.
I bet riding around in the back of one of these was like an oven in sunny weather due to all that sloping curved glass. I am surprised that one with the Cassini package left the factory without AC, seems like if the customer is going to spend the extra bucks for the fancy trim they would want creature comforts to go with it.
Keith Kaucher once imagined how the Matador should had been http://www.popularhotrodding.com/features/1209phr_muscle_cars_that_shouldve_been/photo_01.html as well as other “what if?” on this article from Popular Hot Rodding
Also, another idea then AMC should had taken is to recycle the Javalin name to use for the Matador coupe (while the sedan and wagon kept the Matador name) just like Mercury did with the Cougar going from pony-car to personnal luxury-car.
Meanwhile in Mexico, the AMC alias VAM in Mexico didn’t used the Rebel and Matador monickers and continued to be called Classic. For 1974-75, the Mexican Classic coupe got the AMX version who was the counterpart of the Matador X. http://www.flickr.com/photos/32167597@N06/3011784200/
I agree the Javelin name would have suited this car much better.
The Javelin was still in production when the first of these cars was built, though.
While a mid size seems entirely too big for a Javelin — even compared to the milk cow 1971-73 Mustangs — AMC could easily have retired the compact Javelin body a year earlier. In 1974 the Javelin was in its seventh and final year of production. Sales had been weak since an over-the-top 1971 reskinning. In addition, the 1973 arrival of the Hornet X hatchback raised questions as to why AMC needed a bloated pony car anymore.
Why?
AMC was simply trying to match the Big 3’s mid size coupes, plain and simple. When ’74 Matador was ‘locked in’, it was about 1970-72 and the Personal Lux coupes hadn’t taken off just yet. They couldn’t afford to re-tool for ‘formal’ Matadors, as Mopar did with ’75 Cordoba.
They bet that the muscle car era fastback bodies would continue to sell good into the 70’s*, and no ‘gas crisis’ was in anyones nightmares in 1971. Also, AMC was aiming for NASCAR acceptance also, and wanted “Win on Sunday, Sell on Monday”.
So while the idea of matching the competition and competing in profitable bigger cars was good business, the execution and timing wasn’t.
*GM’s Colonnade fastbacks were concieved in 1969-70, and were meant to debut in fall 1971. They also were meant to be continuation of muscle cars.
Save for the reclining seats, this car had few redeeming qualities. I will give AMC credit for offering a relatively luxurious feature on mid-level cars like intermediates and compacts.
I’ve seen a few Oleg Cassini Matadors – the color scheme was attractive, even if the rest of the car was not.
IIRC, this Matador had the Nash-style lay-flat front seats. We had to push the front seats all the way forward, but the seatbacks then would lie down horizontally and touch the edge of the back seat bottoms.
AMC had some clever ideas at one time before it all went bad.
I want that Ford. Now. And the ’71 Impala has a handsome, confident stance. The Matador is just goofy looking. IIRC, it was designed to “stand out” and draw attention to the brand and inject much need life into a fading company.
Our neighbors had one in a bright green with, I believe, a GM 250 6cyl. She would hop in, start it up, race the engine and take off. It would invariably pop, or backfire, half way down the street.
AMC did not buy GM 250 6cyls, they had their own 258 6cyl, by the time this one came around they were buying their automatic transmissions from Chrysler though.
“I believe it was a GM 6”
Never assume anything with car buffs, you’ll get checked right away. And most car people should know that AMC made their own 6’s for decades.
Wow, what a car. I also remember when these came out. I came of automotive conciousness in the early 1960s, and that was a style or look that has been my “home” ever since. These really seemed “out there”, and worse, I had no idea who “Oleg Cassini” was, and thought he must be a real oddball with a name like that. All I knew was that I really missed the 73 Matador/Ambassador 2 door hardtop.
Poor AMC – maybe this car could have sold around 1969 when everyone was going all Coke bottle, but by 1974 the formal look was back with a vengeance, and these things were just, well, not stylish.
Not many of our Dads went from a Ford to a Chevy to an AMC – you certainly had some variety in your childhood. Also, I am surprised that one of the top-line Cassini models would come without air. In my hometown of Fort Wayne (what – 50 miles east?) most everyone I knew was getting air conditioned cars by then. My mother test drove a 74 LeMans without it, but since getting it in her 72 Cutlass, there was no way she was going back.
It is great to read your story, and I look forward to the next installment.
I remember feeling exactly the same way about the Cassini name when Dad brought the car home! Even when he explained, it didn’t help me understand.
Dad is really a Ford man. He bought his seventh last week. But he’s also charmed by the unusual, and the AMC certainly fit that bill.
My family’s cars lacked air conditioning until the 80s. We didn’t get a color TV until 1977, so we were just constitutionally behind the times on amenities.
I fail to see how a 66 Galaxie 2 dr ht or a 71 Impala coupe would pale in comparison to one of these. Everyone has their guilty pleasures, to each his own! LOL
One of my big disappointments so far is not finding one of the Matador coupes on the streets. I live in hope.
It was a very surprising car when it came out. I actually like it for both its campy appeal, as well as for some authentic qualities. Dick Teague’s designs always had some redeeming features, and so did this one.
Most of all, I like the way he handled the 5-mph bumpers by just sticking them out in the air on their two mounting posts, rather then trying to fair them in with all that crappy cheap plastic everyone else did. It’s hard to see from the pictures in this post, but they looked like they were kind of free-floating, and thus they didn’t require the body sculpting to have to conform to the bumpers.
Obviously, the Matador coupe was ill-conceived arriving just at the moment when sporty coupes were out, and formal broughamy coupes were all the rage. AMC could ill-afford that kind of mistake.
The Matador Coupe and Pacer were both disasters, and probably crippled AMC more than anything else, forcing it into the arms of Renault. Very bad product decisions.
It has a similar appeal as the ’50 Stude coupes, and certainly invites customization.
Here’s how it should have looked.
Looks good, they just need to fill in the holes for the bumper brackets with some fog lights or fill them in completely.
Hey,not bad. Filling the wheel wells helps a lot too.
As a TR4 owner I always thought the Matador coupe had a family resemblance, and looked like the TR4’s drunken uncle.
You got me laughing there with the drunken uncle comment, I can see it.
Now I can’t look at the front end of one of these without thinking of it this way. I wonder what Giovanni Michelotti thought of these cars…
“Obviously, the Matador coupe was ill-conceived arriving just at the moment when sporty coupes were out, and formal broughamy coupes were all the rage. AMC could ill-afford that kind of mistake.”
You know, this and Stéphane Dumas’ post gave me an interesting thought. It’s entirely possible the Matador coupe was conceived to be much more of a 71 Charger than a 73 Monte Carlo. Take away the bumpers, the vinyl top and clean it up like the example, it completely changes the look. Now take away the big single headlights and…
Yes; it’s just that the market was moving away from that just then. Typical for AMC, they were three years behind.
Now that really screams Javelin to me.
C’mon, it was 1974. For a domestic 2-door intermediate, after a Buick GranSport, Dodge Charger, or Plymouth Satellite Sebring, what else was there? The AMC is certainly better than the rest of the GM ‘colonnades’ or Ford’s intermediate coupes.
In that context, the Matador coupe isn’t so bad.
I remember really liking these when they were current. I was very young, but I was already obsessed with car spotting. It really ticked me off when I saw one being used as the sacrificial car at a donate a buck and swing a sledge hammer at a car charity event when I was about ten years old.
My parents told me that two doors were safer for little kids too. We had a ’66 Dodge Coronet 440 2 door hardtop and a ’71 Valiant Scamp until I was 8 years old. Then the Dodge was replaced by a 4-door Horizon, suggesting that either I was old enough to be trusted to keep my door closed and locked, or that my mother was tired of folding seats forward to let my sister and I out.
As someone who is a sucker for AMC’s eccentricities, I find this car appallingly ugly and yet infinitely desirable at the same time. There is truly no angle that makes this car look good. I want one.
I rode in one a few times back in the late ’70’s. A friend’s mother up the street had a black one, and I thought it was kind of a weird looking car, considering that she had owned much nicer cars before that one. Plus, she was only about five feet tall, and she hunched herself over the steering wheel with the seat hitched forward. I remember that it rusted out in a few years (hey, it’s Canada) and they ditched it for a Pinto wagon. I’d take the ’71 Impala or the ’66 Ford over the Matador any day. We had a ’73 Impala Custom coupe in the same shade of blue with the white vinyl top. Great car, but it rusted out within a few years. We kept it on the road until 1980. In the James Bond movie “Live And Let Die”, one of the characters is driving around in the identical car.
Actually, the James Bond movie with the AMC cars is “The Man with the Golden Gun”, set in Thailand.
“Live and Let Die”, made one year earlier (1973) featured then-current model Chevrolets and a Cadillac pimpmobile, kind of like Superfly. That movie seemed to be a spoof on blaxsploitation films, which were very popular at the time – when one of the villains (Yaphet Kotto?) tells his henchmen to go “waste that honky” [Bond].
As Paul discusses above, for the time this wasn’t such a bad design (at least without the over-broughamed, two-toned opera window treatment).
I’d argue that the problem was that the Matador coupe — much like the Marlin and original Toronado — was a size too big. The basic design would have looked great as a pony car, particularly in comparison to the toylike Mustang II. Think Hornet hatchback with higher-grade features such as frameless door glass and free-floating bumpers.
I don’t get why AMC tried to revive its dismal sales in the mid-sized class with a fastback sporty coupe that didn’t lend itself to a luxury notchback, let alone a sedan/wagon variant. Was it primarily because Roy Chapin was determined to compete in NASCAR? He seemed to have a fixation on low-volume coupes that had no hope of returning an adequate profit for their considerable investment.
According to the article in Wikipedia, AMC originaly had plans to bring out a 4-door and wagon version based on the coupe’s design.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMC_Matador
At this website devoted to Matador, there a scan showing a drawing of the proposed sedan and wagon http://www.matadorcoupe.com/images/CoupeProto.jpg
The sedan looks Studebakeresque, and the wagon faintly resembles a Colonnade wagon.
Chopped it
Nice job – I like it. Mind you, I can fully appreciate why only one or two people would. But I’m glad I’m one of them! 🙂
Well, at least two, I like it! The notchback roof really changes the look.
Good thing they didn’t bother. The sketches that have surfaced remind me of the awkwardness of the 1953-55 Studebaker sedans. The coupe’s design was too distinctive to translate well into a sedan, wagon or luxury coupe.
That’s mostly because the 53-up Studebaker sedans were major facelifts of the earlier sedan bodies, and not all-new like the coupes and hardtops were.
The 1953 Studebaker sedans also had an all-new body. Studebaker introduced two all-new bodies for 1953 – the Starliner/Starlight coupes, and the regular sedans.
The sedan doesn’t look bad – certainly not any worse than the Matador sedan AMC did sell for 1974 and beyond. That car was looking very tired by 1974, and the bulging nose certainly didn’t help.
Whether sales would have been high enough to justify the tooling is another question. Intermediate sales boomed in the 1970s, but it was primarly the coupe or personal luxury versions that sold well. The intermediate sedans weren’t strong sellers – even among the GM Colonnade cars.
Good call on the Matador coupe being a latter-day Marlin. In fact, I’m sure it had exactly the same mission as the Marlin, to fill the void of not having an AMC ponycar. By 1974, the ponycar market was in a death spiral, with the only remaining traditional-sized players still having decent sales being the GM f-bodies. Ford wisely (for the time) had shifted the Mustang to the Pinto platform. There just wasn’t a big enough slice of the now diminutive pie left for the now too big, thirsty, and expensive ponycars from Chrysler or AMC.
Chrysler would score a big hit the next year by moving upmarket with the Cordoba. Poor AMC gave it their best shot with the Matador coupe which, ironically, sold just about as well as the similiarly unorthodox styled Marlin less than a decade before.
I always imagined the Matador as a Monte Carlo/Grand Prix pretender, which is sort of where the Marlin could have kinda ended up.
Exactly. The thing is, AMC had been burned (badly) by the Marlin, weren’t willing (or didn’t have the resources) to take any more chances on it, and ‘ponyed-up’ (bad pun) to the ponycar market with the Javelin, instead.
But what if AMC had just skipped the ponycar market, altogether, and continued with an intermediate, personal luxury car in 1968, beating Delorean’s wildly successful 1969 Grand Prix to the market by a full year?
IOW, a Rebel-based Javelin which essentially looked like what would eventually become the Matador coupe. Without the federal 5-mph bumpers, could the styling have worked in 1968?
Standard Matador coupes are okay. However, I never liked the Barcelona version brought out in ’77.
The two-tone brown/cream paint and padded opera window made it look horribly pimped-out.
The mother of a friend of mine owned one. We called it the “Barfelona.”
My father owned a ’74 Matador coupe as well. I believe his was copper all over and not of the Oleg Cassini variety. I’ll have to ask him more but he doesn’t talk too much about this car. He traded it in for a Chevette at some point before he got his Plymouth Voyager in ’84.
I recall at the time that this style was intended for NASCAR … in those days reasonably stock bodies were required, and AMC, with Roger Penske and Mark Donohue, then Bobby Allison, was making a big push into stock car racing. They started with the previous model, really just a 2 door version of the sedan, then introduced the more aerodynamic coupe-unique body for 1974. I don’t think Donohue ever raced this version, but Bobby Allison was quite competitive with it. Although the Penske Javelins had been competitive in SCCA TransAm roadracing, the cost of fielding a NASCAR team and the unique tooling for this bodystyle probably didn’t help AMC’s finances …
I wanted one of these back then, just because they were…umm…different.
Zackman, is the real reason you wanted one of these back then is because the rear windows rolled down unlike those of the…uhhh…competition?
They only rolled down about 2/3 of the way, though. First car I ever rode in where the back windows didn’t go all the way down.
Still, they rolled down unlike the rear windows of colonnade coupes.
Man, you guys know me only too well!
Busted and guilty as charged!
I seem to recall that I read somewhere Roy Chapin wanted a more streamlined vehicle that could compete in NASCAR; one of the segments of “Ate up with Motor” on the Matador stated that Mark Donahue named the previous version of the Matador “the flying brick” because of its blocky appearance. For what it’s worth, I remember “Car and Driver” called the Matador coupe the most attractive car for 1974. Obviously they jumped the shark on that pronouncement, as 1974 saw the public go after the “formal look ‘popularized by European auto manufactures such as Mercedes. Had the Matador appeared in the go-go sixties, it would have probably sold well.. In the 70’s AMC always made the wrong decisions, first the Matador and then the Pacer which crippled the company and eventually forced it into a disasterous merger with Renault.
In that era, Chrysler seemed to pick up on a style 3 years after GM. The GM intermediates went coke-bottle in 1968, and the Mopar B body did the same in 1971. When AMC found itself following Chrysler by 3 years, this would almost guarantee being 180 degrees off of the currently prevailing styling cycle.
Love the color combo on the Impala. The Matador coupes are just too weird for me to call them ugly & for awhile, I thought it would be neat to have one until sometime around 1990 or so. At that time I was 18-20 years old & working at my father’s scrapyard.
One day this rollback drove across the scale with a very clean light green Matador coupe. The Matador looked to be a 2-3 year old car by its condition: the paint was a little dull & the only damage on the entire car was a broken RR quarter window. I ran up to the truck, hopped up on the bed & checked out the interior: it was perfect. It was a typical 70’s dealer-ordered vehicle, green bench seat interior, A/C, AM radio, 304, and it had those nice finned wheelcovers.
I then ran off to continue doing whatever I was doing out in the yard, wondering why someone would bring such a nice car across the scale, especially a rare car like the Matador. I usually unloaded the cars with the crane & figured I’d just get the guy to roll it off the back of his truck in some inconspicuous spot hoping my father wouldn’t throw a fit.
However, another car had pulled in behind the rollback & an older couple had walked up to the window & were talking with whoever was inside working the scale — probably my father or ex-psycho-stepmother. I stayed out in the yard throwing metal around/picking my nose/etc.& watched my father walk out to the crane & pick the car off the rollback — oh it was terrible seeing the roof crumple up & all remaining windows pop — I never got used to that (foreign cars excluded). Anyway, he then takes this big weight we used to smash stuff & proceeds to drop it on the car repeatedly, totally destroying it. All this time the couple was standing outside watching him do it. I was getting pretty angry at this point.
He throws the remains back on the tin pile & the couple left after collecting the $125 or so. I asked him later what the deal was with that car & he told me the owner of the Matador broke out the RR window, ran a dryer hose the opening, cranked the car up and killed himself in it a few days earlier. The couple that followed the rollback in was the man’s parents who asked my father to make sure that they never saw that car on the road again.
I was sad to see such a neat car be destroyed initially and after thinking about the man’s parents standing there trying to get what little closure they could get as my father flattened their late son’s car, I had to go find a cool corner & cry awhile. I couldn’t wait until its remains left the yard.
Sounds like the inspiration for Christine…
Sad story (both the car and the kid). The worst thing is that I knew somebody whose spouse killed themself in a semi-similar manner. Creepy, weird, eerie, odd, and near-frightening. Wow.
That’s incredibly sad and tragic, but it’s a great story and well told.
very emotional story
Waaaaay better than a similar vintage “Big-Gulp Brougham” Torino and probably neck and neck opinion-wise with a similar vintage colonnade.
The finned wheel covers on these always reminded me of the metal tins on frozen pot pies. They still do.
In at least 1975, you could also get the Cassini Matador in black. I kind of like it!
Dick Teague; the Matadors stylist, often complained “if it had the name Cutlass Supreme on it, we would have sold a million of them”
No.
No, because, in addition to the badge appeal, the Olds had the right styling for the times. The Matador did not, as AMC had the right idea, but badly misjudged the where market tastes were headed.
This car might have done better if a) It had debuted around 1970 and b) American Motors hadn’t so badly ruined its reputation in the ’60s.
That said, the personal luxury coupe segment was a tricky one. GM owned the market at the time, so all of their entries naturally did decent, but the Olds really hit the sweet spot in terms of badge, styling and price, while the Monte Carlo benefited greatly from being almost as cheap as a stripped Malibu, along with the massive Chevy dealer network. Meanwhile, Ford and Mopar succeed only when they moved premium nameplates downmarket (Thunderbird and Chrysler). AMC had no panache, no premium nameplate to bastardize, a small dealer network and the wrong styling, so their entry was an unsurprising failure.
Agree, the Cutlass Supreme was never a fastback after 1970. Olds fastback Cutlass did OK. But, overall GM’s Colonnade fastbacks faded in sales from 1973-77. Even added ‘formal’ windows on Malibu and LeMans base coupes. But they didnt sell as well as CS.
I love the styling, no idea why. Very unusual and unique, it works for me!
The other thing that made the Matador Coupe a poor move by AMC was the short shelf life of such a distinctive design.
Nice work Jim, interesting to read about cars we never saw here.
I really love these ! However they look best with sporty trims to me, even if the Oleg Cassini interior is super cool
My Dad loved his 2 door ‘commuter’ cars, starting with used 65 Mustang, I6, 3 speed manual on the floor.
Favorite was after the Stang, a ’70 Monte Carlo, got used in summer ’73. We took it on road trips, all 6 of us, when our ’68 Plymouth wagon was starting to fade.
He had GM coupes until switched to Buick Century/LaCrosse sedans in 2000’s. Last one was a 1988 Cutlass Supreme Classic, the last RWD.