I was barely a teenager in the summer of 1988 when my older brother, who was by then an adult and visiting, took our younger brother and me along for a drive to run some errands around town. His ’85 Renault Encore three-door hatchback had been a lightly used gift from Mom and Dad, who had purchased it new from Country Motors in Owosso, Michigan. It had no air conditioning, so both windows were rolled down all the way on that hot, summer day. The car also had vinyl seats (thankfully in a light color, beige), and also no radio. Despite all this, and based on my own later driving impressions, I thought that Encore was the best strippo car in the world – a position I maintain today.
We were in the southern part of Flint, on South Saginaw Street, when I spotted a Pacer coupe at rest at the stoplight we were approaching. As our newer AMC product approached the older, homegrown one, the joyous strains of Steve Winwood’s “Roll With It”, an inescapable hit that summer, began to crescendo. Accompanying Winwood’s husky bleat with her own voice was a boisterous blonde, loudly singing along as she tapped the steering wheel of her Pacer to the beat, seemingly oblivious to the rest of the world outside of her car.
It’s not that I remember her having been a knockout (though she was definitely pretty and looked fun, in a blue-collar, very “Flint” kind of way), but it was her singing with such abandon and great gusto, combined with the visual of her Pacer with its multi-colored, replacement body panels, that left an indelible impression in my mind. To this day, hearing “Roll With It” reminds me of that very moment over thirty years ago more than anything else.
I’ve professed my genuine, non-ironic love for the looks of the 1975 – ’77 Pacers for years, both the original coupes and the new-for-’77 wagon. We all know the sob story of how the Pacer’s engineering had been severely compromised by some unforeseen plot twists in its development. To give one example, it had been designed around a Wankel rotary engine that GM had been working on and later cancelled at the eleventh hour.
I liken AMC’s dependence on this unfinished rotary-in-development to something like me throwing a massive party the weekend of a local appearance of a favorite idol or performer, inviting everyone I know with the promise of meeting said celebrity, and then being crushed when the Guest Of Honor doesn’t show after not even having confirmed that an appearance was definite. Whoops! What to tell people now?? I can only imagine the panic in Kenosha the day that powerplant-related news was delivered.
“Every car has a story” (welcome to Curbside Classic), and tastes differ, but I’m going to tell you straight-up that I think the ’78 restyle of the Pacer’s grille and hood is hideous. This is coming from someone who legitimately loves the rest of the styling of both the coupe and wagon. As many may have gathered from my previous musings, I’m very much about finding something to at least like about any thing or person who hasn’t been demonstrably gross, bad or evil – but, seriously, AMC? Was this frontal restyle really the best you could do? This puffy-upper-lip thing could not have been the only proposal that had sprung from the drafting board.
I sort of get it. Engineers were not going to make this heavy car lighter or more efficient, so AMC product planners said, “Let’s drop a V8 into it. That will at least give it something.” The introduction of the wagon just the year before had failed to return sales numbers to those of the very respectable first- and second-year tallies. To clear the V8, engineers and stylists had to raise the horizontal surface of the hood.
The unfortunate thing was that instead of raising the entire leading edge of the hood between both headlamps, they raised only the center section in a very bizarre-looking hump, almost like a “Pacer Vanden Plas” (thank you, Roger Carr). I can’t decide whether the restyled grille and hood more resemble botched lip fillers or one of those TV pillow-things you put on the couch or your bed and lean up against.
I’m hard-pressed to think of another, relatively minor styling update on any car that so thoroughly altered its original visual concept, whether you like the looks of either Pacer or not. The irony was that the V8 delivered only adequate performance in these cars, both bodystyles of which were both glassy and innately heavy – weighing about the same 3,400 pounds for both the ’78 coupe and wagon.
Here’s a fun fact: the V8 Concord four-door wagon had a starting weight of just over 100 pounds less than the V8-equipped, two-door Pacer wagon. The advertised 130 horsepower of the 304-cubic inch V8 was not a lot for this amount of weight, and provided only a 10-hp advantage over the lighter 258 six-cylinder that was also optional that year. (The ’78 Pacer came standard with a 90-horse 232-six under the hood.)
Sales slid hard for ’78, with only 21,200 (7,400 coupes, 13,800 wagons) sold that year, down from 58,300 (20,300 coupes, 38,000 wagons) the year before. This was after inaugural-year sales of over 72,000 for ’75 and another, truly outstanding 117,200 units for ’76. Only 10,200 ’79s found buyers (with wagons, again, outselling coupes). Our featured car is a ’78, identifiable by its front grille and also its interior, which featured the original design. (The interior of the ’79 was given a minor refresh, with an easy identifier being the revised inner door-panels.)
With the final-year 1980 models (re-serialed ’79s?; Pacer production ended in August of ’79), AMC sold less than 2,000 of them before that whole show was over. Two thousand. That was extremely low volume, even for AMC. The sad irony is that the V8 option which necessitated the truly unfortunate ’78 frontal restyle found only 3,500 takers over the two model years it was offered (there was no V8 for ’80). Overall, there were 280,000 units manufactured over the Pacer’s six-year run.
It’s true that a decade is a really long time in the car business, especially when I think about the ten model years that separated the first iterations of my brother’s ’85 Encore and that blonde lady’s Pacer. Both cars had a similar original mission within AMC showrooms: to provide a novel, quality subcompact car experience for U.S. small-car shoppers. It’s an understatement to say that neither car had any degree of lasting success here in North America. However, as was demonstrated by the mere presence of this latter-day Pacer wagon which I had spotted at the annual Back To The Brick car festival in Flint last summer, sometimes just to “roll with it” is all you can do – as AMC did often, as much out of its scrappy inventiveness as it did out of necessity.
Downtown Flint, Michigan.
Saturday, August 18, 2018.
A lot of folks complain today about the lack of greenhouse on modern cars (Camaro) well, here is your dream car.
This looks better than the current Camaro. Even the grill is less ridiculous.
Agreed. If you offered me the featured Pacer or a new Camaro, I would take the Pacer, thank you. The fuzzy dice would go into the bin immediately, however. I never understood the attraction of those things.
There’s a lot more fuzzy dice around these days than there ever were ‘back in the day’.
Aside from the details of the nose refresh, I think the Pacer and in particular the wagon, has aged well. Though the large glass area is the antithesis of modern slit windows on many current crossovers (Evoque anyone?) the general proportions and “stance” are in fact quite CUV-like. I briefly drove a friend’s parents’ Pacer soon after they bought it to replace a /6 Dart, and my biggest memory was the raised door sill which blocked a few inches of side window glass in a very odd way. IIRC the car had very low ratio manual steering, low seats and poor visibility over the dash, and was generally less pleasant to drive than the Dart.
AMC did do a mockup of a crossoverized Pacer wagon (with straight-across front hood redesign) that was maybe meant to use the Eagle 4×4 system. It never got beyond the styling-buck stage though.
https://66.media.tumblr.com/4afa889ca38951a07ad5737fda854eab/tumblr_pmohzku6P71svtnufo1_r1_1280.jpg
Those inner door panels, with that wonky raised door sill, were odd. Reportedly, they were shaped that way because the glass didn’t roll all the way down. Those raised door sills were there to keep people from resting their arms on the glass.
I also think the Pacers have aged really well. When I was writing this piece, I had forgotten they were such strong sellers at the beginning.
The styling of the Mitsubishi Mirage / Dodge Colt / Plymouth Champ of 1979-82 appears to have been inspired by the original AMC Pacer. Less extreme and much smaller, of course, but it wears it well.
Definitely – but it’s more angular as well. And the four-doors thick C-pillar spoiled the likeness. This certainly shows a straight-across hood treatment would have worked well on the Pacer.
Another view of the Mitsubishi Mirage / Dodge Colt / Plymouth Champ of 1979-82. It’s hard to find a good color photo of these on the internet, so I’ve posted this one in black & white.
“Pacer-Lite” – exactly. Allan, Thank you!
I like this, even the nose! It has bags of character, and I’m a sucker for a red, if somewhat faded, interior. Having said that I can see how it went out of fashion really quicky as 1980 rolled in..
It makes me think of a big thick moustache on top of the grille opening. Mos were big in the late seventies….
A moustache! Hilarious! I can’t unsee this. 🙂
Was the taller hood and grille required to clear the V8, or just a larger radiator? Googling shows that the six had a very low profile air cleaner, but it’s hard to imagine the V8 being taller than the straight six.
I was talking to a Pacer fanatic at a car show last month, and he indicated the V-8 cleared the old style hood. It’s possible the V-8 requires a larger grill for cooling, but the smaller opening would still work fine 95% of the time.
Maybe a wider radiator behind the existing opening and some louvres on the hood top to let hot air out would suffice?
I think they were just trying to add a more normal “radiator grille” look and flatter hood behind it as cheaply as possible, just not very successfully. Nothing to do with any mechanical requirements. The V8 would be lower and shorter than the six.
Sounds logical, brougham still ruled!
If you like red Pacer wagons with wood paneling, here’s two more I photographed last month. The one closest to us has the AMC 4.0 H.O. six with a T-5 manual transmission.
(Forgot the image)
Those 05 V6 Mustang wheels look great on it!
Wait – the one in back has opening front vent windows????
This ’77 wagon is a looker, and I (too) like those wheels. It’s such a shame that this bodystyle had just one model year with the original front end.
The Pacer story seems to get sadder as time passes. But it started as a futuristic dream. I remember as a 15 year old, when they advertised it on TV it seemed so- what a car of the future would look like. Now they just seem ridiculous. I agree, the 1978 styling update ruined the original clean design. I suppose the idea was to brougham it up, the trend at the time. When I was 21 (in 1981) I bought a used one, the original 1975 coupe- Pacer X! It wasn’t the future, it seemed like a car from the past- had no power steering and had 4 wheel drum brakes. Yikes.
A sad melange of future style and yester-tech.
A Pacer, though not the wagon, was my daily driver for a short stint that was too long back in the 1980’s. I had crashed my other car, needed something cheap, and there it was, in all its Jetsonian glory. It embodied all of the negative attributes that have been so thoroughly discussed here and elsewhere. Though I never loaded it down, the rear springs broke. It also had electrical gremlins that occasionally rendered the brake lights inoperative, and the brake pedal would intermittently go spongy, which made the otherwise slow car feel dangerously fast for a moment. Of all the crappy cars I have had, the Pacer was the worst.
That wagon is certainly less bad stylistically than the coupe version, and the woodgrain contact paper gives it a more interesting appearance than the typical paint job. A V8 would definitely give it more gumption than the weak 6 that mine had, and probably not hurt the fuel economy.
I always love your personal connections/memories you tie into your articles Joe, especially those random memories, such as the blonde in her AMC Pacer belting it out to Steve Winwood. I have so many of those random snippets of memories from long ago, such as some phrase a complete stranger muttered, what someone was wearing on an insignificant date, etc. It’s odd how the memory works.
Thanks, Brendan! That moment was so surreal. LOL I agree with you about our brains being fascinating with the things we can remember.
Count me as another Pacer design fan and another who doesn’t love the second grille. That being said, as much as I love the purity of the original coupe (the wagon is handsome, too), give me a ’79-80 Limited coupe with the leather seats.
What a fun read Joseph, thank you! I’m really impressed by your ability to remember so many specific details to events in your life. Though I’m not surprised you can remember specific songs that were playing at particular moments. As I tend to be able to do that as well. And how it remains locked in one’s memory for good.
To me the Pacer was supposed to be a young person’s car. And that ugly new grille, combined with all the brougham accessories they offered, made the Pacer seem so stuffy. And dated it even more IMO. To me, the best looking Pacer was always the early ‘Pacer X’ with white letter or black wall tires and slot mag wheels. In bright red, or yellow. Futuristic and sporty.
We all have corny Pacer memories. I remember around 1985, a young guy moved into my parent’s neighbourhood. He drove a maroon early Pacer with dog dish hub caps. Lots of lower body rust. Rather ugly, for a Pacer. What made this driver especially memorable, even today, is he always had to open and slam his driver’s door shut at a ‘Stop’ sign on our street. As Pacer doors were so heavy, hard to close, and tended to sag with age.
Strange, but the Pacer always reminded me of the corniest pop music. And the mid 70s, had plenty of it. I had a chance to ride in a Pacer in July of 1976. And “Let Em In” by Paul McCartney and Wings was playing on the AM radio. It was climbing the charts that month.
I made a point of getting the ‘Packin’ Pacer’ when Hot Wheels introduced it in ’77. It was one of my favourite die casts at the time.
Daniel, you have no shortage a great music!
I’m also a fan of the original Pacer X (to echo Jellybean’s comment above). It was the Pacer’s passenger’s side door that was longer, correct? Or was it the driver’s door? I honestly can’t remember! I can just imagine that rusty door slamming shut and the door glass rattling.
And *thank you* for posting that picture of the “Packin’ Pacer”!! That was one of my favorite toys when I was in the Fourth Grade!! My family was living abroad, and the Pacer just seemed so “American”.
I believe that the passenger-side door was four inches longer than the driver-side door. This would supposedly make it easier for rear-seat passengers to enter and exit the car. They were expected to use the curbside door for safety reasons.
What if they’d adopted the quad-rectangular headlight setup that was coming into fashion? If my admittedly-uncalibrated eyeballs are correct, they’d have had to raise the grille opening (and hood) a bit, and could have carried that straight across. With a wider crossflow radiator (did they have them in ’78?), cooling wouldn’t have been a problem. If the shape of the grille opening was rounded off at the corners rather than being squarely-hacked, this wouldn’t have screamed at the cutely-rounded shape of the rest of the car.
Amazing how we can solve the world’s automotive problems with an unlimited tooling budget and hindsight!
I’m curious if the Japanese onslaught was at all a factor in the wagon’s fairly quick sales decline (of course the coupe declined even faster, but again, same question. (Yes, of course, the Pacer had other intrinsic issues that didn’t help but…)
The Pacer isn’t that small but I can imagine the second generation Civic coupe and wagon as well as the third generation Corolla sedan/hatch/wagon combo taking a lot of sales away as well as Nissan/Datsun’s offerings at the time. The late 70’s were a time of rapid advancement among that trio of manufacturers, especially on the west coast. ‘
And that’s my blinder, the Japanese were all over the west coast to the detriment of the big 3 and certainly the Pacer, which was if anything a total oddity and pretty much outnumbered there by the likes of even Triumph’s TR7 and various other random fairly low-volume things as far as I could tell but I have no first-hand idea of the center portion of the country. Anyone?
Upon its release, the Pacer wagon wasn’t competitive with the domestic compact wagons offered in 1977, let alone the Japanese choices. AMC’s own Hornet Sportabout and the Plymouth Volare/Dodge Aspen offered much better space utilization, and gas mileage comparable to or better, than the Pacer. That’s why it appears AMC attempted to go the luxury route with the Pacer, Matador, and Concord. Offering luxury features at a competitive price, to remain viable in the market. And later promoting better build quality with greater use of galvanized sheet metal than competitors, for example.
The Fairmont and Malibu wagons further rendered the Pacer wagon obsolete in ’78.
The Pacer’s biggest selling point appeared to be its styling, and very comfortable seating for two. It was not a popular choice of most small wagon shoppers across North America in the late 70s. Whether compared to domestic or Import wagons. Certainly not in Toronto or Ottawa, Canada, where I lived. The Volare/Aspen wagons greatly outsold it. The Pacer wagons were relatively rare when new.
Thank you!
It sticks in my mind that the wagon version outsold the sedan.
The problem was that Pacer sales as a whole declined greatly after the 1976 model year ended. (Pacer sales actually began cooling off in the summer of 1976, even though that was a good year for car sales.)
The wagon thus claimed the large share of a rapidly shrinking pie.
Buddy of mine had a Pacer back in high school.
He’s now the Chief Marketing Officer at DraftKings.
The 1978 revision seems to be Dick Teague’s tribute to Packard’s distinctive front appearance. Not a fan of the Pacer though.
AMC was making a lot of errors regarding auto trends during this time. They committed to auto designs that lacked any opportunities of being more than what they were designed to be. There was no design flexibility to the Matador coupe or the Pacer. They were stuck being what they aimed to be – a weird big intermediate fastback coupe, and an even weirder goldfish bowl. AMC couldn’t turn the Coupe into a formal Brougham sedan, or the Pacer into a functioning car.
Imagine if they just put that dough into a new Hornet? If they just crafted something like a Fox-body. Ford used that Fairmont Fox from 1978 to 2005, and turned it into a goldmine in dozens of alterations and models. Or created a K-Car like the one Chrysler used for twenty years from Plymouths to Imperials. What AMC spent on the crappy Matador Coupe and Pacer could have created a brand new modern Hornet giving AMC a completely fresh start with a flexible design.
AMC stopped building Ramblers that made them famous, and tried aping Detroit. They turned their backs on the bread and butter cars that brought in the money. AMC launched the Hornet, and then ignored it until they went belly-up. Instead of ensuring that they kept a state of the art compact and subcompact on the market during the years the US were needing to buy small cars, AMC wasted their resources on dopey coupes like the Pacer and the Matador Coupe.
Thanks, everyone, for letting me fly my AMC Freak Flag this Memorial Day Weekend. 🙂 I hope everyone is having a decent day back at work, whatever it is you do.
I wonder if an E Type straight six would fit under the hood ? That would make things interesting…
I figure many Jaguar owners would prefer to have the reliable AMC six as a replacement for their original engine. The Pacer was interesting as a wide and short car. In an urban setting. As a four door. As a wagon. With a 4 cylinder engine. Maybe front or 4-wheel drive. Agree with other commenters that AMC should have kept up with development of the Hornet,Gremlin and Javelin platform. That alone with all the variety, including 4-wheel drive versions, could have saved the firm.
Late getting here, but it was worth the wait. The Pacer. Hmmm.
This is a car I was ambivalent about when it was new, that I hated with a passion when it was an ordinary used car, and have come to kind of like in the way I like oddball cars in general. A ratty one that was about 8 years old was the only car I was ever actually embarrassed to be seen in. But today I would drive one if for nothing other than the camp factor alone.
The thing just never had a chance. It answered a question nobody was asking. It sold on novelty for a couple of years but then went out of style as quickly as a pet rock. By 1977 AMC had lost every semblance of a potentially successful car manufacturer.
Couldn’t help but be seen in it either, with all that glass. What if they had started out with a wagon, three rows of seats, a proper tailgate? Great thought provoking post, Joseph.
The Pacer was an answer to a question no one asked. I believe it was originally to have used GM rotary engine along with Endura bumpers. When GM cancelled the rotary, AMC had to shoe horn their 6 cyl into it. I think the Endura bumpers never made it due to cost considerations. When it appeared it seemed to suggest European handling and fuel economy and American performance and delivered on none of those. It sold well the first year of production, but then sales quickly collapsed, apparently word spread quickly about its poor performance, fuel economy and iffy quality control. A friend of my had one, the transmission failed after the warranty expired.
I read on “Ate Up With Motor” the Pacer was designed to be an urban car, but a conventional compact would have performed just as well. In my opinion AMC should have built a modern replacement for the Hornet, the 2dr on say a 111″ or 112″ wheelbase, the 4dr and wagon on perhaps a 114″ wheelbase, and they could have used the platform for a Javelin replacement. This was one of Dick Teague’s major failures.
My least favorite design change was the 1973 Torino. From the simple, clean, sporty look of the fresh-for-’72 bumpers to the guard rail mounted on the front only of the ’73.
To this…
I may be in the small group who actually likes the ’73 Torino frontal restyle. The issue I have with the overall car is that the massive-bumpered front seems completely out of balance with the small-bumper rear. The ’73s always looked a little to me like the front clip had been resourced from a newer car and transplanted onto the old one. Not harmonious at all, but I do like the ’73 front end better than the ’74,
To This….
The Torino was made by the hundreds of thousands for many years. It was flexible enough to go from a giant overwrought sports blob to an overwrought luxobarge. Ford got millions off of it!
As an owner of a 1975 Pacer coupe, I agree that the hood restyling in later years doesn’t look that great. That said, I think AMC missed the mark by not using a 1/4″ chrome strip across the leading edge of the hood. It fits right in with the chrome trim around the headlights! I wound up using one to cover up a few tiny rust bubbles along the edge (yes, I treated the rust spots first) and it looks like it belongs there! One more thing re the A/C in this car: I now run R-152A which is actually “Dust It”, the common and cheap keyboard, etc, cleaner in a spray can. I never knew this til I saw a lot of info on line about using it instead of R-134A for original R12 cars. Outlet temp at the center vent runs about 38-40 deg on hot FL days!