The images in some of these old brochures are just delightfully perplexing: The nicely attired couple, the haystacks, the LP records, a phonograph? And the not-quite-Mustang-hip Ambassador Sports Sedan? What kind of party are these two planning on attending?
Lots of concepts got Ok’d on that brainstorm PR session. How many demographics are being chased in this one image?
Admittedly, the rest of the ’67 brochure is much more conventional; and maybe more fitting with AMC’s Ambassador?
Yet, food and farming have an odd way to stay present all the way through the booklet. Maybe my ‘young’ Gen-X mind is missing something?
Then again, any of these is way more fun than those found in the Tercel brochure Mother got in ’88.
Car Show Classic: 1967 Ambassador Convertible – Only 1,268 Others On The Planet
that “roll in the hay” may be a truncated affair with a background music provided by 33rpm records played on 78 rpm with the mechanical wind up gramophone player seen there. imagine Marvin Gaye’ s lets get it on- as performed by the alvin & chipmunks.
Ha! Good one!
What’s with the painted B-pillar? Is it a hardtop that is supposed to look like a coupe?
Leave it to AMC to come up with something weird for their premier product.
Its a honest to goodness 880 series 2dr “sport” sedan! Made to compete with a Bel Airs, Catalinas, Custom 500s , and Fury I/II still lurking about. Dodge and Mercury threw in the towel by 67 on 2dr sedans.
That’s what makes this car so cool to me…. it’s bizarre use of the hardtop roof on a two door sedan. Most 2dr sedans of that era were sold to skinflints or fleets, using the sensible, dull, four-door sedan roofline. Here AMC used the coupe roofline with a fixed B-pillar on the Ambassador and Rebel, giving the cars a modicum of sportiness at lower cost.
AMC strugged with an image of thrift. This might be a good selling point for economy cars, and for value cars – but as we go into the Brougham Age, no one wanted to buy a car that promised luxury, but then had the same cheap dashboard and steering wheel found in a stripper. AMC did a very fine job making their cars look the part – but upon closer look, you saw thrift instead of brougham. Exclusivity is another selling point, but AMC just kept offering thrift when buyers needed to see a personal luxury car.
All Ambassadors struggled with being nothing but a basic Rambler with a hood stretched six inches. Really nothing else. It was rather silly to compare a Classic with an Ambassador side by side and noting that they were the same car in nearly every way except for six more inches of hood.
Then you compared the Hornet to the Gremlin and the same rule applies. They were the same car up to the B pillar. You’d buy a nicely optioned Hornet, yet you saw a stripper Gremlin dash and steering wheel. Wood applique only convinces so far. The AMC budget didn’t permit much beyond length.
So the DPL was not an exclusive ride for a buyer accustomed to AMC Classics, Rebels or Matadors. Without those Brougham touches, the profits weren’t as strong as they were for AMC competitors. Lord knows that when the Matador Coupe arrived in 1974, it needed to be a Personal Luxury Car with a stand up verticle grille, opera windows and notched roofline – not what it ended up being. All that money – wasted on the wrong design? Oof.
Those brochure photos are as perfect as could be. Sad they didn’t reflect reality.
And it’s way to easy to forget what a difference a detail like that can make. Say whatever else you will about the interior of Chevy Bolts like mine, the leather covered steering wheel in that car is wonderful. It’s covered in genuine leather that’s glove soft. Very satisfying to touch, which is great because you touch it all the time. Make the car nicer to drive. So if AMC got to 9/10 and that’s the tenth that’s left out, too bad for them.
It was tough being an independent and then try to compete with the Big 3 using the same platform for both lower and upper tier models.
Although Studebaker got away with it for a brief period with the Lark.
Studebaker got away with it? Dead before AMC. Other than Avanti, all models had a cheapskate image.
Weren’t Golden Hawks riding in a similar place as the Avanti in earlier years? I know that the ingredients were getting pretty stale when the GT Hawk was hatched. As stated in another comment, I wasn’t around when Studebaker was still alive, so the overall stigma is a bit lost on me.
I’ve always been drawn to Studebakers, and have become more involved with them in the last 15 years, so I’m “getting it” a little more than I once did… One thing that surprised me is how many bottom feeder cars they were moving compared to better equipped ones. And they seemed to have a thing with using the little Champion engine in almost all of their trucks; gearing was adjusted to make the combination work, leaving you with a 45mph cruising speed. I’m not sure if that was what their customer really wanted, or if that’s what the company preferred to produce and ship to dealers.
My current 1962 Lark was a special order that was reasonably well optioned, including a V8 and factory air. My Dad has a ’62 Lark wagon that was ordered for dealer stock. The only option it has is tinted glass, and it appears that full wheelcovers were installed at the dealer. No heater, no radio. It has an engine, steering wheel, and a seat. Cheapskate turned up to 11.
I guess you are right, with the Hawk and Scotsman or Lark all with 1953 Studebaker underpinnings.
Big three intermediates starting in ’62 were the final nail in the coffin for Rambler and Studebaker. Thoroughly modern practical sized cars were mainstream instead of a slightly quirky alternative.
Guess they wanted to make the brochure more memorable by having pics of things not normally associated with this type of passenger car. AMC did have to do some odd things to make them stand out from the big herd.
The 1967 Ambassador is best remembered (by me) as the ultimate stripper – the postal delivery car. How does one tart up the mailman’s sedan to sell a top of the line car and who does that ruse fool?
Chevy did get away with it. Biscayne the for postman and Caprice for affordable luxury.
Baby Boomer. First family car I remember was a 1950 NASH AMBASSADOR. Great car, like other NASH AMBASSADOR through last 57s. When Romney came to power, AMBASSADOR had an identity problem. Recall magazine ads showing AMBASSADOR next to a Cadillac Fleetwood (each with a chauffeur standing ready) asking why pay more $ for a luxury car? There were several 67? 🤔 AMBASSADOR limousines built. One was used several times in TV show Mission Impossible. While not in same league with Fleetwood, AMBASSADORS gave a lot of luxury for the money.
Good points! Those Ambo limos were 1969 model, and at least one still exists in the hands of a well-known AMC collector here in WI.
Playing the Persuasive Percussion version of Miserlou on 78 might’ve been the inspiration for Dick Dale’s cover.
That lead photograph is totally perplexing; haybales in the background, an old style gramophone with a 331/3 lp? I would say maybe a subliminal suggestion for a roll in the hay. What would have George Romney said about that!
My first thought when I saw that photo was they must be so far from civilization there’s no place to plug in and thus you need an acoustically-amplified wind-up vintage gramophone to listen to your records. But then others reminded me that records from the acoustic-horn era were 78s and all the records shown appear to be 33-1/3 LP albums which would sound like chipmunks played at 78. I *know* that album at the far right below the horn, but can’t make it out.
The blue interior with the woman holding grapes just screams for Nero to sit…in an AMC???
It seems that no “real people” ever have as much fun as those models depicted in ’60’s car brochures! They are often in unlikely, ludacris, situations, that are completely different from everyday life. Even the more pedestrian car lines like Chevy, Ford, and Dodge, featured models dressed up at formal events. Putting your best foot forward, that was advice that most parents gave their kids back in the late ’50’s.
Cadillac had those little, “slice of the rich life” scenes in their ads. Ford had a lot of fun when advertising the early Mustangs. They were a parody of this type of ad. With Walter Mitty style men and women transformed after buying their new Mustang.
From an art direction point of view, they over did it with the hay bales. The ‘wall’ of hay bales to the right, is visual overkill. A few hay bales around the couple would have sufficed, for a cleaner background that lent the impression, this was an impromptu moment.
Not to mention that the farmer would be real angry at them for messing up his haystack and dancing on the bales!
Yes, these images are silly; and if Mad Men is to be believed, ad agencies at the time seemed to function with most of the creative staff half in the bag at any given moment…which no doubt contributed to the silliness.
Still, these ads do convey an appreciation of the reader/target to be able to hold on to enough detail in the images so as to convey something of a narrative story. For this, I give them credit and feel a bit nostalgic for days passed. The final picture in this post calls back to the first one…with the same model, the phonograph records on the ground, and the tractor. In between, we have some indication of a picnic…which is echoed in the contents of the trunk in the final picture.
I’m not saying that this worked (as we know, nothing ultimately worked for AMC), but it does indicate that someone was thinking about something that under no circumstances would be conceived of or approved in our modern world where attention spans are expected to be measured by the second. Much longer than it would take to read even a few words of this 1967 brochure.
I hadn’t noticed that last pic. Isn’t it a bit risqué for AMC to show the model in the back seat, looking out the window at you?
She has a look on her face… like she might be calculating how many grapes to stuff into the works of the gramophone to slow it down enough to make use of those LP’s on the trip home. Or possibly stomping the grapes as the first step of making wine. Depending on which powertrain the Amby has, they might have aged into an acceptable hooch before the trip’s over. Or maybe there *is* some backseat boogie on the menu. Could be a combination of any of the above, or something else entirely. I, for one, would be brainstorming a way to permanently attach Ambassador wheelcovers to the tractor.
I wasn’t born for over than another decade after these cars took to the road, so can only look rearward and see them through ads, the memories of others, and as they exist today. Without the Rodney Dangerfield effect that was bestowed upon AMC products when they were new, I probably see them a bit differently. I’ve always liked the styling of the 1967-68 Ambassador (and ’67 Marlin), and would have seriously considered one based solely on their merits. The interior of the one where Grape Girl is looking through from the other side looks quite inviting. I like the seats, trim, and fabric choices, though I’d probably prefer a bench seat and column shift if we’re traveling together.
There are some details that aren’t tip top; such as the fairly plain instrument cluster, door panels, and a center console that looked a bit like it was fabricated out of hardware store materials… and there were the mechanical bits like vacuum wiper motors (I think the Ambassador at least got electric by this point?) that AMC hung on to through 1971. Overall, this feels like a very credible effort, though it didn’t seem like there was any real way the company could shake the image they had sown in the late 1950’s-early 1960’s. Betcha this more-than-quirky brochure theme captured here was at least partly a result of Roy Abernethy and Co’s mad scramble to throw anything that might have a chance of sticking, as the fickle buying public tuned out AMC’s new tuned in cars, and the kind of folks who were looking for another stolid and solid Rambler bargain scratched their head and walked away.
That blue on does “photo well”. The seemingly bizarre setting is something only the photographer could explain though.
a friend of mine has his 67 SST hardtop for sale currently one of two that came to NZ new, nice enough car, drives like an old Holden he reckons.
Can’t help but correct your on your incorrectly describing this Ambassador as a “Sports Sedan”. The term ‘Sport’ generally refers to pillarless hardtop bodies, as in 2 or 4 door pillarless hardtops.
A “Sport Sedan” is a 4 door pillarless hardtop. This Ambassador, has only 2 doors and therefore cannot be described as a ‘Sedan’. Someone has already questioned why a ‘B’ pillar has been painted in, and I also wonder why this a has been done.
Bottom line more correctly, we are looking at an Ambassador ‘Sport Coupe’ (2 door pillarless hardtop).
As the last image in the post shows, the ‘2-Door Sports Sedan’ term was used in company print regarding the model. I would argue it with AMC’s ghosts, but the whole brochure shows they were rather misguided.
2-door sedans were a thing, the difference vs. a coupe being that the 2-door sedan typically used the same wheelbase and roofline as the 4-door sedan, whereas a coupe would have been “cut down” vs. the sedan in some regard — e.g., a shorter wheelbase and/or lower/sleeker roofline — as the term “coupe” derives from the French word for “cut”.
This also explains how “4-door coupe” isn’t an oxymoron, as those have a sleeker roofline than the sedan they’re related to — such as the ’62-73 Rover P5 Coupé.
AMC was taking a leaf from Ford’s late-1950s playbook.
For 1957-58, Ford offered the Fairlane and Fairlane 500 in two- and four-door sedans with rooflines and thin B pillars that were designed to mimic the hardtop look.
I’d love to be able to buy a new car with that fancy blue interior with a whole shitload of green grapes on the center console now. It’s bad enough that we don’t get color choices nowadays but we don’t even get grapes.
Why is there a shoeless drunk girl slumped over a tractor tire trying to put an Ambassador hubcap on the tractor tire that she is slumped over. “Granny? Cousin Betty Lou Mabel’s been into your jug!!”
In ’67 AMC engaged Wells Rich Greene as their ad agency. They were famous for unconventional ads, and they started out strong!
Incidentally, the Edison phonograph wouldn’t have played 33s, and the record seems to be above the tone arm somehow?
The records look 33. The portable phonograph,with changer, looks like it could be 33. The speaker says 78.
The influence of Wells Rich Greene didn’t show up until the 1968 model year. The brochures, print ads and television commercials for 1968 have a completely different look and theme as compared to those for the 1967 model year. (Of course, it didn’t hurt that for 1968 AMC had the Javelin and AMX to sell.)
The AMC theme for 1967 was “The Now Cars.” That theme landed with a thud (as did the cars themselves).
In December 1966, AMC employed comedian Jack Benny to extol the virtues of its line up. It only shows how confused – and desperate – AMC was by this point.
AMC was promoting its 1967 cars – particularly the Rebel and Ambassador – as the “Now Cars” for younger buyers seeking style and performance. But this commercial – which ran in prime time – features a 70-something comedian who played up a “tightwad” persona in his act.
I had a 67 Ambassador dpl in 1977, it was rough on exterior but ran great. Car was white w/ black top and red cloth interior. Hood was green with the outline of the United States. Was it a postal vehicle?