1975 AMC Pacer X

March, 1975: Good times in Kenosha: From the New York Times:
"The American Motors Corporation announced today it would increase production of its new Pacer model by 32 per cent to 700 units a day because of stronger than expected demand."

You might say it was all downhill from there. AMC had a great year in 1974, and it looked like their huge investment in the new Pacer was paying off. Unfortunately, after a strong first year-and-a-half, Pacer sales took a dive along with everything else AMC was making. By that point the company had little money to invest in new platforms. The good news was that AMC had purchased Jeep in 1970. But the dream of a car company that would compete with Detroit's Big 3 was reduced to a flicker that finally burned out when Chrysler purchased the company in 1987.

The car on the left has the 'X' sport package. If you bought a Gremlin X, you could get a V-8 engine. In this video, Jeff Dunham refers to the Gremlin X as 'the poor man's Corvette', to which Jay Leno replies, "Well, maybe the homeless man's Corvette." The Pacer X didn't even have a V-8, although a few Pacers did get one late in the production run.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Concours d'Lemons: 1976 AMC Pacer

The Concours d'Lemons is a car show, "Celebrating the oddball, mundane and truly awful of the automotive world."

The Pacer was the last all-new car AMC ever built. It put a lot of money into the project, and although initial sales were strong, it seems everybody who thought it was cool bought one, then they couldn't sell any more. It also got a reputation as a not very well-built car.

So you may look at the Pacer and simply ask, "Why?!" Well, Americans were used to driving big cars, and there was a market in the 70s for small cars that were as wide as big cars and that drove the way big cars did. AMC had used this same idea for the Gremlin.

* This car is done up as a replica of the Mirth Mobile from Wayne's World.
* I've never seen a Pacer on the street in Washington, though I have seen a couple of Gremlins. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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1980 Jeep DJ

From the mid-1950s through the mid-1980s, the DJ delivered most of America's mail.
* "DJ" stands for Dispatcher Jeep. The Jeep now called the Wrangler was sold for decades as the CJ, or Civilian Jeep.
* The vehicle is very different from CJs of the same era. It has a lighter frame, rear-wheel-only drive and a DJ-only 5-slot grill. A lot of them had transmissions from Chrysler, and they had engines from several sources.
* I have no idea what that extra radiator/cooler attached to the grill does.

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1970 Jeepster Commando

This is the second Jeepster I've spotted in this part of the city. I like this color.

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1959 Nash Metropolitan convertible

A favorite of both collectors and Weird Al Yankovic, the Metropolitan was the only really small car you could buy from an American brand in the 1950s. Every single car (except for the Corvette) made by General Motors in 1959 qualified as "full-size". Sure, American Motors sold "compact cars", but they were actually pretty big vehicles.

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1973 AMC Javelin, Pierre Cardin edition

From Automobile Magazine: "The Cardin Javelin is arguably the most fully realized of all the designer-branded cars of its early era. The interior is truly a spectacle, with pleated upholstery stripes in plum, orange, white, and silver against a black background. The environment is flamboyantly psychedelic, although in a tailored way. In period print advertising for the car, Monsieur Cardin (AMC included a phonetic spelling of the name, Kar-dán) commented, "People should feel like they’re sitting in a living room instead of sitting in a machine." That is, of course, if your living room is done up in space-age style on par with a discotheque in Saint Tropez or perhaps a movie set from "Barbarella." The decor package was optional for all 1972 and ’73 Javelins for a mere $84.95 and included exterior badging."

This Javelin appears to have every factory option, including AMC's ferocious 401 c.i. V-8.

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1963 Rambler Ambassador 990 Cross Country

Top of the line. V-8, power steering and brakes. For the Kenosha Cadillac, this is as good as it gets. This Rambler is for sale, and the owner was good enough to let me examine it in detail.

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1984 AMC Eagle station wagon

Sales of traditional sedans have plummeted; now it's all about crossover SUVs. Love it or hate it, the AMC Eagle was the car that popularized the crossover.

There's a good article on curbsideclassic.com about the 1970 AMC Hornet titled, "Today Is the First Day of the Rest of Your Life." The title speaks to the fact that AMC, unable to invest the capital needed to create new car bodies, re-envisioned the Hornet compact first as a "luxury compact" called the Concord in the late 70s, then again as the Jeep-like 4x4 Eagle sedan and wagon in the 80s. The wagon pictured below carried AMC all the way to its demise at the end of 1987.

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1969 AMC Hurst SC/Rambler

AMC President George Romney was insistent that his company match the Big Three in every market segment rather than just producing dull compact cars. So when Detroit went all in for muscle cars, Kenosha (that's where AMCs were built) did the same. The ordinary two-door Rambler Rogue (called simply the AMC Rambler in 1969) was certainly America's cheapest and most basic transportation. But the Hurst SC/Rambler included a 315 hp V-8, functional hood scoop, Hurst shifter, heavy-duty shocks, anti-sway bar, anti-hop rear links to fortify the suspension and heavy-duty brakes with front discs.

Most of the 1,512 SC/Ramblers that were built had a red, white and blue paint scheme much wilder than the car pictured. Note that this car may be what's called a "clone" or "tribute"; in other words not the real thing. It doesn't have the correct Magnum 500 wheels or the blackout grill correct to the SC/Rambler. It's still cool.

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1956 Rambler Custom

In my last post I mentioned that in the fall of 1956, American Motors tried to introduce the first car with electronic fuel-injection but ultimately killed to idea due to the complexity of the system. If they'd gone ahead, the unattractive sedan you're looking at would have been the fastest car in America. Even without the horsepower boost provided by fuel-injection, the 1957 Rambler Rebel (the pillarless-hardtop version of the car pictured) boasted a 327 c.i. V-8 with up to 255 hp. Combine that with the lightweight construction of the Rambler, and you've got a car with a 0 to 60 time of 7.5 seconds.

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1979 AMC Concord DL

Perhaps you've seen the Simpsons episode Scenes from the Class Struggle in Springfield, in which Marge repeatedly alters her Chanel suit because she can't afford a new one. Apply that same idea to a car, and you've got the AMC Hornet-Concord-Eagle.

In the fall of 1969, AMC introduced its new Hornet model as a compact car for the budget-minded. Now flash forward a decade. Compact cars are becoming more popular, and AMC is trying to stay in the game but they don't have the money needed to engineer new models. So AMC adds plush seats, a vinyl top and... um... color-coordinated wheel covers to the Hornet. Now it's a unique "luxury compact". Sounds crazy, right? Incredibly enough, this gambit actually worked - this car sold 100,000 copies in 1979 alone. Who can explain anything from the 70s?

And if that isn't unlikely enough, AMC pulled the same trick again a couple of years later when they put the same old bodies atop their new Jeep-derived chassis, thus creating the Eagle - the first four-wheel drive "crossover". Even the old Gremlin got turned into a 4x4. Good times!

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1969 AMC Rambler

The Nash Rambler was introduced in 1950. Within a few years, this model dominated the American compact car market, and was so popular that the company changed its name to Rambler. Known as the Rambler American in 1968, this model became the American Motors Rambler in its final year as the company changed its name again.

Regarding the final edition of the dull but durable Rambler, curbsideclassic.com observed: The compact market took a protracted dive in the second half of the sixties, as buyers gravitated either to sporty cars like the Mustang, which could be had for very little more, or to imports. This generation of Americans never sold really well, and sales drooped as the years went by.

   

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1981 AMC Eagle SX/4

When people think of the AMC Eagle, they mostly remember the station wagon version of what was at that time America's only 4-wheel drive car. But the Eagle was available in other forms, including two-door and four-door models. The SX/4 combined the new 4-wheel drive platform with the old Gremlin chassis (which dated all the way back to 1970) and the Spirit hatchback body (which was based on the Hornet/Concord body, which also dated to 1970). The Eagle 2-door was also available as a "kammback" which was a clever way of saying it had the old Gremlin body. I have seen one of these very rare Eagle-Gremlins in Seattle and hope to photograph that one as well.

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1977 AMC Hornet Sportabout wagon

The Hornet was a new car for American Motors in 1970. This same basic station wagon body staggered all the way to the 1988 model year atop the all-wheel drive Eagle chassis. Chrysler Corp. then purchased AMC and closed their Kenosha, WI factory.

The most famous Hornet is of course the 1974 model X used in the corkscrew-jump in the James Bond film The Man With the Golden Gun.

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1969 AMC Javelin SST

Over the course of seven decades, American Motors produced a lot of surprising cars and reinvented itself several times. After World War II, Nash Rambler models virtually cornered the market in the compact car segment in America. In the 1970s, AMC sold huge numbers of cheap, dull-but-durable fleet models popular with police departments and other government buyers. In the 80s, the Jeep Cherokee and Eagle wagon 4X4s anticipated the SUV and crossover vehicles that everybody drives today. 

The Javelin, like the Chevy Carmaro, was designed to compete with Ford's wildly popular Mustang. Thought not sold in large numbers, the Javelin received good reviews from the car magazines, and, quite surprisingly, was very successful in Trans-Am Series racing. Most memorably, the state of Alabama purchased '71 and '72 second-generation Javelins and put them on the road as the most terrifying highway patrol cars of all time.

This particular Javelin is the deluxe SST model with optional 290 c.i. V8. It appears to be an untouched original apart from having a replacement hood from a different color car. It's been parked in this same spot during the ten years I've lived in Seattle. I thought it never moved, but the other day I saw it driving around.

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