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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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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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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