A look at the history of AMC from the early days of Nash and Hudson through the end of Eagle. Go to my community page to vote for upcoming brands in this series.
Yep, all too true. Living on the west coast, we have a lot of older cars running around, and outside of the jeeps, I almost never see anything from AMC on the road anymore. When I do, it makes me smile.
I think they are under appreciated. Sure, some of their cars were quirky, but it would be a shame if all they are remembered for are the Pacer and Gremlin.
Me either. When I was in college there was V8 Spirit at a car show on campus and I had a pretty negative attitude about it, but now I think I was just an idiot.
I bought a '74 Hornet Hatchback because of the Arab fuel embargo. It turned out to be one of the best cars I ever had. It towed trailers and boats and crossed the country many times.
I went to school with a guy that had a Hornet hatchback with a 304. It was a neat little car. I wonder how many people would consider attempting to tow with a modern compact car.
Excellent video. Father had 1974 Jeep Cherokee with 360. I had a 1977 Gremlin with 258 six on 4 speed. Car was quick until about 60mph when it ran out of steam. AMC was one of the best affordable dependable cars.
Thanks. A friend of mines dad had a Cherokee Chief that I thought was the coolest truck around at the time. Test drove a purple gremlin once but it was pouring down rain the the defrost simply couldn't keep up and plans to come back and try another day never happened.
One of our neighbors when I was a kid in the early seventies had a red, white, and blue 1970 Rebel Machine (a household with several teenage boys), and another neighbor had a pink 1964 Rambler American sedan with a black interior.
I always thought the gorgeous concept you show at 12:10 looked like the result of a wild night of drinking between L David Ash (Mk III) and Dick Teague (Javelin). Raising the horizontal ridge line 6 inches would indicate that Bill Mitchell (Riviera) crashed the party with another bottle of cheap scotch...
My folks bought a brand new full size ‘65 Rambler Ambassador 990-H that in hindsight was gorgeous and a car ahead of its time in features for its price point. It was a coupe with a creamy white body and a red painted roof, red interior with bucket seats, center console with automatic shifter, a/c, and 327” 4-bbl under the hood. I took my driver’s test in January of ‘70 after an overnight 3” snowfall. Good times.
@@thehopelesscarguy Lol… Actually, he just had me drive around the block. I had been “driving” since age 14, unofficially of course. But it was my 16th birthday and by gawd I was going to get my license! This was in central Michigan at the time. 😉
@@Primus54 I had a friend that had a similar experience in a '65 Barracuda, except it was in Oregons Willamette Valley where snow on the ground after noon confuses people.
The mom of one of my high school girlfriends drove a mint green 78 Concord Wagon. It was the first car I drove over "Roller Coaster Hill" and I still remember it vividly. Trying to sit up taller to try to see what happened to the road in front of the hood.
I kinda like AMC as well but gotta be honest...my father had a Gremlin back in the day with the V8 and it was atrocious in the snow. He got rid of it after the car did it's third 360 spin around the engine while trying to come to a stop.
Not a great wheelbase / weight-bias combination, but there is a guy locally that races a Gremlin with something heavier and more powerful than a stock 304 and manages to make it work.
Had both Studebaker and Packard merged together with Hudson and Nash along with Kaiser and Jeep and man AMC would've definitely been the big 4th for sure.
Thanks for making this video. If I had to disagree with one thing I would say it was the real jeep comment. The xj and tj are widely considered the last of the Jeeps. This is the reason you can sense somewhat of a divide at jeep events sometimes. I often wonder if the modern day auto industry would be better if amc were still around. Despite working with the smallest budget, they were the last domestic manufacturer that ever made an attempt at developing something innovative.
Seems everyone has their lines and I've seen similar divisions at other types of events. Often new vs old. To me the Wrangler crossed the line with the 4-door.
@@thehopelesscarguy indeed everyone has their own line. But one thing I will never understand is Mopar people calling AMC products Mopar. That just doesn't make sense to me.
@@1598hi Seems they are welcoming to new members under the Mopar banner. Although I have yet to see a Citroen at a Mopar event, it wouldn't surprise me.
I am a big fan of AMC because how they did business they were unique car company I wished the merged with Studebaker-Packard to make the fourth largest car maker.
@@American-Motors-Corporation It did ok, but in a period before the rise in sales of pickups and SUVs, AMC regularly sold more Hornets than all the Jeep models combined.
@@thehopelesscarguy well that is extremely wrong, jeep was known as the crown jewel of AMC in fact it made so much money and it was the most profitable arm of the company it literally kept the company going the only other two profitable arms of the company would have been wheel horse lawn mower division and or AM general heavy truck division that also had military contracts the jeep was still the most profitable! As it is in the '60s Kaiser was already buying engines from AMC at that time so jeep was actually very helpful in lucrative to AMC even before they owned it they could at least sell engines! As far as your theory goes that they sold more hornet-based cars yeah you know they might have but here's the problem to get what you could get out of a Jeep versus hornet you need to sell two to three hornets to get the same sticker price okay so wholesale to the dealer when you're dealing with wholesale prices you must figure that you now have to force the dealer to take four if not five of those hornet-based cars in order to make the same money you would off of 1 to 2 Jeeps! And then of course that's the other thing they had so many hornet-based cars did yeah you could easily talk about how they may have sold more of them sometimes in business you can make things up in volume other times you kind of can't it depends particularly in the car business as to what the options are and what the customer is wanting to do with it most of the cars they sold at the time honestly the jeep was the better investment and people started to realize this! See that was Kaiser's problem Kaiser did well but it was worth selling off the Jeep division 2 AMC simply because the Kaiser corporation wanted to go focus on other things cars were considered a pain in the ass especially with all of the coming regulations! AMC knew that there was profit to be had there that's why they went after it was probably one of the only decisions that they got correct in the late sixties early seventies when they decided this! I mean you had the hornet wagon itself you had the Concord the Concord two-door the gremlin was also a hornet-based vehicle basically just had the rear end chopped off and then of course came the spirit and the eagle which was also hornet based basically it was a hornet with four wheel drive shoved underneath it! AMC new how to market the Jeep whereas Kaiser really didn't to be fair and the times that jeep was owned by Kaiser for most of that time it was looked at as a farmer's vehicle not necessarily an outdoorsman's vehicle though it had dual purpose that was recognized but it was not emphasized the 1970s came not just personal luxury cars but the concept that any vehicle could be tailored to a certain need or a hobby that's exactly how they chose to market it and that was correct whereas Kaiser did not do that the only time they come close to it is when they were trying to market it as a helpful Farmers vehicle! So now AMC was heavily dependent upon the Jeep! If they did not acquire a Jeep honestly the company probably would have died about 8 years before it did!
@@American-Motors-Corporation Towards the end it was certainly all that kept AMC going, and the reason Chrysler bought it. And AMC was doing a better job of marketing Jeeps than had been done prior. And it was defiantly a good investment for AMC at the time. Kaiser had been selling manufacturing licenses all over the world, which is why we see these CJ knock offs being sold as ATVs. Per unit profits in the 70s isn't something I can attest to, but it clearly wasn't enough to keep AMC out of debt or from being taken over by Renault.
Unfortunately your video did not get into company management nor product reliability. Both factors greatly contributed to American Motors demise. Yes. Their designs were often ground breaking as well as some of the features they offered like standard seat belts and head restraints long before they were required equipment made the company successful. But, in the long run its poor management and product reliability did the car company in. I like your videos but they substantially lack detail and insight. Rather they simply are a long list of models and years produced. Your videos seem more of an outline or bare bones discussion. You might care to begin adding some depth or story line to your videos. This video is a good example. You really did not answer the question posed in the title. Why are you a fan of AMC? You did not go into that very much. If you work on depth and details more than simply a boring read of dates and models you may get a larger viewership.
Unlike General Motors, AMC did not go bankrupt. They did have problems with their union (as did Studebaker) which affected their costs and quality, but their business management was usually quite good. When these discussions take place little is made of the government's role in strangling business. While the Japanese government was encouraging cooperation among its automakers, ours was lurking about ready to pounce on "restraint of trade' should the companies discuss their individual engineering efforts to meet government requirements re: emissions and fuel economy. When Renault bought in, AMC was forced to divest its profitable AM General division as the French government held the major voting bloc in Renault and, heaven forfend, that a foreign government have a financial interest in an American defense contractor (a position our government later changed). That same French government got the vapors and hauled out the white flags when unions and other Left wingers decided to squawk about AMC building Renaults in Wisconsin and ordered the divestiture. Of course, Lido was happy to scoop the company up. When auto companies fail to make the grade, focus is on product unless of course we are discussing such market failures as Duesenberg or Cord. Car business is two words. AMC mostly got the cars right and did the business well. From the time Jeffreys started making bicycles, through the many years of Charlie Nash, and the renaming of Nash-Kelvinator as American Motors following the accession of Hudson; the company never went broke. Its demise has been greatly exaggerated.
