Eagle: The fate of non Jeep American Motors 

It always saddens me to see the slow death of AMC, a once-great hard-fighting underdog worn down to the point it just could not get back up again to fight another round ☹ I don't know if Iacocca really believed in Eagle and wanted them around because his main focus was naturally the Chrysler brand, but I'm sure that he believed that he could sell them, and perhaps the effort might become more lucrative than he expected so it was worth trying I guess. It was a strange time for the US car market as Japanese cars had become more 'Americanized' and respected for their virtues, but nobody was fooled by rebadged cars no matter who sold them. There was also uncertainty of what would happen if the rebadged models were dropped, pushing a lot of buyers into simply buying what was essentially the same car directly from a Japanese brand dealership instead. French cars were never popular in my part of the world no matter whose name was on them, nor were really small cars like the Colt popular back then either. Another regional quirk is that none of these cars were referred to as "Eagle"; instead everyone here called them "AMC Eagle". This is the South and that's just how we are, no offense intended y'all 😁 And this is also where the mountains begin. That fact meant that a lot of folks here were and still are very interested in AWD and 4WD cars, since many days out of the year there are snows at the higher elevations which makes them a very practical choice indeed. Prior to this you only had Jeeps and pick-ups to choose from, but now you could get a car better suited to family use and they came with much better fuel economy too 😎 Those models were fairly popular and you did see those on the local roads, but very few of the others. Eagle did do one remarkable thing; they convinced a lot of the hold-outs from the past who would still buy only American cars that imports really were OK, and they could keep their pride in buying an American brand even if the cars weren't built here. Lee Iacocca was someone who you felt you could trust and if he said this was an American brand then it was. I do wish that he and Chrysler had kept the AMC brand alive and hadn't changed to Eagle but such is the way things sometimes go, and I doubt that this one thing would have much changed the final outcome for these cars. Nowadays nobody who wasn't there when it happened knows who and what Eagle was and I'm glad this channel has highlighted and thus kept alive yet another part of our automotive past.

Thank you for including me man. Much appreciated, nothing but respect🤝😄

Eagle. The Chrysler version of Geo

I was a kid when the Eagle Vision came out and I thought it was one of the coolest looking cars ever. Still looks good today, decades later

I had a 92 Eagle Talon mid range. 5 spd..i loved that car.

Years ago I was walking to the local Metro station here in DC when an elderly woman called to me from her second floor balcony. She was on her landline with the police, trying to report a clearly stolen/abandoned car and asked me to see what kind of car it was. I yelled up that it was an Eagle Summit and she was totally confused. She had no idea that brand ever existed.

9:29 - that vehicle had so many different names depending on the market. The sliding door mechanism was pretty slick to make it work on such a short vehicle.

The Eagle was the OG crossover. That said. They should have made the Eagle brand the crossover division of Jeep. Kinda like Subaru with their AWD cars that came later in the 90's.

Great video as per usual. Thanks for shining light on these. I especially liked the 1995 Talon TSi the best. They still look phenomenal. Thanks for the interesting chatter.

I worked at a Jeep/Eagle dealer in 89 and 90. The Premier was a nice comfortable car. They weren't too bad reliability wise. The Eagle Summit were nice and we hardly had any in for warranty work. The Eagle Medallion drove nice, but they were "junk". We had so many complaints and 2 customer buybacks. We started getting arbitration cases brought to us. Chrysler would re-sell the buybacks and sell them with extended warranties and free maintenance. The Talon TSI AWD was a rocket and decently reliable.

10:47 - Early in Greg Kinnear's career, before he got a big break with "As Good As It Gets". I think he just did a tabloid show on E! Network before the Eagle commercials.

Thank you for another video. I thought it was interesting how you explained Eagle. I liked the fact you included the details about AMC and Renault and the later connection of Mitsubishi. You are correct about the Chrysler 300 M. It was supposed to be an Eagle. It was turned into a Chrysler. I recall the Premier and Dodge Monaco. The Eagle Vision looked like an Oldsmobile. You could called that car Oldsmobile Eighty-Eight and people would have believed it. I thought it looked the best out of the three LH cars underneath the Chrysler New Yorker . I thought the New Yorker was the best. It is sad it was short lived, but they had to think quick and Eagle was it. They took AMC and turned it into Eagle quick and fast and on a budget. Jeep lives on globally thriving. AMC was like little car company that could. We have lost so many car brands since. Three should not be dead( Oldsmobile/Pontiac/Mercury). Thank you again.

I had the pleasure of owning a 1990 and 1992 Eagle Premier. On two occasions, during that time, I had the opportunity to drive a Toyota Camry, and also a Dodge Intrepid. Neither could compare to the Premier. It felt much more substantial a vehicle in every way. A truly understated car. Very reliable also.

15:09 - GM's equivalent wasn't Saturn; it was Geo. Saturn was much different - more of a proof of concept that GM could design & build a true import fighter with an altogether different approach from the legacy GM brands. Eagle (and Geo) served as a label to group rebadged vehicles built by other brands.

The Eagle Sumitt Wagon was one fun vehicle to drive. I've known of at least 2 used car dealers that chose those as their daily drivers. They loved them. Could have driven anything else but chose them.

Fun fact, the Espace was originally designed for Simca which was part of Chrysler Europe. They turned it down and Renault later took it up. Chrysler brought out it's similarly styled people carriers around the same time as the Espace, so it may have influenced those. When Chrysler pulled out of Europe, Simca etc were bought by Peugeot. Chrysler and Peugeot are now owned by Stellantis now, circle of life...

I enjoy Green Hawk's videos as well as yours!!

My dream car in High School was the Eagle Talon TSi.

Canada also had the Eagle Vista, based off the previous generation Colt and the 2000 GTX, a rebadged Mitsubishi Galant. If you thought Dodge selling the Monaco alongside the Premier was bad enough, Dodge also sold a rebadged Galant creatively called the Dodge 2000 GTX. The same car with either a Dodge or Eagle emblem

I honestly don’t think I’ve ever seen a single Eagle vehicle in person

I'm 35, and the brand "Eagle" feels like something out of a Mandela Effect. I know it existed, but I can't ever really say I've seen one.

4:41 - They never should have sold the Premier as the Monaco. Bad product planning. That undermined Eagle from the very beginning.

The 90's sunset the Eagle and Greg Kinnear together.

You.mentioned it was sad to see Plymouth go in 2001. Indeed it was. Weve lost a lot of American brands in the last 25 years. And quite a few of them were very old names. Eagle, Geo, Plymouth, Oldsmobile, Pontiac, Hummer, Saturn, Mercury. Did i miss any? Chrysler is in hospice. GMC is a duplicate brand. Weve gained Rivian and Tesla. And Chrysler created the ridiculous "Ram". We call those Dodge trucks.

My dad had a Summit. It was blue and fairly basic with a 5 speed manual. Don't remember which engine he had. He absolutely loved it and had a car phone in it. The car phone was possibly worth more than the summit was

Good video. I was disappointed when eagle failed. By the time they had really good products in the vision and the talon, the division was pretty much already dead. The problem that I think Chrysler had was they didn't have the discipline to utilize the divisions correctly. They were comfortable placing the divisions too close to each other competing for the same customers without leaning enough into performance let alone types of performance for one division versus another division. They also couldn't decide what price point eagle was supposed to compete for. The Premier was supposed to be aimed at making a car to share the garage with a Jeep wagoneer which appealed to some of the wealthiest of people in the country. So instead of a Mercedes, BMW, the Premier was supposed to be the offering on the higher trim. But then they also wanted to compete against the Ford Taurus so they offered the lower trim. Beyond this, all respect due to Premier owners, even at the top trim level The premiere would never be mistaken as a serious Mercedes or BMW competitor. I think for eagle to have worked, they needed to wait until they figured out the formula on how to make a proper import fighter and let the AMC name live on until the contracts were done with Renault until they got their homework done on a clear plan on how to compete, a model that was designed to compete toe to toe with the cars they wanted to compete with. I have wondered if the proper way to do eagle would have been to release the stealth under eagle instead of Dodge with eagle styling and follow it up with the eagle vision but making the vision rear wheel drive with all-wheel drive optional and fitting a V8 in it as an option. Remember that the LH platform was designed that it could be adapted for rear wheel drive And there were apparently test mules with v8s in them. From here, if this worked, develop a whole product line as a more high-end import fighter division and leaving the economy cars and the eclipse clone role for Plymouth only (and a full version like the talon not the content and styling removed version Plymouth was stuck with).

The talon was not a Galante it was a eclipse. Maybe the eclipse was a Galante? I have to say that Eagle versions were consistently better looking than any of the other clones.

My parents friend had an Eagle Talon that was sweet. I wanted to buy it when I got old enough to drive, but unfortunately there was a bad storm in our city and a tree fell on his garage destroying the car. Insurance wouldn’t cover the damage cuz that’s considered an act of god clause.

Say.......GEORGE-et-toe JEW-jar-o. Georgetto Giugiaro. Very good!

About 3:40 you state that the AMC Eagle was a full-time 4-wheel drive while the same year Subaru’s were only part time 4-wheel drive. I believe you made a mistake here as I drive several early Subaru vehicles and they were all full-time all wheel drive. A minor mistake here or is my memory failing? Thanks for the video!

Interesting

Would you ever do a video about the Merkur brand?

I enjoy Green Hawk's videos as well as yours!?

Yeah the AMC Eagle what's the first crossover

Wasn't the PRV an absolute boat anchor of a motor?

American motors customers were not going to buy a weird French Renault car After buying ramblers

4runner?

Eagle: Chryslers version of Merkur and Saturn

Interesting