Purple Ponycar Post

"Bad72AMX" (Bad72AMX) 11/25/2013 at 22:31 • Filed to: AMC

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I LOVE 71-74 AMX's in Fresh/ Wild Plum. If my car was literally any color but Trans Am Red with black and red interior I would've switched it to this color. I parted out a 72 6 cylinder Javelin that was Fresh Plum with white T-Top vinyl roof and white interior. It was nothing but rust but I am sure it was a strikingly gorgeous car in its heyday.

Jonee > Bad72AMX 11/25/2013 at 22:57

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It's really the best factory purple ever offered. Jesus, did AMC ever do any thing wrong?

Bad72AMX > Jonee 11/25/2013 at 23:09

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Definitely made a lot of mistakes, but they had tons of stellar ideas, many of which were replicated by bigger brands much later and with much more success. The domestic auto industry as a whole would've been much better off had AMC been a larger competitor from the late 60's onward. They focused heavily on component outsourcing, warranty, economy, reliability and dealer consistency as far back as the 60's. Such novel ideas, right?

Jonee > Bad72AMX 11/26/2013 at 00:00

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I was definitely being sarcastic, but I've been a big AMC fan since I saw my first Pacer as a little kid. Yeah, their biggest problem was that they were never big enough to properly implement their ideas. They had a lot of firsts. Which is not always a good thing when it comes to a dinosaur industry like automobiles, I guess.

AMC/Renauledge > Jonee 11/26/2013 at 01:03

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I love this shade of purple. Perfect. And it's excellent on the Javelin AMX, as well as the Gremlin X, with gold stripes.

AMC went wrong with their bread and butter midsize line by only really selling the basic-ness of their offerings. When everyone else jumped in to the intermediate market AMC had created, they pushed muscle, luxury, and style. AMC couldn't quite keep up at that point. Not without encroaching on the Ambassador.

Changing the name of their bread and butter car 4 times in 11 years (Rambler 6/Rebel V8, then Classic, Rebel, and Matador) didn't help.

Rambler Classic sales were over 350k in '63 and fell every year after that - right as everyone else was fielding competitors. Just 8 years later, its Matador successor managed less than 50k.

They proved they weren't reading the market with the '74 Matador coupe that was redone to the exclusion of it's aging sedan/wagon counterparts. As a 4-sweater only, no less! Meanwhile a huge gap had formed between the 215" long Matador sedans and the 185" long Hornets under it. AMC needed a 200" car, not a sporty coupe, and Ford launched it in '75 instead, selling 500k+ per year between the Granada and Monarch.

AMC was becoming more dependent on their lower-margin compacts, where they were gaining good traction. So they pumped a HUGE amount of money into the Pacer project, got stiffed by GM late in the game when they canned the rotary engine the Pacer was designed around (transverse FWD), and the Pacer had to undergo a crash redesign to stuff a straight six going to the rear wheels. It had to be massively widened, gained a ton of weight, and lost interior space to the trans tunnel, driveshaft tunnel, and high load floor that had to accommodate an LRA. And because of the weight gain, it had no hope of ever getting the mileage it needed to make sense to buyers. Why they didn't keep it FWD, but use the newly updated Buick 231 instead, I don't know.

So the Matador coupe and Pacer projects yielded cool cars, but fell far short of what the market wanted and AMC needed. After they got done flashing in the pan, AMC was out of money, with the rest of their line looking quite old. Jeep was keeping them alive until '79, when Energy Crisis II killed their sales momentum.

That's my understanding of their mistakes. Sorry for the novella.

Bad72AMX > AMC/Renauledge 11/26/2013 at 08:00

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That's a very solid answer. I'll add to it that divulging the Ambassador and the Classic/Rebel/Matador so heavily didn't help matters. The common body shell Classic/ Ambassador in 1963 was the most success AMC ever saw in marketing a non-compact car, but Abernathy changed it almost instantly. Had Romney stayed at the helm, the basic chassis would've underpinned both models until 1968/1969 as had been planned. I think it would've met much greater success. The 63 Ambassador was the compact luxury car many people wanted in the 60s and would become the style of car that everyone would clamor to build in the 70's.

As for saying the Matador coupe was a failure, I can't agree. It used mostly off the shelf items so development cost wast nearly as high as it looked. It was also wildly popular in 1974. Many don't care for its looks now, but then it was almost universally praised for them in reviews. It generated showroom traffic in a way that nothing had since the launch of the Gremlin, which helped sell an otherwise stale and aging lineup. It's biggest issue was the lack of updating it received which meant it too was quickly an also ran.

I love Pacers and their excellent packaging concepts, but that car suffered the same fate. It sold like crazy in 1975, but that led to quality issues as the ancient Kenosha factory attempted to build enough to satiate demand. But like most AMC's, it got no marketing or styling attention after it's debut and sales quickly slumped. For a car that shared nothing but Powertrain with the rest of the lineup, it was expensive to build and didn't amortize as quickly.

Despite all of that, I would say the real failing of AMC was that Renault simply didn't contribute enough. Had AMC stayed single, it likely would've dropped the passenger car line in the early 80's and focused on profitable Jeep. They could've sold off the Kenosha plants and kept Toledo only. But Renault initially invested cash to keep development going, then stopped short after the Alliance. Development was on going, but Renault was ready to cut its losses despite the upcoming ZJ Grand Cherokee, the Medallion, and the Premier. These were all modern, higher margin products that likely would've kept AMC alive. Instead, Renault foolishly exited too soon and gave Chrysler Jeep and a brand new plant for pennies on the dollar.