Ridiculous Rebadges: A Medallion Lost to History

"Amoore100" (amoore100) 08/22/2016 at 22:22 • Filed to: Ridiculous Rebadges, Eagle, Renault, AMC

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Welcome to Ridiculous Rebadges, a series of articles in which I go through and examine the details and circumstances surrounding some of the more infamous and some of the more esoteric vehicular rebadges throughout automotive history.

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A few months ago I composed !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! despite being based on the rather mediocre Renault 25. Well, I recently discovered another Eagle that was not quite so eager to hide its French roots. Prior to the mighty Premier’s premier, we had the Eagle Medallion, a Renault 21 federalized for the US market. The Medallion was released one year after the EU got the Renault 21, which, by that time, had already established itself on the market as a decent family alternative to the old and dowdy Vauxhall/Opel Ascona.

While the Renault 21 was cause for celebration overseas, us across the pond were less enamored when the all-new Medallion burst into showrooms in ‘87. Disillusioned by years of Encores, Alliances, and Le Cars, the Medallion was not what we were looking for in a new car, no matter how fancy and European it may be.

And European it was, for every Medallion that showed up in the United States was crafted in Maubeuge, France before being shipped to the States for final specification and adjustment for regulations. However, while the ships carrying the Renault Medallions across the Atlantic seemed to be getting along just fine, AMC, the company that had funded the project, started taking on debts and had sunken itself by 1988. This left none other than Chrysler to sell the rest of the Renault 21s that were part of the contract and so, as with any other AMC products they had, they simply rebadged the entire lineup ‘Eagle’ and called it a day.

Since AMC had launched the Medallion on a shoestring budget, though, the few potential buyers the Medallion might have had were even lower due to the nearly non existent marketing and advertising resources, not to mention public concern over AMC’s demise.

Adding insult to injury was the Eagle Premier/Dodge Monaco model which was selling in the same showrooms as the Medallion and offered much more weight and power for the few Americans who had stumbled into an Eagle dealer and were turned off by the Medallion’s dismal Douvrin 2.2.

No one’s quite sure how many Medallions eventually sold, but they certainly weren’t breaking five digits by anyone’s reckoning, or even four for that matter. The entire lineup was discontinued after two years, in 1989, and it marked the end of another European bestseller’s (2 million sold) fate in the bigger-is-better American market. Funny how less than thirty years later Renault’s current owner produces one of America’s top selling sedans which has a very popular 2.5L I4. The Medallion was simply too little, too soon.

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Eric @ opposite-lock.com > Amoore100 08/22/2016 at 23:11

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Wait... Someone owns Renault? I knew they had a close relationship with Nissan, but I don’t know of another automaker that owns them.

Amoore100 > Eric @ opposite-lock.com 08/22/2016 at 23:19

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Sorry, bad wording. They’re equal partners in a “cross-shareholding agreement”. They do a lot of sharing and exchanging though, so they’re basically one big entity rather than two corporations.

Birddog > Amoore100 08/23/2016 at 01:20

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Hooniverse pretty much hit the nail on the head. They really weren’t that good.

Amoore100 > Birddog 08/23/2016 at 01:28

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Yeah, the original version of this post had a far more negative take against the Medallion/21 but I got rid of it in favor of being more objective.

Birddog > Amoore100 08/23/2016 at 02:03

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Kudos for taking the professional route.

The only experience I had with the Renault experiment was back in High School. A buddy got a brand new 1986 Alliance for his 16th birthday. In 1989. His Dad got it at a liquidation auction at our local AMC dealer. By time we graduated in 1991 that car was gone.

Amoore100 > Birddog 08/23/2016 at 02:13

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Haha, the trouble with the AMC Renaults is that on paper they looked amazing. They won plenty of awards and seemed to be the answer to all our questions but in truth it was an unholy combination of European designs which were not oriented towards American-type roads and American build-quality, which was shoddy to begin with. Add that to mechanics who didn’t know their ‘Bonjours’ from their ‘Mercis’ and you had a recipe for disaster. At least, that’s the most likely theory that I have for these cars looking so promising from new and selling in the millions over in Europe.

Birddog > Amoore100 08/23/2016 at 02:19

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That’s a very solid theory.

And let’s face it. AMC was dead by 1980. Everyone knew it except for the folks at AMC and Renault. The only reason Chrysler pounced was for Jeep. Oddly, once AMCs engineers were rehydrated they taught Chrysler a lot about building cars.

Cé hé sin > Eric @ opposite-lock.com 08/23/2016 at 04:52

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Somebody owns Renault Trucks, if that’s any good to you. That somebody is Volvo, a Swedish company who don’t make cars. Yes, big business is complicated.

RT > Amoore100 08/23/2016 at 14:04

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Also this is an old Renault design - which is just asking for trouble as far as quality or engines are concerned.

RT > Amoore100 08/23/2016 at 14:10

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Even under the Renault badge, while it may have been successful on debut - they’re virtually non-existent on today’s roads. For example, there are only five Renault 25s left in the UK!

Amoore100 > RT 08/23/2016 at 14:59

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Well most old French cars have gone extinct today, probably more due to rust although mechanical issues are not to be overlooked. Also, the Medallion was actually a Renault 21, not a 25, although there are probably still just as few of those left in Britain!

Amoore100 > RT 08/23/2016 at 15:10

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But new these cars were amazing—more fuel efficient, roomier, and better designed than the competition. They were just marketed poorly and marred by the awful Renault ownership experience.

RT > Amoore100 08/23/2016 at 15:33

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Yep, and I’m aware it’s a 21. I just used the 25 as an example since if any car is rare around here - it’s going to be a large non-luxury saloon. Since the built quality of most old Renaults were atrocious, I can’t really say I’m surprised.

Then again, bestsellers like the Renault 5 took longer to disappear than these cars. It’s all relative I guess.

RT > Amoore100 08/23/2016 at 15:50

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Better designed than the American competition at the time for sure. They had some good features, but I’m not sure whether to class them as amazing, it’s sort of like a British Leyland effect.

Amoore100 > RT 08/23/2016 at 18:44

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Well a lot of contemporary road testers were amazed given the reputation of the Encore and Alliance, although in the end the Medallion and Premier did nothing to fix that reputation. They were a lot nicer from new, though, and surpassed everything from the Chevy Celebrity to the Audi 5000 in terms of space and power.

RT > Amoore100 08/23/2016 at 20:44

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Haha, you reminded me of this video. The AMC Renaults weren’t bad cars.

Since you’ve brought up two of its rivals though I decided to see how it would compare. Sorry for the incoming walls of text, but I was simply interested to find out.

Medallion vs Celebrity:

Now, the Medallion was only available with a 2.2 litre engine that put out 103bhp, while the Celebrity’s closest equivalent was a 2.5 litre engine which had a stunning 93bhp. Space is harder to judge since no figures for interior space were given for the Renault. We can only compare via exterior dimensions, wherein the Chevy is longer and wider but the Eagle is taller. I’d imagine the Eagle would be better designed inside, and hence accommodate more space, but that’s just speculation on my part. Overall the Medallion is the clear winner here.

Medallion vs Audi 100/200/5000/whatever:

Here the 2.2 litre equivalent of the Audi made 115bhp, or even up to 220 in Turbo form, so it wins in power. When looking at dimensions the Audi is noticeably wider, taller and longer - so for the sake of simplicity I’d say the Audi is ahead here. It’s also going to come with more kit than the Medallion, since the Audi is a luxury car after all. Perhaps it would be fairer to compare it with an Audi 80 /90 or even a VW Passat. Either way, the Audi is ahead by a landslide.

So, to cut it short, the Eagle Medallion was underrated, and outperformed (most) of the contemporary competition. It’s no world beater, but it deserved more praise than it got. Renault had notable quality issues at the time, and I have personal anecdotes of it myself, but they had a few good ideas too. It’s far from perfect, but this car had its strengths.

Amoore100 > RT 08/23/2016 at 21:30

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Excellent comparison! Actually, it was the Premier that I was thinking of that was the Audi 5000 competitor. I was watching this video last night and got things a bit mixed up:

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Definitely, the Eagles were perfectly decent cars marred by Renault’s poor reputation and worse marketing. The cars alone were quite ahead of their time (despite aging badly) and I can see myself getting drawn towards purchasing one had I been in that market back in the 1990s, especially with those elegant Giugiaro lines.