Re: The old days - Aboard the Apollo - 1973
My favorite fun car was an AMC Hornet. It was a 1973 'gucci' edition. I put about 400,000 miles on that baby. I bought it from a Sea Org member who left Flag with his wife after having their fourth baby. (mandatory) I got the car in 1985 and drove it until 1992. I had to change the master brake cyclinder every 18 months for some reason. But for the brakes it was a no problem car and got me wherever ...always... and soooooo easy to work on. Every part of that engine was accessible. I loved that car.
It came off the back of the Cadillac lot in Lakeland, Florida where the ex-SO's father sold cars. I thought.... now
there'sthe back lot to shop!
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[url]http://selectism.com/columns/benjaminvergnion/tag/amc-hornet/[/url]
[IMG]http://carphotos.cardomain.com/ride_images/3/2055/4441/30137220007_large.jpg
mine was a cream color white
__
It never died. It was
murdered eventually by my boyfriend scraping off the entire underside, running over a very high median while drinking. I buried it respectfully. Some people are so jealous when someone else has a NO maintenance car.
AMC rocked
I am a huge AMC fan. I followed the company for years. I have a fantastic book on AMC which I bought from the Peterson Auto MuseUm in L.A. near Wilshire and Fairfax.
George Mason, CEO of Nash-Kelvinator put together the merger between Nash and Hudson in 1954, calling it American Motors Corp. According to this book, Mason foresaw that the only way for the independent makers to survive and compete with GM, Ford and Chrysler, after 1950, was for them to merge and form another major company. Mason was not liked by the head men at Studebaker Corp. but Mason was in touch with the CEO of Packard Motors, Nance.
Mason and Nance allegedly formed a plan where Mason would merge Nash and Hudson while Nance merged Packard and Studebaker. At that point, Mason and Nance would merge those two companies into one huge American Motors Corp. Out of the blue, Mason died of a stroke in late 1954 and his second in command,
George Romney, father of politician Mitt Romney, took over AMC.
Studebaker, Nash, Hudson and Packard could have been a formidable company had it seen the light of day! They had the entire market covered with their products. The Nash Rambler had the compact market to itself, Studebaker had the low priced car in the Champion model, Studey, Nash and Hudson covered the middle and upper middle price ranges and Packard was sort of the American Mercedes and could do battle with Cadillac and Lincon. Studey also had a line of pick up trucks. At the time almost no imports were being imported into the US. Under Romney's very astute management, this company might well have succeeded.
Instead, Romney decided to drop Nash and Hudson and simply focus on the Rambler. Under George Romney, AMC rose from near bankruptcy to 3rd place in industry sales in the early 60's. Rambler was their only brand and they were selling nearly 500,000 units a year. ROMNEY BECAME INTERESTED IN POLITICS AND DECIDED TO RESIGN FROM AMC in 1963 AND RUN FOR THE GOVERNOR OF MICHIGAN. HE WON AND LATER ENTERED THE RACE TO BE THE REPUBLICAN NOMINEE FOR PRESIDENT in 1968. He lost that battle to Nixon.
The Rambler name was tarnished by Romney's successor Abernathy, a former Hudson executive. Rambler lost favor with the public and Abernathy was sacked.
New management at AMC introduced the AMC Hornet and AMC Gremlin around 1970. They also bought the Jeep division from, of all people, Kaiser Motors. Kaiser had purchased Jeep from Willys Motors in 1953 and then dropped out of the car business completely in early 1955. Few People know that Kaiser still sold Jeeps all the way up to 1971 when AMC bought Jeep!
The AMC Hornet was named for an earlier Hudson product which won great fame in stock car racing, the Hudson Hornet. Soon AMC turned the AMC Matador from a stodgy conservative sedan to a sleek sporty model. I believe the Matador offered a stylish Levi's edition with Levi's like material as upholstery and many other designer touches. The Hornet and Gremlin sold like hot cakes for about 4 years but the Matador never caught on.
At this point, AMC brought out the sporty Javelin car to compete with the Mustangs and Camaros and brought out the incredible AMX model as a competitor to the Corvette. The same old problem arose again, as it had in the late 50's and late 60's. AMC thrived as a niche automaker offering products GM, Ford and Chrysler did not offer. Whenever they decided to slug it out with GM and Ford, they could not really compete and they would lose money.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1971_AMC_Javelin_SST_red_Kenosha_street.JPG
http://www.bing.com/images/search?q...233A88F5FF91C37B757F0796D&first=0&FORM=IDFRIR
The Javelin and especially the AMX were extremely fine sporty cars but youth oriented people were not going to buy an AMC car no matter how good it was. The Javelin and the AMX took valuable AMC money away from updating its successful Hornet line and the Hornet started to grow old.
AMC responded to the challenge one last time and conjured up the futuristic Pacer model which was the type of product that they historically did well with. The Pacer was designed to be fitted with a rotary engine like Mazda was making. GM was scheduled to offer the rotary for 1976 and AMC cut a deal with GM to buy rotary engines for the new Pacer from GM but the gas crises hit and the rotary had a reputation for poor gas mileage so GM cancelled their rotary engine program. The AMC Pacer could not have rotary engines so instead the AMC 6 cylinder engine was shoe horned under its low hood. This sort of killed the Pacer project. Due to its revolutionary styling, it sold like hot cakes in its first year but the AMC 6 cylinder engine just did not fit the rest of the car and its popularity quickly fell off.
This was almost the end of the road for AMC as an independent manufacturer. What saved them was that Jeep sales took off like a rocket. Jeeps were selling in very large numbers, around 200,000 a year while the rest of their line was dying out. The Matador died first then the Hornet died, the AMX and the Pacer died. Only the Javelin was being made. Also, the Hornet body was converted in the Concord which was a luxury trimmed Hornet equipped with Jeep like off road ability.
AMC was struggling and the French were looking into making a comeback in the American Market so they bought AMC in the late 70's. Renault built vehicles started being sold in AMC showrooms, such as the 1981 AMC Alliance. The first year or two, the Alliance sold well and was followed up with the AMC Encore, another Renault model. Between these French cars and the Jeep, AMC got back to profitablity as over 400,000 sales a year occurred in 1982 and 1983. The Alliance and Encore started to wane. The French responded by throwing French money into tooling for a competitive American type AMC car to be built in Canada which was to be called the Premier.
At this point, Lee Iacoca had just succeeded in turning Chrysler around as its new CEO. Its "K" cars were a huge success and were bolstered further when the Dodge, Plymouth minivans became one the most successful models ever introduced in the US auto industry. Iacoca had tons of cash and wanted to grow Chrysler. He had his eyes on the Jeep division of AMC. The French wanted out from the US market and were eager to sell. A quick sale was arranged.
Chrysler did not really want AMC's car line but the brand new Premier had just been developed and was coming out in the market. Chrysler created the Eagle brand and called the car the Eagle Premier. They put no further money into development so though the Premier was a pretty good family car, it died out in a couple of years but Chrysler did a great job marketing the Jeep. As part of Chrysler Corp, Jeep sold as high as 550,000 a year and for a while, Chrysler challenged Ford as the number 2 car company in the US. Ford never relinquished that status but with their minivans and their Jeep line plus Dodge trucks, Chrysler finally became a very strong company. When they sold out to Mercedes, their fortunes eventually started to sink.
SUMMARY - THE UNIVERSAL BEAUTY AND LESSON OF THE AMC STORY - It is difficult for a small manufacturer to compete with giant corporations which dominate their field. THE CURSE OF DEATH IS TO TAKE ON THE GIANTS HEAD ON AND DO DIRECT BATTLE! The only chance to make good is to tap or develop one or more niches in the market which the big manufacturers are not competing in. VW did this with its Beetle model and AMC did it with its Rambler model. Microsoft developed its own niche in areas in which IBM and other computer giants were not competing in and Apple also used this technique.
George Romney knew this datum and was a brilliant executive who achieved great success using it. His successors were not as smart. They thought that if Romney got as far as he did by only marketing the inexpensive and economical Rambler, then if the Rambler was offering more power and flashier styling, it would be able to overwhelm Ford and Chevy. These men were actually mediocrities, not fit as executives to polish Romney's shoes but they thought they were much smarter than him. When AMC kicked out Abernathy in the late 60's, he was replaced by Roy Chapin Jr., the son of a former great Hudson executive. Chapin was a near genius who recognized how Romney had succeeded. He did a lot of things right and set AMC on the right track again, bringing out the Hornet and Javelin which were great successes.
Chapin made one big mistake and that was approving $40 million to be spent on the Matador coupe. This robbed the Hornet and Javelin of the necessary money to be face lifted after their normal 4 year cycles. The other thing which sunk Chapin was the Pacer. It was designed to have a rotary engine and through no fault of his, rotaries were cancelled just before the Pacer hit the market. When they were fitted with standard engines, they were not that good of a vehicle. With a rotary they would have been revolutionary. Chapin was a top exec and yet he did make one very bad decision but made an offsetting great decision by purchasing Jeep.
That is the way it is with a small company competing against giants. It is hard to bat 100% and never make a major mistake. That is the lesson to be learned from the AMC story. George Romney was brilliant and never made any major mistakes in his 9 year tenure at the helm. He built AMC into a powerhouse and left. Abernathy was an egotistic exec with no ability to predict the future and in only 3 years, nearly destroyed everything which Romney had built. Chapin was good, really quite brilliant but made one mistake on his own and was the victim of an unforseen gas shortgage whiich killed the rotary engines. That was almost the end of AMC. However, Chapin's genius in acquiring Jeep gave AMC yet another chance. Gerry Myers, Chapin's successor, took a gamble merging with Renault of France. That effort failed but once again, Chapin's insight in buying Jeep precluded a complete collapse. The Jeep franchise was a very very valuable commodity and a lot of car company's wanted it. Iacoca got it and merged AMC into Chrysler. AMC execs landed on their feet and most of the good ones had great careers at Chrysler while most of the AMC rank and file workers were also employed at Chrysler.
AMC had 3 or 4 chances to grab the brass ring. After a long run, the company ended up failing, being the last of the independent American car makers. Enough was done right that part of AMC survived with the Jeep franchise plus many people, such as Hats, still feel strongly that AMC "rules"!!
Lakey
All!I hope it lasts me for the rest of my life.
Her insurance co. didn't even question me. They just paid to have it fixed. I got the idea that maybe her insurance co was used to her doing this sort of thing.
Some people just shouldn't be driving cars.
One being acid and the other alkaline . . . at least I know you should have got a lot of bubble and fizz 