Everybody loves the underdog, so how can we not love this Concord? Or everything else that AMC kept coming up with in its increasingly desperate attempts to forestall its inevitable demise as America’s last (major) independent car maker? Every couple of years, a new strategy appeared to position its cars in whichever little niche that seemed to offer a glimmer of hope: compact economy cars in the mid-fifties, a sporty fastback Marlin, the pony car Javelin, the two-seater “sports car” AMX, the full-sized Ambassador, the #%$@&% Gremlin (adjectives fail me), the wide-body compact Pacer, the ultra-swoopy Matador coupe, the all-wheel drive Eagle.
Desperation is the mother of improvisation, and AMC did plenty of that. This Concord is one of AMC’s last gasps before it rolled over and played dead. And exactly what niche was it trying to fill?
AMC’s new 1970 Hornet (top) was a mighty clean machine for those coke-bottled times; one of Dick Teague’s best in his highly varied but never dull career as head of AMC styling. I’ve been vigilantly looking for a Hornet, and regret not stopping in a little town where I saw a nice early example parked. It was the Rambler American’s successor, and aimed straight at the compact car class dominated by the Nova, Valiant and Dart; tough company. Especially so, since it was a segment vulnerable to two big factors: the swing in oil prices, and the invasion of the Japanese sub-compacts. The Hornet’s only year to crack the 100k barrier was in 1974, in the midst of Energy Crisis I.
The Hornet’s front two-thirds, the Gremlin, was left to fight off the sub-compacts, but its all-body-parts-accounted-for donor languished in the late seventies, as the old “compact” class started to fragment. What to do? Where is the new niche? AMC certainly couldn’t afford to develop a genuine new car, and the “mid-size” Matador was already as good as dead.
AMC decided that the opportunity lay somewhere between Mercedes and Toyota, as the booming success of those two brands were determined to be the result of American’s new-found love with quality and luxury, or some reasonable facsimile of them. The Hornet would get a face-lifted front, and a healthy dose of quality, luxury and class, but without throwing value to the winds along with the Hornet’s foreshortened front end. And a new name, of course: Concord.
And it actually kind of worked. The real secret sauce was that by 1978, the Hornet/Concord had been in constant production at Kenosha for almost a decade, so the bugs and panel gaps had all been pretty much worked out. Slather on a hefty dose of sound-deadening, thick new rugs (both on the floor and on the roof), and a higher grade of interior materials. The Ford Granada had shown the way with this formula. At least AMC avoided any fake classic grilles; Dick Teague wouldn’t have allowed that; thank you.
Sales jumped: in its first year (1978), they hit a decent 117k. That would remain the high water mark, but the Concord had two more decent years, in ’79 and ’80. Then the formula petered out, like so many of AMC’s perpetual stop-gap measures. Energy Crisis II might have been part of it, but the market was just shifting away. 1983 was the Concord’s last year, as it handed off the baton to the Renault R11 based Alliance. But that’s another story.
Concords were powered mostly by the venerable AMC six, the 258 CID (4.2 L) version only after 1980. It actually made the Concord feel fairly zippy at lower speeds, with its very healthy torque curve. The 304 was available the first two years only. And the unloved Audi-castoff 2.0 L four was available for hard core economy freaks in ’78 and ’79, but undoubtedly struggled more than a bit under the burden of all that padding in the vinyl half-roof. GM’s Iron Duke 2.5 L four was recruited from 1980 on, and with a long-geared four speed stick gave pretty good mileage during those high-gas price years. Although that combination didn’t really suit the Concord’s character, and I’ve never seen one. These cars are quintessential six cylinder machines, with an automatic. The fours and eights just never quite seemed right.
This particular Concord is the only one I’ve seen around town, and eluded me until a couple of days ago. Like so many well kept original older cars, it’s a multi-generational affair. The driver’s grandfather bought it new, and will inherit it after his elderly mother passes on, as she made a point of telling me. It’s certainly aged well, and the condition of that red vinyl cardinal’s hat tells me it’s been garaged.
The Concord did the trick, sort of; it didn’t keep AMC independent, but it allowed it to survive long enough until Renault stepped in; or stepped into it, as the case may be. What were they thinking? Along the lines of Fiat today, I presume; but then AMC was no Chrysler.
Olds wheel covers heh? Well my Dad put those on an early 80s F150 cause he had them laying around. It really made the truck look great and they do good things for that Concord. I saw a 304 powered coupe on eBay a few days ago. Amazingly well kept.
AMC must have gotten a good deal on some surplus ones. Good catch. I knew the Concord had several different wheel cover designs, and never stopped to check these out.
Well I am as much an Olds guy as Supreme Brougham is, I’d be ashamed of myself it I didn’t catch it.
Looks like the wheel covers are off of a 88-91 Cutlass Calais.
This style of wheel cover started life on the 1982-85 Chevy Celebrity. In 1986, the emblem was changed to the Monte Carlo logo, and it became the base wheel cover on the Monte Carlo LS through 1988. After that, the emblem changed to the Olds rocket, and it was used on the Cutlass Calais through 1991. In its last years, it was the rarely-seen base wheel cover on the 1992-93 Olds Achieva.
You make me proud Danny
My mom had a 73 Hornet with the 6-cyl/auto, and I can attest to the torque of that engine: I could get rubber on the 1-2 shift at will, and since I was 17 at the time, that was just about every chance I got……
My mom’s last American car was a ’75 Hornet hatchback, with the 304, rally wheels and a vinyl top. By all accounts, it was a great car, save for the AMC stigma. Mom used to have quirky taste; Before this she had a Corvair ragtop (that she hated because it was slow), and a Bug with the Automatic Stickshift (that she loved, go figure), and a 383 Satellite sandwiched in-between. But in the summer of ’80, she fell in love with a new Corona on the showroom floor of the local AMC-Toyota dealer while the Hornet was getting serviced, and she’s driven nothing but Toyotas and Hondas ever since.
The Hornet/Concord/Eagle really was a great design. Despite the unfortunate vinyl top (One of several unnecessary attempts to modernize the 1970 rear window design. By the way, the 2 and 4 doors share the same roof stamping for cost savings…When they were focused, AMC was very clever at saving money), the car still looks up-to-date by 1981 standards. The Eagle held up even better; Since its truck classification exempted it from the bumper standards, AMC was able to fit it with better-integrated bumpers. As maligned (or in my opinion, inspired) as cars like the Gremlin, Pacer, and Matador coupe were, Dick Teague certainly the most creative designers/styling directors of the era.
The Hornet/Gremlin and their derivatives represented the same approach to product design that made AMC so successful during the Romney years. Considering what little investment these cars received during their lifetimes, they did pretty well in the marketplace. It makes you wonder where AMC would be today if they hadn’t veered off course every time they started to do well.
That’s a wonderfully preserved Concord. I still contend that AMC is the car company that CAFE killed. After 1978 when the regulations went into effect, AMC found it harder and harder to comply with them, started to court Renault and find ways to put smaller and smaller engines in their cars. These cars were never designed for four cylinder engines, and these were stopgap measures to buy time until they were able to release a new line of fuel efficient and CAFE compliant cars for the 1980′s and beyond. I think the arrangement with Renault was a disaster, and takeover by Chrysler was the only way out. At that time, they only had the one ‘jewel’, that being Jeep. They didn’t have the resources to keep up with the regulations and were forced to take desperate measures to stay in business. Just my 2 cents.
Since I’m trying to get a couple of kids through college, collecting cars is out of the picture for me now. I’ve passed up a couple of AMXs and Javelins that were sweet, Now, with EVERYTHING becoming collectible, my choices are narrowing down, and the Hornet or Spirit AMX I’d like to find are going up in price. Something like this Concord would make a great inexpensive driver, something you could drop a SBC into, have a lot of fun and not tick off the ‘serious’ collectors. I’d leave the vinyl roof on just for the kitsch value.
Something like this Concord would make a great inexpensive driver, something you could drop a SBC into, have a lot of fun and not tick off the ‘serious’ collectors. I’d leave the vinyl roof on just for the kitsch value.
Nah, drop a fuel injected Jeep I-6 into it and a matching transmission just to keep things more “correct.” Plus that would be a sort of “creative” solution, I mean anybody can drop a SBC into a car.
@Dan: Back in the day, I put a 302 V8 into a six cylinder Maverick, and even with all of the factory parts it was a lot of friggin’ work.
I ‘get’ the idea of using the AMC 6 and I have great respect for it, but if I’m going to do an engine swap, I want something I can easily hot rod. SBC’s are great for this exact thing, cheap, light, tons of inexpensive go-fast parts, and it seems like there’s lots of adapters available to put one anywhere. An AMC V8 would be OK too, but I don’t know what kind of problems I would encounter trying to source all of those parts for a 40+ year old car.
Im not sure if we can post pics here so I won’t. I had an 80 AMC Eagle Sport Coupe that was the 606th off the line. Had to drive to Independence, IA get it and drive it back to Chitown. At the time I had no idea it was a Hornet in drag. I was still new to AMC cars.
I learned two things owning that car.
1, There is NOTHING between Iowa and Illinois
2, AMC almost had it right. That thing was serious fun..
We’re working on a way to post owner rides, perhaps via Facebook. Stay tuned.
I’ll repeat what I’ve written before on the Concord. After my dad died and mom moved in with us, the old 1970 Duster was about done in and she needed a new car. We looked at the Dodge Aspen (in early 1979), and for what you got, it was too expensive for a base model. We went down the street to the AMC dealer and saw a beautiful 1979 metallic brown 4 door Concord with saddle brown interior, 6 cyl., PS, PB, auto, A/C, AM radio, vinyl seats, pinstriped exterior – in other words, a beautiful car, and on the advice of our mechanic – a life-long Chrysler man, who was painfully aware of the Aspen/Volare debacle then in progress, not to mention the GM X cars and the Granada, mom bought the Concord. $4,750.00 cash. Probably could’ve bargained better, but she had that car until 1990 when she stopped driving. That machine was a Sherman tank, virtually indestructable! All in all, a wonderful car that we missed and still talk about on occasion.
This car was a lot of things, but beautiful? You must really like brown, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Were you being sarcastic ? I’m just curious. My Dad favored the underdog that was AMC. I suppose he liked his Ambassadors in the same way.
The 70 Hornet was AMC’s version of the 53 Studebaker. I have difficulty counting the variations from the original. These were solid cars. The AMC engines were good and they used Chrysler Torqueflites, as I recall. The bodies were always the weak spots, and things in the interiors always seemed to break.
I always kind of liked the Concord. But by 1981, it was plainly an old car. Modern cars looked like the K-Car or the Cutlass Ciera. The Concord of 1983 was kind of like the Studebaker sedan (no longer called Lark) of 1964. They had done what they could with the old girl, but she was still the old girl. In retrospect, this car and Fox body Fairmont (both conventional rear wheel drive) were the cars to own if you liked honest, durable transportation. The Concord was comfortable as a side benefit.
I just never liked the door handles. Bad ergonomics. Opening the door with either your thumb or 2 fingers on the other hand just never felt right. They looked nice, but I consider this the worst door handle of all time.
Excellent comparison to the Studebaker. The longish wheel base even adds to the visual aspect of the comparison. Here’s what would have been interesting: if Studebaker had made a Gremlin version of their sedan. The Lark wasn’t quite radical enough to be eligible.
Just as radical would have been an AMC pickup built off of the Hornet/Concord, like an El Camino or Ranchero. The Stude Lark at least begat a pickup, if not a Gremlinesque shorty.
Actually, I am now recalling the AMC Sportabout wagon – the only compact wagon of the 70s, and a really good looking car. May be my favorite AMC product of the 70s, but then I have a thing for wagons. Maybe there’s still one bopping around Eugene?
AMC built a couple of prototypes of a Hornet-based pickup. I recently purchased The Story of Jeep by Patrick Foster, and there is a photo of one, badged as a Jeep Cowboy. It said in the book that three were built; one with a six, one with the V8, and one styling model with no drivetrain. It looked pretty nice, very much like a smaller El Camino or Ranchero.
I quick spin on Google brings up two of them, anyway. There’s a Jeep Cowboy that’s a bright red Hornet with a bed with JEEP in bright white on the tailgate. There’s also the AMC Cowboy, which is a Hornet Sportabout El Camino-ized. There was a magazine a couple months back that had the full story on them but I was too cheap to pay $5.99 on a two page article.
There was a 1982 Concord coupe for sale not far from my house about four months ago. It was amazingly rust free for being a New Hampshire car. At $2,000, I was tempted. I just couldn’t get past that hideous half vinyl roof and partial rear window delete.
I remember looking at these when they were on the lot in Boston, around the time the K-cars came out. I was intrigued by the Limited Versions, I remember being skeptical as to how anything AMC built was limited in that They were overrun with cars in relation to the demand for them. They would gladly have built as many as anyone wanted. Stodgy in my opinion. I think I remember the half roof covering the part of the rear window as being odd. When I looked at the Clue, I was thinking either this or The first K-car I saw that day. That must have had something to do with my choosing a Mazda GLC, which was a world more modern at the time.
Finally, the long awaited Concord review! Thank you Paul.
The Concord has a dear place in my heart, when my Grandfather’s 1971 Toyota Corona was failing Dad and I discussed what to replace it with. We decided on an AMC Concord because you could get a pretty luxurious interior in a reasonable size car without too much gagetry. As a Dutch immigrant Grandpa didn’t learn to drive until he was 40, so he ran the car and Grandma handled the heater controls and radio.
Dad found a nice deep green 4 door with a tan vinyl roof and tan velour interior, it provided him reliable service for the rest of his life. It passed through the hands of a few family members until I got it in 1991. I drove it for two years, singing my own version of the Beach Boys’ Little Deuce Coupe (Little Green Concord) until I gave it away. That car was still running after the RX7 I’d replaced it with was dead. Not a great car, but a very good car.
By 1981, AMC was a dead brand walking. It took a gamble with it’s terrifically orginal Matador Coupe and Pacer, and it blew what little cash it had left on them instead of reinvesting in a completely new Hornet and completely new engine. AMC shot it’s wad with two novelty vehicles when it’s bread and butter sedan went stale.
The Matador Coupe was a complete market miss. It was four years after the success of the Monte Carlo, Grand Prix, and Lincoln Mark III, and the market preferred goth stylings in personal luxury. Muscle cars were dead. Why AMC would think a Matador Coupe, styled as it was, could succeed, is beyond me. It’s styling was incompatible to the popular goth style and incompatible to the lines of a successful sedan and wagon. The Coupe was an utter waste of money. Within 12 months, everyone knew it bombed and couldn’t be fixed up enough to find buyers to pay for the investment made.
The Pacer should have never been attempted. It was a waste of money.
We saw how strong stable platforms could spin off inexpensive versions of itself, and had AMC launched a new Hornet in 1974, it could have become it’s version of Chrysler’s K car or LeBaron. We knew that by 1974 there would be a new trend towards small cars. It was rather foolish for AMC to believe it’s old Hornet could continue for another seven years without replacement.
So after witnessing the failure of the Coupe and Pacer, it was too little too late for AMC to attempt a name change and a couple of front end restylings to keep AMC afloat. The Hornet lifeboat it needed to cling to, became too old to stay viable.
The Market could have supported a five year old heavily refreshed Hornet, but not an 11 year old one.
My grandpa took me to the Auto Show in 1980 – he even let me play hooky from school so I could go. I was a silly, nerdy teen boy who couldn’t understand why the Fairmont/Zephyr or any of the imports were better cars than the cheerfully dated and baroque Concord Limited that was on the floor. I thought it was a hoot that a compact car had reclining leather seats and power everything…plus I have always had a thing for the underdog, being a bit of one myself. The Aspen/Volare fiasco was in full swing, and they were my former favorite compacts; I dropped them like the shallow youth that I was. I still think that maybe they should have turned the Concord hatchback into a coupe; it would have looked much better with the landau roof. The 2-door sedan always looked awkward with it. I thought that the 79 D/L hatchback, with it’s brushed aluminum tiara band and half-vinyl roof was quite handsome in its own way.
I miss AMC. Too bad they didn’t stick around or didn’t find a buyer to let them express themselves instead of what the buyer wanted like Renault and later, Chrysler.
“What were they thinking?”
They were competing with the dressed up compacts, that’s what. Renault came knocking at about the same time, too. It wasn’t that the Concord failed, its that the whole company was losing $$ from bad investments, i.e. Matador/Pacer.
Renault imported the 18i compact sedan and Fuego coupe to supposedly replace the Hornet…, I mean Concord. The Alliance was meant to replace the Gremlin/Spirit and give AMC dealers a new small car to sell, then have an 18i for step up. Later was to be the Medaliion and Premier, but they came too late to aviod Mopar buyout.
I have a 81 concord dl and it is a beauty. Runs great and its in great condtion. Just a perfect car.
My hillbilly friends and I got drunk on Saturday night. Sunday we got up and went to the flea market. Which was attached to a trailer park, naturally. Someone was selling this exact car for a hundred bucks. Except it was red and a 1980. So I bought it. Drove it for a year with no problems until it died in the Taco Bell drivethru.
I had both a ’78 and an ’80 Concord, both 4 cylinder models. My ’78 was a 2 door with an automatic, and had to be one of the slowest-accelerating cars I’ve ever owned. You could time its 0-60 time with a sundial. My ’80 was an Iron Duke 5 speed (a Ford trans, go figure
), and that car got unblievable fuel economy. One particular trip I made with that car in the summer of ’82 (Cleveland to Iowa City) that car got just shy of 33 mpg, not bad for a reconstituted Hornet. That car was near bulletproof as well, needing nothing but oil changes for its 160k miles. Alas, N.E. Ohio salt ate it up. I would love to find another like it someday but I doubt that will happen…