The handsome hardtop coupe was new to the Classic and Ambassador lines in 1964. The all-new 1963’s were oddly missing that body style, one which had become a mainstay in America. Why?
Because it was destined to share much of its its roof and glass with the new 1964 American, as a cost saving measure. For that matter, the two shared quite a bit of their body structure, except for their length and width. Both were designed by Dick Teague, who had taken over the top design job at AMC in 1961 or so. These ’64s were a great first step of his to keep Rambler relevant, stylistically.
AGuyinVancouver shot and posted these at the Cohort. It’s essentially the same as the one I shot some years back and wrote up here (in more depth). I still see it at the same business parking lot, as it’s someone daily driver, apparently. Or they just keep it there. But this one sports a much zippier red paint job.
And it’s straight off the front cover of the 1964 Rambler brochure. Did someone say “I want one just like this one on the brochure”?
Related:
CC 1964 Rambler Classic 770 – A True Classic PN
CC IKA Torino TS – The Legendary Rambler European South American PN
That red sure stands out. It puts everything else in the photo to drab, anonymous shame.
And it’s a “mere” RAMBLER!
It has also enjoyed care and love, judging by its condition. Will anything else in the photo still be RUNNING at this Rambler’s age? Could it actually outlive all of them by actual calendar date, even given its “head start” in life?
Never even saw the other cars in the street scene photos, G.
One thing I liked about the 63s were the distinctive concave grills with vertical bars. Many didn’t like it, including some at AMC. They did a quick job of filling that in on the 64s with chrome or aluminum wrapping around to the sides from the headlights.Not that it looks bad. What I don’t like are the stacked headlights on the 65 Ambassadors. Did they do the same with the Classics ?
I agree on the ’63 having the more distinctive grille. First-year cars usually have the best styling; then the later facelifts generally go downhill.
Teague’s designs of this era were so clean and mid-century modern. I prefer the 1963 grille but this is a very handsome car. A year ago I found this 1964 Ambassador 990 four-door sedan in a mini-mall parking lot. It is loaded with A/C, power accessories, and what I’m guessing was a rare option: the slim bucket seats with console and floor automatic. A little rough but solid. I especially appreciate the intact wheel covers and period correct whitewalls.
Another view:
And that interior:
A rare car indeed! AMC had nice styling during these years but the mechanicals were ancient and really let their cars down. Trunnion front suspension, anyone?
A modern suspension and steering system with a really high-quality nice interior and that styling would have been a smash hit, and really differentiated AMC from everyone else. Sadly, these were mostly known as Old Maid Librarian or Pennypincher Special cars.
actually the 64’s offered the brand new 232 six, a universally acclaimed engine that lasted well into the Chrysler years in the Jeep
Trunnions were durable and required little service too. The 63/64 WAS a smash hit for tiny AMC – we had a Classic 770 V8 and loved it
A modern suspension and steering system with a really high-quality nice interior and that styling would have been a smash hit, and really differentiated AMC from everyone else.
Modern suspension and steering cost money that AMC did not have, after their innovations in unibody construction, which won them the 63 Car of the Year award. The 63-64 Ramblers were a smash hit as Rambler was duking it out with Plymouth for third best selling nameplate in the industry.
Steering, handling and braking were major sore points with these cars after driving several of my friend’s 1963 4 doors 660 models. The body lean was atrocious, the steering cumbersome and too light, the brakes were crap after 2 stops and the 196 wasn’t a very good mill unless one took super care of it. Most of his have been either rebuilt or replaced over the years and we currently have a 1959 with a knocking motor that only has 80k original miles on the clock that will be next year’s project.
That’s interesting that a 4 door had bucket seats, console, and the shifter on the floor in the 1960’s. Though it’s the norm these days, I don’t recall any other American manufacturer having that configuration back in the day.
The 1964 Ford Galaxie 500XL four-door hardtop included a bucket seat/floor automatic combination (see below). Definitely not a common combination at the time. I was fortunate to find this unique Ambassador in an East Hollywood parking lot near the Frank Lloyd Wright house where I am a docent.
Chrysler did for at least a few years in the ’60s.
1965 300 four door hardtop………..
Someone posted a picture of a 68 Pontiac Executive sedan with buckets and a floor shift.
CA Guy: I’ve toured that house. Even waxed my 63 Valiant in the parking lot. Lived near Santa Monica and Vermont, not far from the college I was attending at the time.
The house and park are fantastic.
The 1963 Mercury Monterey S-55 also had the 4-door hardtop/bucket seat/console shift configuration, that year only. Just saw one at a car show here in Palm Springs a couple of years ago. Only 1203 built that year according to Wiki.
Identical to the one my friend Roger had after High School. Minus a white top.
Oddly enough Tri-ang chose this exact model to add to their MINIX range of ’00’ cars. These were all done to the same scale so here’s a size comparison with a Hillman Imp on the left and a Simca 1300 on the right. Over this side of the Pond even American compacts were considered pretty large.
+1. I remember being amazed that Americans would make cars that big with only two doors! Down here they were reserved for Minis and the like.
From this to the Pacer in 10 years !!? How is that even possible.
Of course Chrysler did the same thing in five from 57-62.
Mo money to spend gets one faster results, I guess.
It is such a shame – had there been a way to combine Studebaker’s superior mechanicals and interiors with the Rambler’s more modern structure and styling, it could have been a heck of a car. But to get the performance or the nice interior you had to take the Insta-Rust bodies with the quirky styling and proportions of the Stude. Or, to get the modern good looks and build quality of the Rambler, you got pauper-grade interiors, marshmallow suspension and decent (but far from great) engines.
Interiors on the top-end trim level Classic and Ambassador are actually quite nice, I think the Ambo even came with matching throw pillows. (The stripped low-end models though are what people usually think of with Ramblers.)
These cars moved out nicely with the 287 or 327 V8. Standard suspension was definitely of the marshmallow variety, but heavy-duty suspension was an inexpensive option.
For those preferring the economy of a six-cylinder engine, sometime during the 1964 model year the 232 inline 6 became available. This was a big improvement over the 1930s-era 195.6 and with engineering upgrades was available through 2006 in Jeeps.
Even in the station wagons you could get bucket seats and floor shifter, including the “twin-stick” manual trans with overdrive. The 3-seat Rambler wagons had no spare tire since there was no room for one. Instead they came with “captive-air” run-flat tires from the factory which incorporated an inner air chamber.
Many years ago I had a 327-equipped ’64 Ambassador 990 and it could surprise a lot of people at a stop light.
Inspector: my Grandmother had a 60 Ambassador with 327 and 4 barrel. She used to burn rubber backing out of the driveway and the thing would knock your head back when she punched it in drive.
So yes, I can verify, it had juevos.
“Instead they came with “captive-air” run-flat tires from the factory which incorporated an inner air chamber.”
Could this possibly be a tube?
had there been a way to combine Studebaker’s superior mechanicals and interiors with the Rambler’s more modern structure and styling,
Are you recalling the “history” of the Studebaker/Nash merger I posted on BC a while back?
The Potter designed Rambler V8, by accounts I have read, was an excellent engine, and capable of more displacement and power output than Studebaker’s. The only unfortunate thing about the Potter V8 was it’s development and production facilities cost AMC some $10M when the company was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy.
wrt the sixes, it was no contest. Though the basis of the Rambler 196 was only a couple years newer than the Champion six, the Rambler was converted to OHV in 56 and it was a far more successful conversion than Studebaker’s attempt with the 170.
As for the styling, I really like the 59-60 Lark, as I find it a much cleaner, more appealing design than what Rambler had in the same time frame. To get the Lark’s cleaner styling meant putting up with the notoriously rust prone Studebaker front fenders, and the willowy, squeak and creak producing 1953 frame, while Rambler’s questionable styling choices were worn by a much more rigid structure that featured the first in the industry body to be completely dipped in primer, which is now the practice industry wide.
While Studebaker had electric wipers, Rambler was the first to go to a dual circuit brake system, before Federal safety regs required it.
Another funny thing about those Ramblers were the vacuum powered wipers. Step on the gas and they’d slow down or stop. Step on the clutch to shift gears and they’d speed up again. They were the same on my grandpa’s 70 Hornet.. One way of keeping the prices of those AMCs down. At some point in time , the electric wipers were available as an option.
This grille, is this the where Ford got the idea of the dog bone grille for the Escort Mark I ?
I’ma big AMC fan, the 63 was clean Euro looking the 64 was competing against the new Chevelle, which was real sleek looking, then came the 65 Classics, dumpy looking and that was the basis of the dumpy and frumpy Marlin!
The front and profile views look like total generic mashup of American styling cues from the 60s. Kinda like if you pulled the can off the shelf that had a plain white label and simply said “PEAS”.
These cars sure did hit a sweet spot in ’63, and I’m glad a hardtop made it for ’64. Amazing how the taste of success made this a two-year style, following the previous 7 year design. The brief momentum created another two-year styling cycle for ’65 and ’66, and then the magic was gone – followed with a 12 year design that carried AMC within a few yards of its grave.
AMC’s 1st, last, brief and only greatest hit?
For one year, in ’63, the Rambler did sort of define the mid-size segment. GM’s new ’64 A Bodies sucked most of the oxygen out of Rambler showrooms the next year.
How fancy can a Rambler get? 65 Amby that shows up at the local AMO meet from time to time.
Same car.
The concave 63 front end looks better to my eye but I can overlook for the handsome new body. AMC really nailed this hardtop design
What confuses me about the Classic/American relationship is I thought the American was on a narrower floorpan, with matching narrower frame members, which was why the old V8 wouldn’t fit in the engine compartment of the American. The side structure I had assumed was the same, but with a wider floor that would mean the front and rear glass wouldn’t interchange, right? Or is it that the roof is the same width and the Classic/Ambassador is wider from the beltline down? The step doesn’t look any more prominent on the Classic or flat on the American though.
I just found specs for the tracks of these cars, which clarifies things. Yes, the Classic and Amby were on a wider underbody/floor pan; their F/R tracks is 58.2″ and 57.4″. The American’s are 56″ and 55″.
Curiously, the American’s overall width is listed at 70.8″ and the Classic at 71.3″, only 7″ wider. That’s thrown me, and. I don’t know how to account for that. Possibly it’s a mistake. Or how they were measured. Or the American’s door handles stick out further? 🙂
In any case, yes, the American was narrower where it counted by a couple of inches. And the roof panel undoubtedly is wider too. But they could still save some $ by using the same side glass and possibly some other details. Maybe there was a way to stamp the roof panels in two widths without a major tooling change?
The American and Classic/Ambassador shared the same uniside panels and doors, saving a huge amount of tooling dollars. “Uniside” was AMC’s trademark for building the door openings using two large stampings, inner and outer, rather than a hodgepodge of small pieces welded together. (It was quite advanced for an early 1960s unibody. Lexus bragged about that kind of construction in their ads about 40 years later.)
The 64 Classic/Ambassador was not a very large car. I looked up the dimensions because I was surprised to note the compactness of the Ambassador 990 noted above that I found in a parking lot. A width of 71.3 in and length of 188.8 in meant they were not competitive with, say, a 64 full-sized Ford at a width of 80 in and length of 209.9 in. As someone else noted here, a contemporary Malibu would have been a competitor in the size category. For me, a right-sized car for urban living.
My only experience with AMC was buying a used basic 1971 2dr Hornet 6cyl. with AT, radio and heater In 1978 at a local Chev. dealer, it had only 23,000 miles.
I paid $600 plus $30. tax. The car was rust and dent free, I rem. it was was cheaply made basic transportation that served my needs back then. The eng. and trans. worked fine and never let me down. A girl ran into the backend and a was paid $600. by her Ins. co.I fixed it with another $35. bumper after jacking out the area below the trunk lid.
Later I sold it to a fellow worker for $300. So I ended up making $$$ on the car.
Remember the entire AMC line won the 1963 Motor Trend Car of the Year award! (I know the ’71 Vega did too…) The mechanicals in ’64 were not so archaic. The trunnion design was dated, but worked well (lower ball joint, upper trunnion on 64’s). Automatic was a Borg Warner-not the best, but it was a 3-speed! (How long did Chevy use the 2-speed PG?) Alternators and transistorized regulators were standard. Yes, the Classic/Ambo used a Torque Tube, but it worked well. The new in ’64 232 engine was the most modern, and one of the most durable, sixes made in America.
These hardtops were nice looking and nice-sized cars! Thanks for running the article.
I was having breakfast with a bunch of guys my age last Sunday (i.e. old enough to have grown up with Ramblers, though we all started driving a bit later, in the early Hornet/Gremlin era) and one of them mentioned his friend’s “Jeep Rambler”. Obviously he meant Wrangler, but it made me realize how that name is seared in the memory of older Americans. Not to mention an interesting take on the AMC-Jeep connection.
I will have to do a write up on a similar car I saw at the local AMC club display a few months back. Very rare here as only a handful of hardtop coupes were imported (as opposed to the locally-assembled sedans, wagons and utes).