1977
(first posted 4/6/2018)Â Â Â I’ve been pointing out for years that the long decline of sedans and station wagons at the hands of SUVs and trucks goes way back, right to the 1950s. The world was changing; it was the rise of individualism, affluence, independence, cool, safety, and a renewed interest in the outdoors, real or imagined. A vehicle with as few limitations as possible for the unfettered expression of freedom. And no vehicle defines the rise of the non-sedan better the Jeep Wagoneer. It arrived in 1962, right on cue when these qualities were about to explode in the sixties. And the trend has never stopped; everyone wants to be “a very special individual”. And for them, here’s the vehicle, or all of its endless imitators and successors.
1962
1963
1964
1965?
1966
1966
1967
1968?
1972
1973
1974
1975
1976
1977
1981
1985
1986
Late model
(Note: some of the model years might be off some)
If you watched “This Is Us,” there was a storyline in which the Pearson family replaced whatever-it-was-they-were-driving with a new Grand Wagoneer, sometime around when 1990-91.
They drove, enjoyed and made memories in it for at least seven years, when the dad – Jack Pearson – died after the family’s home went up in flames.
Without explicitly stating so, their GW was, to them, The Ultimate Wagon, just like the ad.
IIRC, At the dealership, Jack explicitly describes to the salesman how this vehicle will keep his family safe, and is basically him expressing what sort of man/father he wants to be and explaining why he’s prepared to get up to his neck in debt to buy one.
As I watched it, I thought it was almost the writers’ commentary on the SUV craze. He essentially seemed to be saying “I drank the ad man’s Kool aid”.
Blue one from 1967.”Your wife will be safer…” Not the kids though, pretty sure they’re not strapped in.
I’m sure all the belts are securely stuffed into the “crack” between the cushion and backrest, as was common practice well into the ’80s for lap-only rear seat belts.
The belts are hanging out the door, dragging on the ground.
Don’t worry, with the padded dashboard and high-impact windshield, they’ll be alright.
I share my late Father’s disbelief that otherwise intelligent people would (and still) pay Big Bucks for a Velveeta cheese box styled vehicle built on a tradesman’s commercial pick up truck chassis.
This must be my German donor DNA influencing my thinking. I’ve read that American SUV vehicles are looked down on and openly ridiculed in Germany; that they just “don’t get” the American obsession with these modified pick up truck.
These didn’t really start to take off until the early 80s, as I recall. I suspect that more than a little appeal was that they still offered the full “American-ness” in a vehicle that we in the US had taken for granted for so long but which had become of short supply after about 1980.
I believe that Germany leads the world in renewable energy, at least in solar power. It would appear that they have different priorities for using their money.
Those Germans just don’t know what’s really important in life.
When I lived there, Germans are always considering how personal decisions impacts the whole group. An American SUV has to be sold as an “umweltfreundlich” decision that helps the environment. You emphasize how often you fill the entire vehicle with family and family items when you drive, saving everyone the misfortune of having more than one vehicle to do one simple task. You choose an American vehicle because it won’t break easily requiring expensive maintenances like an Italian or Russian vehicle. It is still acceptable in German public to make a choice based upon the concern for everyone’s environmental security. They may not agree, or even see through the ruse, but they’ll appreciate how you share their values.
I was repeatedly told that Germans don’t talk to strangers, but it isn’t true. Germans will always be ready to correct you when they see you do something they disapprove of. They will tell you what to wear, how to speak to your children, and tell you the rules if they think you broke them. There’s no need for police because folks know that if another German sees you do something that isn’t acceptable – you will be reported to the police. I have been in huge crowds without a single enforcement officer. You know what to do. Do it – or else.
I’m certain other cultures do the same, but I wouldn’t know about other cultures than ours and Germany.
The 1964 Evolution-Revolution ad. It really was. Thanks for posting this up.
Mark Reimer- the velveta cheese box built on a commercial chassis describes the Suburban back when the Wagoneer came out. It was the Wagoneer that put mom’s behind the wheel of a 4WD.
Although the early Willys Station Wagon up top in that ad was really the ur-CUV. Granted it’s BOF and rear drive (mostly, in the early years), but so were most sedans of its’ day.
Paul’s writeup of it;
http://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-american/curbside-classic-1946-willys-jeep-station-wagon-the-first-modern-station-wagon-and-suv/
I was thinking about these last evening after yesterday’s CAFE discussion. Chevy and the Suburban was aided greatly by the way the Grand Wagoneer took off as a favorite of the horse country set.
And why did it? It was no bigger inside than a Caprice Estate or a Country Squire (smaller, most likely) but that 360 V8 provided the power that the well-heeled were willing to pay for. I remain convinced that the 4WD was more about bragging rights than about actual usefulness for most buyers. AMC should be commended for making lemonade out of this ancient body and chassis. They gave it a genuine luxury interior to go with the mechanical package and had a hit. The Suburban just gave us more of it, and by then the luxury SUV was genuinely something with a halo.
Yes CAFE killed the full size car station wagon and started the shift to trucks and truck based station wagons. Fact is after the downsizing occurred there were no longer station wagons that could tow the really large travel trailers and boats.
I had a friend who’s family had one of then largest Airstreams and his dad’s preferred tow vehicle had always been a fully loaded Country Squire including of course the largest engine available. However when the 460 disappeared with the downsizing he made the switch to a F250 Supercab. Others I knew who’s parents had something they towed responded similarlly, trading a Caprice for a Suburban, ect. The fact that 4wd was available wasn’t the big attraction, it was that you could still get a big block and the big tow rating it helped to provide along with the mass and wheelbase to make towing easier.
The Wall Street Journal did a piece in the mid 80s on Airstream travel trailer culture in Texas. They noted that the Suburban had displaced Cadillac as the favorite tow vehicle of that group because no modern Cadillac was up to the job.
Yup; if it hadn’t been for CAFE, Cadillac would still be selling 500 cubic inch mega-sedans. 🙂
Haha, perhaps not. But one thing we *do* know: Cadillac would not have been selling HT4100-powered Fleetwoods. 🙂
While I have no doubt the 500 ci Caddy wouldn’t be with us today even if CAFE never existed it would have lasted several more years if CAFE had not been enacted when it was.
As I may have mentioned before I had an Uncle who was an “oil man” working in a management position at a local refinery and he was also a Cadillac man ordering a new one every other fall like clock work. He had no problem with swapping his C-10 for a LUV, and I remember him stating how much better the fuel economy was and was big enough and with enough capacity for his needs. However when he got word through is wife who was the accountant for the local GM dealer that the new downsized models were on the way,and despite it was the year to replace the pickup, he ordered up one last real Cadillac. Stating “I’d rather drive a Lincoln than one of those sawed off excuses for a Cadillac”, which was saying a lot considering my Aunt worked at the GM dealer and his fierce loyalty to Cadillac. While he may not have represented all of the Cadillac buyers he certainly wasn’t by himself in that feeling and he didn’t use it for towing, in fact he only drove it on weekends as my Aunt drove the Caddy to work while he drove the LUV, and being a childless couple who didn’t tow anything the downsized C would offered the same combination of better fuel economy and have all the room that they really needed as the LUV did compared to the C-10
The other thing that should be mentioned in regards to legislation favoring the switch to trucks from cars are the emissions controls. That led to the automakers creating a new niche to give consumers what they wanted. That was the heavy half ton that had a listed GVW high enough to avoid the need for a catalytic converter, more expensive unleaded fuel and have the availability of the big block or at least high output engine.
@ JCP while they wouldn’t have been selling the HT4100 cars being GM and where they were at the time I’m certain the could have and probably would have come up with something similarly disastrous without the CAFE pressures. The Vega engine wasn’t built because of CAFE and I think their desire to move that technology across more models, despite the problems would have been likely. So instead we would have got the HT6000 which would have been a much more suitable and satisfying engine for a Fleetwood, at least until it overheated and blew the head gaskets.
JP:, I think you’re placing way to much blame on CAFE. After the first energy crisis, folks (manufacturers and the public) became much more conscious about efficiency. Yes, that slipped some in the late 70s as gas stabilized. But the ’80-’81 crisis scared everyone; gas was projected to go to $5.00 (that’s close to $10 adjusted) within a couple of years.
GM saw this as an existential crisis, and threw everything at the problem. The issue was actual fuel economy, as shown on the EPA sticker and in ads. That drove things more in these few years than CAFE, IMHO.
Let’s face it: GM had no problems making the CAFE regs in the later 80s and 90s when the HT engine was enlarged to 4.5 and then 4.9 liters. And of course GM would crew the pooch in releasing it before it was fully fleshed out. Within a couple of years, it was reliable.
They could have handily met CAFE if this engine had come out as a 4.5 or 4.9 to start with. And nobody forced GM to make the ’85 C Bodies so stubby; they fixed that after a few years with longer front and rear ends. These later 4.5/4.9 FWD Cadillacs had no problem with mileage. GM screwed up the 4.1 by making it too small and unreliable.
And here’s another thought: If GM’s 5.7 L diesel had been designed properly for durability, a turbo version would have solved all of the issues with their large cars. Gobs of torque, and plenty of power.
Mercedes was making hay with their 3 liter turbo diesel; GM could have been doing the same, but they totally screwed it up.
All the issues that you have been blaming on CAFE were not only/primarily because of CAFE; it was because buyers were demanding fuel efficiency, and the advertising of high EPA numbers was a critical part of marketing in these years.
If you think GM could have been happily selling big-block Cadillacs and other big RWD cars during the 1980-1985 time period, I think you’re trying to re-write history because you were personally unhappy with the big cars during this period. I’m sure you weren’t the only one, but I still assert you and those that felt the same way were a rapidly shrinking part of a rapidly fragmenting market. And one that was wanting/demanding fuel efficient cars.
As to American cars being built too cheaply, that was their own fault too. The Japanese didn’t have that issue, not did Volvo or Mercedes. Sorry, but you can’t blame cheap components on CAFE. Light does not have to equal inferior.
The only good alternative to what happened would have been if GM’s diesel engine was stronger and more powerful (turbo). That could have changed things significantly for GM, because diesels were hot, and GM could have ridden that wave, as well as actually put momentum in it. But they totally screwed that opportunity. And that was not CAFE’s doing.
As to American cars being built too cheaply, that was their own fault too. The Japanese didn’t have that issue, not did Volvo or Mercedes. Sorry, but you can’t blame cheap components on CAFE. Light does not have to equal inferior.
Well in their defense, what American manufacturers needed were all new and fully reengineered cars and components to be like the Japanese or Germans, and while it’s easy to wag a finger at a giant like GM for not being able to cope with a looming regulation, requiring a fully revamped and well out of their comfort zone lineup, it’s not so easy to do for AMC, Chrysler or even Ford, who had far less resources to start completely over from scratch, as CAFE ultimately dictated. The cheap and dirty stopgap solution was to change material compositions and casting techniques in existing component designs, with the big end of the budget dedicated to more critical and extensive model line revamps to house them. It’s common practice to this day, as most all new cars are almost never truly ALL new.
Plus this brings up the glaringly unfair aspect of CAFE. Japanese manufacturers were virtually unaffected by it. The cars they were already making were well within the parameters set by the law, allowing them to pour the entirety of their growing profits into making better and better successors to the ones already selling. All the risk CAFE posed was placed on the shoulders of American manufacturers, who effectively had to cede producing what were previously their bread and butter designs and spending every available dollar creating dorky import facsimiles as successors across model lineups two to three times the size of the import brands.
One point that nobody’s brought up is that it’s been stated (was it Bob Lutz? I don’t remember…) that the “light truck” CAFE designation’s generous definition of what sort of wagony things still qualify as a “light truck” was written specifically with AMC/Jeep in mind since if they had had to put the kind of development money into keeping the Wagoneer compliant that GM could absorb for the B-body without blinking, it really would’ve sunk AMC.
I’ve often wondered how many Lincoln Town Cars were “sold” by early/mid 1980’s Cadillac ownership?
V-4-6-8, HT4100. 350 diesels, quality control rivaling Dodges, peeling clear coat paint, unreliable air conditioning systems….
I know of more than a few (former) loyal Cadillac De Ville buyers who switched over to Lincolns around 1985…..and never returned to the GM family.
CAFE wasn’t the end of big American sleds, their gigantic sledom ended them. My own father, for example, was not fond of the 1971 B body GM stuff as he saw it was too large with poor interior materials. He bought a 1970 model instead. Really, nobody who ever had to feed a 455 V-8 really enjoyed it. Even with fuel prices at $0.40 a gallon big blocks were not cheap to run. The cars were so huge and heavy by 1971 they needed big block power to move them decently.
The number of folks who had a Buick 455 around to tow was always pretty low, and as the market became for sophisticated snooty folks, like the horsie set, got into Suburbans because they were bigger and not so common.
So where does this leave a company like GM in 1975? Like Paul mentioned, had it kept working on the the 5.7 diesel and put a proper turbo-intercooler system, they would have had a world class product. Caddy could have not so horribly styled their first FWD platforms, and introduced a new engine that was not being beta-tested by buyers.
The GM engine debacle send loads of buyers to Lincoln and Ford. The Town Car eventually got the Modular V-8, but even the EFI 5.0’s were nice cars. They are exactly what should have happened to Cadillac.
Now both brands are lost in the woods.
Yeah there were people who enjoyed their Buick 455 and while I’m certain that they would have been happy if it got better MPG that is pure BS that people didn’t like them because they were too big.
Thanks for compiling these, Paul, each one is its own special treat. I’ve always had a fondness for the Wagoneer and Grand Wagoneer (America’s Range Rover!) but really like the 1966 Super Wagoneer, I had no idea that existed until now.
For many (most) people, it’s not that the capability is needed, but that that it’s extremely nice to have on those occasions when it IS needed. And if one can afford it, then why not. Nobody “needs” a big engine in a sedan or “needs” the handling of a sports car either but it sure is nice when it can be used. And for others it’s an accessory, like a nice pair of shoes, or a (giant) piece of jewelry or whatever.
FCA keeps talking of bringing the GW back – I’d certainly like to see it in principle but most Jeep/FCA showrooms are nowhere near ready to adequately support the sales and service of the vehicles that will attract the socio-economic subset of buyers that this should/would attract.
With the splash that the new Navigator is making a properly-done Grand Wagoneer could finally move FCA into that top tier from which it has been absent for so long. A strong 392 Hemi and Jeep’s best 4 wheel drive systems mated with an SUV of a size and trim level befitting its traditional pricing and BAM!
These vehicles are driven by Boomers who want the Earth returned to its Eden state. The SUV acknowledges the wildness of Earth the simplicity of life and the struggles of establishing a home. The SUV boom is occuring as more Americans move further from one another, to homes with septics, wells on quarter acre or more lots with few neighbors.
Station wagons boomed during the suburban era, SUVs are booming during the current Exurban era.
It is like the difference between a horse buggy in the cities during the 19th century and the covered wagon during the same century settling the American West.
That’s some manly advertising there, for some reason when I read it I hear it in the voice of Foghorn Leghorn.
Ah say, Ah say boy, you gotta keep that little lady safe, hear? With this here four wheel drive she’ll have, Ah say she’ll have twice the control in danger spots…
ROFL!
I was only familiar with these through the mid-sixties ads that appeared regularly in National Geographic. Other than the Tonka versions, I don’t recall ever seeing one “in the metal” until after the Cherokee appeared in 1974. The local AMC dealer was a pretty marginal operation, and I’m not even sure if there was a Kaiser-Jeep dealer in the area previously.
I saw precisely one. An older childless couple moved in down the street around maybe 1969 or 70. They had two cars – a Jeep Wagoneer and a Mercedes W108. They kept to themselves and seemed a little odd, due in no small part to their vehicle choices in a neighborhood full of Pontiac Catalinas, Olds 88s and Ford LTDs.
Clearly your neighbors saw the future… :-). Or they were planning a move to either coast. They probably invested in a weird little company named Micro Soft a decade and a half later…
Stumack, I loved this post for precisely this reason – it reminded me of looking through the ads of National Geographic.
Like this…
I had horse-trailer-towing neighbors back in the 70s and 80s who owned several of these over the years. Always maroon in color to match the horse trailer.
I want one, and if I could con my wife into letting me spend the money to get a remanufactured one (and the money to keep gas in it) I would gladly drive it until I become permanently horizontal.
Yes indeed, the 1972 Wagoneer towing a pair of the worlds greatest snowmobiles. Cool
Changing tastes for more interior room were also desired. Families I knew back in 70’s wanted more room in either full sized vans or Suburbans. When aunt/uncle got a big Dodge van, my cousins loved the bigger interior for long trips.
But also, the early 70’s full size wagons got too overstyled, like the clamshell GM’s. While a novelty, the sloping tailgate/window was impractical.
Ford wagons became too “Brougham-y”, with spongy suspension, slit windows, and Baroque styling that was on the way out. The side facing rear seats could only fit little kids.
While the downsized GM/Ford wagons after 77-79 were more sensible, they mainly appealed to the “Greatest Generation”
Many of those ads show impossible situations where nobody would actually drive in a fancy new car. Especially the “Most Interesting Man In The World” with his fancy geodesic dome and his Martian Wolfhound dog. (Or whatever that creature is.)
But impossible fantasies are still around. Most ads for Tesla show the Tesla driving in desert landscapes a hundred miles from the nearest charging station. Exactly where you CAN’T drive an electric if you want to get back.
Not only was Jeep on the leading edge for SUV’s, but the “twice the control” ad from 1966 seems to predict mountain biking 10-15 years before the Crested Butte and Marin MTB pioneers.
These Wagoneers, are not, and never were trucks, so you can’t compare them. These are 4WD station wagons, and they really were the machine that got Mom out from behind the wheel of the Galaxie, and into a 4WD. These were they type of women who would never be caught dead behind the wheel of a “truck”
It was a slow ascent to the top of the automotive pecking order, but I’d have to agree that the Grand Wagoneer was a pioneer in showing how a beefier and more truck-like vehicle could stand in for a full-size or luxury car.
While I agree that the do-anything outdoorsy aura of these is part of the reason why they became part of the next thing big thing in big vehicles, you can’t deny that CAFE didn’t play a part.
The Grand Wagoneer’s rise to prominence in the American psyche, if not actual sales, can be pinpointed to almost exactly to September 1979 – when large cars were driven by law to be mainly powered by wheezy 5.0 liter or smaller engines and fuel saving transmissions that were not ready for prime time.
If I was ready in model year 1980 to drop Custom Cruiser or Ninety-Eight money on a vehicle, especially if I had any ambitions to tow something, the Grand Wagoneer suddenly looked much more appealing. In terms of where the real sales volume was, it was mostly Caprice Estate buyers walking across the showroom to checkout the Suburban.
I’ve said this many times before, but among American brands, Jeep unquestionably has the highest brand equity of them all. Both as a whole and among its now many models, Jeep appeals to a wide range of buyers with no specific demographic, including both people who are into cars and those who know nothing about them. Sales have typically remained somewhat steadier as other brands peak and valley, and quality issues never seem to deter the Jeep faithful.
An excellent point. My sister (a nurse married to a farmer) has owned an XJ Cherokee, a turbodiesel Liberty and now a Wrangler Unlimited Rubicon – and is in love with it. Her other vehicular constant has been diesel Volkswagens, so go figure. FWIW my 22 year old daughter has a thing for Jeeps too. Jeep has almost become the new Mustang, a vehicle that can transcend demographics and social classes.
Jeep people are indeed an interesting breed. When I was a Mopar service advisor, it was extremely easy to get Jeep owners to care for their Jeeps and keep them in top shape. That was because they were horrible leakers. Seals and the like were constantly being replaced on Jeeps. Few ever even saw a dirt road, let alone a trail.
The Grand Cherokee, pre-1999, was the darling of the horsie set, because it could tow 7500 lbs, in theory anyway.
I have a few additional observations to add, because I had the unique situation of having our Chevy and Jeep stores across the street from each other in the mid/late 70’s. I had a front row seat, in other words.
1. The Wagoneer had two primary advantages over the Suburban until about 1980. The first, obviously, was size. It carries an equivalent GVW rating as a 1/2T Suburban, but was not much bigger than a Chevy Nova.
2. Because of the full-time 4WD setup GM used, the fuel mileage of all the full-size pickups & SUV’s was atrocious. Like you’d rarely, if ever, see 10 mpg atrocious. The Quadratrac on the Jeep, on the other hand, could log 12-14 mpg without any special driving techniques. The Quadratrac had other advantages off road and in slippery situations.
3. The Jeep could be equipped with far more luxurious options and trim than the Suburban until the late 80’s. Example- a typical Suburban we sold was a Scottsdale trim level (vinyl seats, rubber floors) with trailer towing options and, generally, A/C. Wagoneers, by contrast, were stocked fully loaded or not at all. Bucket seats, stereo systems, and all power accessories were the norm. The Suburbans also followed like this profile, but much later.
One advantage the Jeep did not have was price. Back in 1976, a doctor ordered a 3/4T 4X4 Suburban from me with just about every available option. The MSRP of that truck just nicked $10,000… and the dealer demanded a 50% non-refundable deposit because he feared it would be difficult to sell if it wound up in stock. Across the street, the typical Wagoneer MSRP’d for over $10,000 routinely. When the Limited model came out a year later, prices sailed well past the $10K mark and never looked back. That didn’t slow down Jeep sales a bit.
By the 90’s, the Suburban had almost caught up with the Grand Wagoneer in terms of trim levels- but we had many customers that had one of each in the garage. Or at the very least a nicely equipped Cherokee.
As to pararagraph no 2, a family freind had a K-5 Blazer with full time 4wd. I think it had a 400 V-8. It never got better than 7 mpg.
Give me a loaded Limited model from ’80 and up with the woodgraining. If you look closely, they shared a lot of interior trim pieces and switches with Concord/Eagle giving all 3 models a “family” feel. AMC pioneered the modern SUV and crossover with these vehicles and it’s really too bad they didn’t do better with the 4×4 Eagle.
To Scoutdude,
The IH Travelall should have been a major player in this market, and be a major player today. What happened?
Bob
Well they were a major player in the day with trucks like my 72 Traveall 1010 which went out the door as the ultimate trailer towing wagon as well as a much more efficiently packaged than the full size cars of the day.
The down fall was due to a couple of reasons, the energy crisis was a major factor but so was the success of the Loadstar. By late 72 the demand for the 392 in the Loadstar was so high they had to start putting AMC 401s as the V-400 in late 72 and 73 1/2 tons to have that ~400 inch displacement for the 10K trailer rating.
Meanwhile they were working on an in-house solution the MV series of engines in 404 and 446 sizes for both the Loadstar, pickups and Travelalls. It was engineered, prototyped, and tooled to make that MV happen for the Light trucks including an entirely new set of frames and suspensions to allow the bigger engine to sit much farther back in the chassis. Unfortuntely for what ever reason the MV wasn’t ready for production when the 74 light truck brochures went to print.
The energy crisis hit or course just as those 74s were starting to roll out so on the one hand they might have thought they dodged the bullet but fact is their sales still dropped like a rock.
On the Loadstar on the other hand the energy crisis only stepped up demand as they did get better MPG than a lot of the 60’s trucks still in revenue service.
With the Loadstar and Light Trucks rolling off of parallel lines in the same I assume the massive changes in demand made it an easy choice to ax the pickup and Travelall to make room for more Loadstars and to free up those engines.
Unfortunately they didn’t hang on for another year or too. Remember that MV engine they did major work for the light trucks to accept? Well the MV and the 6.9 were designed with a common envelope so shared bell housing, front dress and engine mount locations and to a point machined on the same transfer line. So they had a truck all ready for the 6.9 that put Ford trucks on the diesel map.
Meanwhile they did stretch the Scout II to take some of the place of the Travelall and it was actually pretty close to the Wagoneer/Cherokee overall footprint though of course with only 2drs. The sad story however is the Scout because the Scout business unit who’s financials was shaky at best dealing with emissions and CAFE did do extensive research that predicted that the Scout sized vehicle, updated with the availability of 4drs was what was going to replace the full size car as the right sized family vehicle of choice for the late 80’s and early 90’s. Unfortunately meeting CAFE and 1981 emissions was going to be expensive and corporate management wasn’t willing to spend the money to make it happen. The money they could spend to make it happen would have been to drop all the gas engines and sell only diesels, the existing Nissan SD33-6 and the SD22-4 cyl that we saw in the Nissan pickups.
Thank you Scoutdude. I would also guess that the skyrocketing interest rates and a devastating rural economy decimated the tractor and implement market resulting in IH selling the tractor and implement division to Case, leaving the light truck market and reorganizing to just focusing on the medium and heavy truck market.
Bob
We went out for drinks last Friday night at West Side Brewing Company. The last time I was in that building it was Wullenweber AMC Jeep, accompanying my grandfather when he was buying a 1980 AMC Spirit off the showroom floor.
http://www.westsidebrewing.com/
They sold a few Jeeps and they had competition nearby from an International dealer that also sold pop up campers and small RVs. I seem to recall that store being named Bob & Ed’s or something like that, but I can’t find any reference to it online.
Either way, Wullenweber and other AMC dealers simply didn’t have the physical plant that bigger, nicer GM and Ford stores had. Their 2-car showroom and tiny service department couldn’t compete with the big stores, just like AMC couldn’t compete.
They didn’t follow the secret we found- focus on Jeep and ignore AMC. We routinely kicked 60-70 Jeeps a month out the door, and maybe a dozen AMC cars. AMC didn’t like it, but those numbers were too big to ignore. The Renault takeover did us no favors, and we flipped the franchise to Chrysler/Plymouth shortly thereafter, and added a Dodge dealership. Chrysler did all but beg us to take those franchises back in those days.
As luck would have it, the Chrysler buyout heralded the return of Jeep- and sales output promptly tripled. The Dodge dealership chugged along until ’94ish, when the Baby Kenworth arrived and turned the franchise into a license to print money. One thing in the car biz- ya never know what’s going to be hot down the road.
AMC had something hot with their 4WD Eagle passenger car crossovers, but didn’t really know what to do with them. The “Boss Eagle Wagon” profiled in C& D Magazine in early summer 1980 was what AMC should immediately have put into production – they ripped out the interior and made it so much more contemporary and function, tinkered with the car’s suspension and steering a bit to make it perform better, they even gave GM part numbers for heaven’s sake! It was right in AMC’s lap but they did nothing with it.
AMC should have forgotten about reg. passenger cars at that point and concentrated on Jeep/Eagle only.
CC Effect! (well, sort of, a week later):
http://www.ivy-style.com/mans-favorite-sport-1964.html
One thing I’ve found fascinating about the early Wagoneers, is the Tornado OHC hemi six. The valve-train design and geometry was such that a single cam lobe per cylinder operated both the intake and exhaust valves!
Until I saw an early Wagoneer ad several years ago, I had no Idea these engines existed. They were also used in the last of the old Jeep station wagons, where I finally saw one a couple years ago, in a wagon that a neighbor had for sale.
Has anyone here done a CC write-up on this engine?
Happy Motoring, Mark
Mac’s Motor City Garage had an article on the Tornado recently:
https://www.macsmotorcitygarage.com/inside-jeeps-wild-1962-overhead-cam-six/
In short, it wasn’t very good.
Had 1976 – My favorite vehicle ever but Tough on fuel – 4.5 miles per gallon city about 15 highway. Could climb anything but watch did not take out Quadra-Trac belt. The accessories extrusion on front of engine was aluminum wore out so you had no oil pressure – no replacements available so you had to send your part in for rebuild – might take year. Very dated like defrosters or heat but not both. Really liked to rust but loved it.
In Texas if you have one of these you get to pretend you own a ranch. Also, if you are a hunter you just have to have one to be properly equipped to shoe up at the hunting lease even if the road in is paved. It’s all about looking the part.
I was a very late convert to the SUV camp. I have always appreciated the passenger and cargo carrying and towing capabilities, as I grew up with wagons. Later I had minivans for my family. I’ve never been exposed to snow, and my family was never into “woodsy” or outdoor activities. I see so many commercials with new SUVs crashing through streams and across meadows, I can’t imagine where you would do that, or why you would want to. Going down county fire roads, or driving out to a hunting/fishing/camping spot on unimproved roads makes sense to me. As well as the added safety in driving in snow and inclement weather.
A smaller or mid size SUV seems to be the best compromise for daily driving duties, considering their fuel consumption. A do it all, “no compromise” vehicle can have a lot of appeal, especially if you can actually use all of it’s capabilities.