This is definitely the Marlin’s best angle. I’ve already said everything I have to say about it here, so I’ll leave it to you if you want to add more.
Vintage Ad: 1965 Rambler Marlin – “The Swinging New Man-Size Sports-Fastback”
– Posted on February 20, 2022
AMC stylist Vince Geraci is quoted as saying “There’s a very fine line between unique and strange”.
Vince is getting on now, well into his 90s. There used to be quite a few AMC styling guys showing up at the local AMC meet in Livonia, but their numbers have thinned.
Last time I saw Vince was at the Ypsilanti orphan show in 2018, on the left in the pic. The man on the right is Frank Pascoe, a clay modeler. When I was at the show that day, Frank told some fascinating stories about the friction between small car group styling head Bob Nixon, who designed the Tarpon, and the people who came in from Renault.
The “swinging new man-size…”
I’ll leave it right there; it really was a different era!
I checked the linked post as well, and for the life of me, I can’t figure out the trunk opening. I can see a brief seam between the tail light and the chrome trim, but that’s it.
So I went to the web and found this photo. Dang, that’s about the dumbest, most useless trunk opening this side of the Monte Carlo SS Aerocoupe!
edit: my photo attachment didn’t work. Here’s the picture:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a1/1965_Rambler_Marlin_fastback_2015-AMO_meet_in_red_and_black_3of6.jpg
The fastback Barracuda.
Looks as though you’d have to deflate the spare tire to get it out.
The Marlin was just too big. The styling worked better on the Tarpon concept car. A car sized like the Mustang and Camaro may have been successful.
Even then, the Tarpon’s rear profile was awkwardly bulky, due to the insistence that there be no compromise to the rear seat packaging of the Rambler American.
Still, much better proportioned than the bulky Marlin. Drop the new 290 V8 in with a 4-speed and that thing would have sold crazy-well.
AMC screwed the Marlin by making it a Classic with a fastback. Same low-end interiors and drivetrains in the basic models. Nobody wanted a gutless six-cyl 3-on-the-tree Marlin. Shoulda made it a premium model: V8-only, bucket seats, floor shift, better trim, and maybe it would have sold better.
The whole rear seat packaging thing of the Marlin is strange. The headroom requirement which resulted in the high roof seems like it’s compromised by the narrower shoulder width of the quarter panel ‘fenders’.
The bottom line is that practicality doesn’t fly when it interfers with styling. The Mustang fastback is an example. Rear seat room was terrible, but the styling carried the day. Bigger cars like the Charger and Impala fastback could also deliver because their larger size allowed both fastback styling and decent rear headroom. The Rambler Classic was just too short for that.
Besides the awkward roof, the other things that made the Marlin DOA was using an unaltered Rambler Classic doghouse (which also killed the A-body Barracuda since it used a Valiant front end) and the biggest V8 being the AMC 327. No one wanted a fastback Rambler Classic.
The bottom line is that, thanks to Rambler’s shoestring budget, the Marlin turned out to be neither fish nor fowl and a huge waste of resources that AMC could ill afford on an extremely low-volume car.
Abernethy would have done much better to save up and wait until he had enough money to come out with a ‘real’ ponycar. If he had done that, the Javelin might have gotten to market at least a year or two sooner when it might have sold a whole lot better. Just imagine how a ’66 Javelin might have sold.
The 66-67 Charger shouldn’t get a pass, it’s got the same problem of using the upright sedan front end as the Barracuda and Marlin. I think the Impala is the only big fastback that really pulls is off well, and that’s largely due to being a cohesively planned cokebottle design from the start, and not a fastback tacked onto a somewhat cab forward square sedan body. If the Charger only had a poly 318 available as the top motor It would be regarded as Dodge’s Marlin, frankly the Ambassador based 67 Marlin looks more attractive to my eye than the Charger.
I like the Tarpon concept a lot better but I have to agree it wasn’t the answer either, and I don’t think it would have sold any better than the Marlin in the end. Being more comparable to the Barracuda wasn’t the recipe for success in the Ponycar field, and the bones of American didn’t have the substance of the Plymouth’s A body to make it endearing to the buyers that did choose one over the Mustang.
What’s called “20-20” again?
Marlin styling sure is different the guy who did my inspections has two one was being repainted last time I saw it the other looked like a parts car.
A total waste of resources for AMC, they should have gone with the Tarpon, but even it had a rather awkward roof line supposedly for additional rear passenger headroom. It certainly didn’t help any with the letters “RAMBLER” on the back above the rear bumper. That alone probably killed it for virtually everyone.
That there fasty was the best gall darned car ever made by the hands of man,and of that you can be sure,of that you can be certain. I stomped the hell out of one back in ’67 and she took off like a bat out of the nether regions….a fine car.
I actually have fond memories of this car, especially in the red and black, since I had the Corgi Toys version, with a neat boat on a trailer. One of my favourites.
No. Just….NO. I read the original article again. I remember seeing a few Marlins when I was a kid and thinking how ugly and badly proportioned they were. Fifty-odd years later my opinion has not changed. Give me a Mustang or Charger of that era any time. Toss the Marlin back and let it swim away…or sink.
I worked with a guy who brought his ’65 charger to work occasionally. He got very annoyed whenever I called his car a Marlin.
Ironically, Daimler had something of a Marlin-inspired car ~40 years later in the 2004 Chrysler Crossfire. At least it was a bit more successful with 42k coupes built over its five year run.
The Marlin has precisely one angle from which it looks good. The photographer for the featured ad found it.
Succinctly and accurately stated.
Absolutely, he nailed it. I started looking at the article thinking, damn, that doesn’t look bad for a Rambler. But in every other shot it looks terrible. The lack of decent engines surely didn’t help either, even the 327, which apparently couldn’t be shoehorned in, was a gutless lump of cast iron. I had one in my Jeep pickup truck long ago and to me it had 6 cylinder power, no more. It just made it with 8 cylinders.
Something I wasn’t aware of but picked up by rereading the original Marlin CC was how expensive it was: $22 more than the much better looking and equipped Charger (you even got a V8 standard with the Dodge) and 20% more than a V8 Mustang fastback. Who the hell would buy a weird, more expensive Rambler fastback over a Charger? It’s actually quite stunning that they were able to unload around 10,000 Marlins in its inaugural year (sales steeply declines from there). But, then, I guess there were people who bought new Edsels and Azteks, too.
As much as I love my Marlin, it definitely has a few lines that make for an awkward profile. But there are a few angles that really make it stand out, and I love the rarity of it now adays. Mine is a base model car, powered by a 232ci inline six backed by a Flash’o’matic air cooled three speed automatic. What it lacks in muscle, it makes up for it uniqueness and character; its pretty easy to find in a parking lot!