I know; it’s been done before. But it’s been a few years, and when I stumbled on this, I was once again flabbergasted by what AMC and Dick Teague did here. More to the point: Why? There’s never been a really good explanation. But then that’s probably asking the wrong question, given what AMC was up to at this point of its long decline.
It is very odd, to say the absolute least. For some unexplainable reason I like all AMCs, particularly those of the seventies, the strangeness is most of the appeal. I have come very close to purchasing a Matador several times over the years, but have never made the final leap, despite having owned several American Motors vehicles. One I actually regret not buying was a mint condition black over black and white houndstooth interior with the six cylinder and a column shifted 3 speed. dirt cheap and likely reliable as a brick. Oddly sharp looking too, to my biased eyes.
I agree with your comment, except of owning one. This didn´t happen until now
Hey, it was good enough for Reed and Malloy. Besides, next to the Barcelona it’s almost handsome.
The cars are ugly with that front end and the 5 mile per hour bumpers. It would have been nice for AMC to have gone back to a revised and updated look of the 67 to 69 Rebel updated for the 1970s. Also updated the interior. Could have had a classic look like the mid 1970s Dodge Darts and Valiants. The Matador was basically and updated 67 Rebel. They probably would have sold well. They could have beaten the downsized 77 Caprice to the market by few years.
And they should had grafted the nose of the 1974 Ambassador for the 1975 Matador, its nose was less ugly and even renamed the Matador sedan and wagon as Ambassador to differenciate from the coupe given a few more years for the Ambassador nameplate.
Agreed. The same name on two completely different cars broke all laws of car naming.
+1 AMC advertising ask “What is a Matador?” They got a one word answer: UGLY!
Clearly, Teague and company were not having a good time then.
I remember these coming out, and 12 year old me thought they looked ridiculous. They added a snout to an otherwise fine looking car, ruining whatever comparative good looks it had. Especially as they were often cop cars, like on Adam-12.
My guess is that they were following the original idea of the Matador coupe and going bonkers on the styling. If you stand out, for good or bad reasons, you get noticed, and AMC needed to get noticed to even be considered. And you have to really give them a bit of credit for trying different styling on the coupe versus the sedan and wagon. Could you imagine the coupe’s styling as a 4 door sedan or wagon, or the snouted version as a coupe?
They had a good looking ’71-73 Matador, then Teague pulled an Exner.
Or, rather, pulled out a Bunkie Beak from the ugly bag. Agreed the 67-69 was a far cleaner design than this…thing.
I’d say the Datsun B210 is close, but yeah the Matador sedan is the worst.
There’s just no reason for that. Even the Matador coupe, as bad as it is, can be made to look decent.
Maybe if I had a bigger thumb I could cover it better in the photos?
Not the F10 or the first 200SX? I’d say those are more out there styling for Datsun.
My first thought was the F10 as well. The Matador’s quite bad, but Datsun made some really challenging stylistic choices in the 70s.
F-10 and 200SX came later IIRC; my first thought was the Datsun 710 which was uglier than the Matador. Maybe the Ford Torino was too.
Yes, the 710 came before the F10 and 200SX. It was my first car. I wouldn’t call it ugly, though it wasn’t as clean as the original 510, it wasn’t nearly as bad as the F10. Most Nissans of the mid 70’s like the 610 and B210 were kind of “Moparaized” and although more “modern” than the original 510 and 210, they weren’t as clean, and a bit innocuous.
My Dad looked at the F10 in 1976, he wanted FWD, and there weren’t a lot of choices, VW and Honda were really expensive, and other than the F10 (and maybe Fiat 128) was the Subaru DL, which he ended up with. It wasn’t the styling that turned him off of the F10, but rather a small vent on the hood which to him smacked of being a late engineering change (maybe for carburator icing?) so the Subaru was more of a process of elimination. We’d moved to Vermont, and althought Subaru also had AWD wagons back then, they weren’t inexpensive either (this was his 2n d car and he wanted it cheap, as it was a commuter…..he just wanted something that could get him back and forth to work on time).
The 710 wasn’t stylish, wasn’t fast, but it was easy to work on, pretty reliable, it got me through all 4 undergraduate years while being parked outside, only refused to start the week of the blizzard of ’78 when I had to bum a ride into town with my Dad (I was a commuter student)..ideal for what I needed it to do. Plus I learned how to do conventional tuneups and other small maintenance work (wasn’t quite doing repair work, I learned that a bit later). Wish we could still buy something as “conventional” as the 710, but that went away after the late 70’s (2nd 510) as far as Datsun, and soon Toyota as well.
These cars never even registered on my ugly radar in a world of 1975 Fords and Mercuries. This two-door Marquis Brougham was one of the worst; with nauseatingly uncomfortable proportions, detailing that was a tribute to bad taste inside and out, and fender spats that looked like they were homemade by someone who should have hired a professional. The Matador was invisible by comparison.
The wagons were fairly attractive. The coupes and sedans not so much.
That’s because aside from the front clip the body of the station wagons retained the clean lines of 1967 all the way to the end.
To me, there is no such a thing as an ugly car; it must be remembered that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Even miracle workers like Teague have bad days. He had 40 years of saving auto companies from extinction, so I’m inclined to pardon him for this one.
Your comments invariably raise a chuckle from me. “Saving auto companies from extinction”? Hello; he hardly saved Packard from that fate. And he styled the two cars that were the biggest disasters ever at AMC, the Matador coupe and the Pacer. Those two cars directly led to AMC’s near-extinction, saved only by Renault.
Yes, he did some fine work. But he’s also responsible for some real stinkers.
Were the Matador coupe a disaster? I thought it was a little sales succes for AMC. Or did you mean that design wise?
Anyway, i like the Matador coupe, especially the Cassini edition
My encyclopedia doesn’t show breakouts for the coupe, but they were weak, and did little or nothing to help increasingly sagging Matador sales. They totally missed the boat stylistically: everyone had moved to formal roof coupes.
I wonder how much influence Roger Penske’s NASCAR ambitions had on the shape of the Matador Coupe? Car and Driver picked it as their best looking car of the year.
Were the Matador coupe a disaster? I thought it was a little sales succes for AMC.
I pulled some numbers from the “Standard Catalog” a few years ago:
74: Matador 4dr 27608
wagon 9709
coupe 62269
75: Matador 4dr 27522
wagon 9692
coupe 22368
76: coupe not broken out that year
Matador coupe/sedan 30464
wagon 11049
77: Matador 4dr 12944
wagon 11078
coupe 6825
The coupe sold a lot better than the conventional 2 door hardtop that preceded it. But, the coupe had so much unique sheet metal, which raised costs, I don’t know how the ROI compared.
73: Matador 4dr 33822
2drHT 7067
wagon 11643
These numbers show the same trajectory as with the Pacer: a decent first year, and then strong decline. Both cars were very outside the mainstream stylistically, so they found some interest in those attracted to novelty, but that pool of buyers quickly dried up.
It appears that the total sales of the Matador coupe were in the 110k range, roughly. That’s not nearly enough to recoup the substantial investment for an all-new body. It was probably projected to pay back after 250-300k units or so.
Same problem as the Pacer. And same result: very substantial losses.
You really think the Matador and Pacer did AMC in?
AMC didn’t have the imagination and creativity to reinvent itself–and it didn’t have the resources to “evolve”
The Pacer’s lack of “big success” is not the same as leading “directly to near-extinction”.
Unless you mean by that comment, that the resources AMC invested to create these cars would have been better spent on something new and novel. Perhaps. I just don’t think the AMC had the ability and intellect to come up with a Honda Civic, or even Dodge Omni, or even a Ford Fairmont type vehicle, that would not only be as good as those vehicles, but also good enough to make up for AMC’s outgunned sales and marketing (compared to the Detroit Three, Toyota, Datsun and VW)
Honda went from motorcycles to Civic (small, but real cars) in what, 10 years? The oversized Civic (the original Accord) was 4-5 years later. AMC had more resources. But Honda was nimble and clever.
Toyota went from Toyopets to credible Corollas, and before that, ugly but well-built and economical Coronas in less than 10 years. AMC best effort was the Hornet, an optimized Rambler, with roots in the 1950s….
AMC couldn’t or wouldn’t change. Unlike big Ford and huge GM, they didn’t have the luxury of waiting two or three decades to go from Pintos to sub-par Escorts (Mazda-based) Escorts, or from the 1971 Vega to the 2008 Malibu for a credilble alternative to the main imported competition of the era (Corolla/Datsun 1200/Beetle to Camcord).
Even Chrysler had access to Simca to help the with the Omirizon.
I agree somewhat–the 5-mph Matadors were truly hideous looking (and 5-10 years behind in refinement)–they were the ugliest cars available–in America!
But there were much uglier cars on the roadways in France (Panhards, Citroen Ami), and in America’s future (Datsun F-10)
“.. the resources AMC invested to create these cars would have been better spent on something new and novel.”
That’s what I would say. AMC since the late 60’s had been chasing the dream of being able to compete with the Big 3 in every category, even though their earlier success had been as a niche carmaker offering reliable and practical compact cars. I don’t know that they needed new and novel, so much as well-designed and reliable compacts and subcompacts, though those would have been novel among U.S. makers at the time.
In the mid to late 70’s, AMC desperately needed a thorough redesign of the Hornet platform but couldn’t afford it because they spent so much development money on the unique 74 Matador coupe which sold OK for a year or two but never made its money back. Who would have thought you could go wrong with a mid-size coupe in the 70’s?!
The Pacer was much more AMC’s type of car and was new and novel, indeed, but probably too much emphasis on the novel. A conventionally attractive, solid and reliable compact built off a great new Hornet platform would have appealed to many of the people who were starting to look to Japanese cars in the 70’s, much the way the Rambler did in the 50’s and early 60’s to people who were looking at VW.
Armchair quarterbacking from the comfort of decades of hindsight, but it’s always fun.
You really think the Matador and Pacer did AMC in?
Yes. Otherwise I wouldn’t have said it.
AMC sales were on a terminal decline since 1963, except for a two year bump from in ’73-’74, thanks to the energy crisis. By 1975, they were in a steep drop. The Pacer and Matador coupe used up all the capital they had left for new products, and both were a bust, never recouping their investment.
There was no money left for new products, hence the need for Renault. Without Renault, AMC would have undoubtedly gone bankrupt within a couple more years.
AMC had no money for new platforms and their demise was inevitable. The Matador, especially the coupe, was a “jump the shark” attempt to gain interest using the already old Rebel platform . Obviously a dismal failure. Interestingly they attempted a much more conservative update of the Hornet with the Concord a few years later which was modestly successful, styling the car in the popular “brougham” fad. Unfortunately just a short lived success
Any responsibly managed auto company would run the numbers on costs versus incremental revenues and profits, and weird calculations such as sales capture from other companies and self-cannibalization from the rest of its own product line. This involves some estimate of sales of the new cars, and whether the product misses, meets, or beats sales estimates. It is possible that the Gremlin beat its sales estimates, especially in the first few months. The Pacer likely came in at the other end. “Good” cars and “bad” cars are initially defined by the manufacturers and dealers in terms of sales versus estimates, and easy to move off the dealer lots, versus hard to move off the dealer lots.
In that way, the first Taurus SHO was a “bad” car, from the point of view of Ford and its dealers. The car magazines, buyers, and memories say it was a “good” car.
Costs versus incremental sales suggest that the Matador sedan and wagon likely fulfilled their sales mission, as the costs for updating the styling were probably insubstantial, and were likely made back and then some. And, if not, not much was lost. The Matador coupe and Pacer were big financial commitments, and likely never made back those costs, due to sales probably coming up somewhat short of internal estimates or hopes. So the beaked Matadors likely could be termed a success to AMC at the time, no matter what we think of them now. The Matador coupes, probably not so.
When Paul speaks of the Matador “doing AMC in”, I think of the coupes doing them in, not these things. Matador vs. Matador.
AMC’s smallest and most efficient engine in the 70s was a 258 cubic inch inline 6, and AMC concocted the Pacer with the plan that they’d have GM selling them their magical rotary engine for it. They would have been better served using the money for that program to reduce that kind of dependence on the big three by investing it in a new engine line at the very least, and perhaps looking for inspiration abroad if they were going to design a totally new car from the ground up.
The Matador Coupe was a waste of resources too of course, but unlike the Pacer everything outside the skin was carryover and shared with the Matador sedan and probably partially amortized by previous models. Big myth of the Pacer due to its “wide compact” pitch is that it’s a super shortened Ambassador, but that couldn’t be further from the truth, the Pacer was truly all new, with a very different suspension and rack & pinion steering system not shared with any other product in the line. They could have built it into any other car with the resources used on it, it could have been worth the gamble if it were actually compelling
They also had a 232 CID six.
Polistra,
Thank you. you took the words right out of my mind. Teague was often tasked with creating miracles out of dung heaps. When he was good, he was VERY good, example: The most beautiful taillights ever made [in my biased opinion], the 1955-56 senior Packard taillights, and the 1956-57 Clipper taillights. The Clipper lights have always been sought after by custom car builders, starting in 1956.
Odd, but hardly worse than some Datsuns, Mustang II notch backs, or Colonnade Monte Carlo’s.
Though I’d be tempted to nominate one of the aforementioned Datsuns or perhaps another AMC product (Gremlin, anyone?), I think the Matador sedan is perhaps the greatest design travesty grafting a plus-length shnoz on the front of an otherwise decent-looking body. Sure, the requisite 5-mph bumpers didn’t help matters (and to be fair those bumpers also afflicted most mid-70s cars), but there was no good reason for the bulging beak.
The other issue is that they let it fester for four years, while spending money on minor tweaks to the grille texture, even though this is one place where a faux-Mercedes Brougham grille and turn-signals-pretending-to-be-foglights would’ve been a real improvement that could’ve been done on the cheap to at least make the snout look a bit intentional.
Pretty tame by modern standards.
This is true.
Easily the ugliest of the 70s decade. There must have been only a handful of people in the world who find that front end attractive and amazingly they all worked in the AMC design department. It was kismet for them…
I’d still take a wagon, but I’ve got a thing for wagons.
Oh my, what a clickbait title for AMC fans! This car looks fine. The schnozz isn’t the best feature but certainly not repellent. The rest of the car is reassuringly smooth , pleasant and inoffensive .
It was AMCs entry into the bold grille fashion of the era that produced many,even worse warts like the Miller inspired full size Pontiac grille, the horrible Toronado and Eldorado grilles, and the inexplicable Thunderbird Bunkie Beak.
There’s much uglier cars out there, such as the 67-68 Dodge Polara, which takes the prize for ugliest of the era, or about half the vehicles made in the last twenty years.
Hold my beer
I think I’m gonna hurl.
I can’t imagine buying one of these new, as I sit here now. But, considering some of the other choices, in context these weren’t so nuts. The 71-76 GM’s were just so large, so maybe someone who wanted “smaller big car”. I imagine a lot of AMC buyers in the mid-70’s either had an affinity for, or long relationship with, their local dealer, or maybe the AMC dealer was the only convenient option in a rural area.
I always thought this was a cynical ploy to increase the length of the car so that it didn’s seem quite so small compared to the competition.
A ’75 Dart punched in the nose. The Karl Malden of cars.
“They can’t all be winners, kid.”
– Willie in “Bad Santa”
Point being, we praise someone who takes a stylistic chance and strikes gold. I figure sales disaster is often punishment enough if they “Slantback Seville” things.
Well, maybe a ~little~ kicking when they’re down.
I don’t recall thinking these were ugly back when they still roamed the streets. A friend of my father’s owned a wagon similar to the one pictured here (same color, with wood), and I remember actually liking it.
OK, maybe my sense of style is debatable, but I agree with Paulson above that the big Fords of the era were ickier-looking than these.
The later Concord and Eagle iterations of the Hornet were really ugly cars in quite a few ways. Yet, they soldiered on, and the innovative 4WD variant gave them an improbable charm. Our brains tailor our opinions to what we see in the cars, and it is not always just about the looks. Well, for the first Mustang, it pretty much was all about the looks. For the Corvair, a bunch of it was not about the looks.
From the headlights-on-back it is an inoffensive car; if a little bit generic and bland.
But that “Butt-Ugly” grille, header panel and front bumper…….YEEECH!
Put me in the camp of this being one of the ugliest facelifts ever, even by the standards of 1970’s wackiness and 2020’s absurdity. What I am struck by is that they modified what I consider a pretty decent looking car. The early 70’s Matadors were unexciting but very inoffensive designs, as seen in this orange and white Matador wagon.
Better looking than Matadors, I think, were the early 70’s Ambassadors. I would say their front ends were legitimately attractive. At least, I’ve always liked them, though admittedly I have been known to have some pretty bizarre attractions. 1974 Ambassadors got an only slightly less ugly version of the 74 Matador’s schnozz before being mercifully cancelled in 75.
As Tom Halter pointed out above, I also think they were trying to make the car seem longer and bigger. Being AMC in the 70’s, they didn’t have the budget for new front fenders, so they could only try to achieve that with bumper, grille and hood modifications. The result definitely put the car on the all-time list for most tacked on and least satisfying styling changes ever.
Tom Halter is correct, from what I have been able to learn from people.
Vince Geraci used to come to the local AMC show each year, so I asked him about that nose. My first thought was extra crush room for crash standards, because the Amby, which had a longer front clip to begin with, had a smaller nose pasted on it. Vince didn’t know, as he was doing interiors in the mid 70s. We looked under the hood of a Matador that was at the show that year, but there isn’t anything behind that grill that would indicate it was there for crash absorption.
Vince suggested I contact Pat Foster. Pat has been interviewing people and collecting documents about AMC for decades.
Pat confirmed Tom’s suspicion: that nose was a cheap way to make the car look longer, period.
I also read that in Pat Foster’s American Motors: The Last Independent. He is the #1 scholar on all things AMC, from what I have gathered. You know him personally?
I also read that in Pat Foster’s American Motors: The Last Independent. He is the #1 scholar on all things AMC, from what I have gathered. You know him personally?
No, I don’t know Pat personally. Vince said I should drop his name in my e-mail to Pat. Pat said he is working on the definitive AMC book, but it will have to wait until he retires from his day job, so he has enough time to pull it all together.
Well, it’s 100% totally obvious, and always has been to me. Nobody needed to extend noses to meet the 5 mile bumper standard; it just required sticking the bumper further forward of the existing body.
Can you cite one car, domestic or import, that required extending their front end like that in order to meet the bumper standards?
It was purely cosmetic surgery. Botched, of course.
I’m one of those people who thinks almost all modern cars are ugly.
….This is uglier.
I first became aware of these Matadors watching Dukes of Hazzard reruns, they make Rosco’s stacked headlight Fury look like a beauty Queen by comparison.
These were not good looking, but I can think of worse (yes, some of the full sized Fords). I never understood the point of the Ambassador at the time, basically the same car with a longer wheelbase and stretched front clip. I guess it was too expensive for cash-strapped AMC to stretch it in the middle and give it more interior room. Maybe they were planning a new straight 8 engine at the time….
Anyway, the Matador sedan to have would be the ’78 Barcelona II. This rare 1 year only special edition combines the swanky styling of the Matador sedan with a generous helping of ‘Broughaminess’.
The Ambassador name goes back to the old Nash cars. AMC was from the merger of Nash and Hudson in the mid 1950s. Nash used to Ambassador name for years and AMC carried it forward. The 1967 to 1978 Rebel/Matador was considered AMC’s “Intermediate” or Mid Sized Cars. The Ambassador from 1967 to 1974 was considered AMC’s “Standard” or Full Sized Car.The Ambassador was supposed to be one class above the Rebel and Matador. Both shared the same chassis.
There are worse looking 1970s cars, 1974+ Comet [snout nose and rail bumper] for one! At least AMC tried to be different.
It is bad, but not the worst.
I believe the nose was originally designed for the Ambassador, doing that long hood thing that Nash and Rambler did – lengthening the hood just to lengthen it. But when the Ambassador was buried, the update went to the Matador. So there it was.
Not good.
The 1970s were filled with seriously ugly cars. This really isn’t the worst, in my opinion.
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/qotd/challenge-of-the-day-say-one-nice-thing-datsunnissan-edition/
Yup – it was an Ambassador nose job
*This* is perfectly attractive.
The dual-headlamp treatment given to the lesser Matador to differentiate it from the Ambassador for just *one* model year before the Amby was discontinued seems like a wasted opportunity.
If I did not know better I’d have said “Soviet prototype”. Or an export model for a market where large six cylinder diesels were the hot ticket.
I just never understood these, in so many ways. That front – the 74 Ambassador was no beauty queen, but the nose bulge was quite reasonable. I always wondered if there was some manufacturing reason why the Matador nose bulged out 2-3x what the Amby’s did, but I sure can’t find any such reason based on outside sheetmetal.
The wagon was the best of all of them because it never got the 1970 uglification that the sedans got. And, of course, the biggest mystery is how AMC could have a vehicle that fit smack dab in the middle of one of the biggest market segments in the US market and suck so badly at it.
That is a wonder in hindsight, isn’t it?
People bought Torino over this?
Satellite?
Wow – that is a bit mind boggling.
Yeah this! There were plenty of intermediate turds to chose from. AMC’s own Jimmy Durante wasn’t so bad. “When you’re smiling! When you’re smiling! The whole world smiles with you.”
My apologies to Louis Armstrong. I was hearing his song in Jimmy Durante’s voice. I need to go to bed.
AMC’s best years were when the offered something unique. Their big iron was never unique and always a few years behind. The Pacer was unique, but it answered a question nobody was asking.
Had AMC put resources into developing their small platform – particularly the Eagle variant – they could have had a shot at finding the market niche later developed by Subaru.
In combination with Jeep, they could have been a real contender. Hindsight decisions are so easy 😉
Ugly, no doubt, but what is baffling is the 1974 restyle of both Matador and Ambassador required tooling for two hoods and four front fenders because the dash-to-front-axle length is different for the two models. Then the Ambassador tooling went into the scrap after one year.
But, AMC had a history of one-year-wonders and short-lived flashes-in-the-pan.
That is the really odd thing…
Other AMC one-year-wonder wasted tooling money: ’57 Nash and Hudson thinner top shell stampings, ’62 Classic and Ambassador two door sedans, ’63 American hardtop stampings and components, ’67 Marlin components…
In the early Eighties I had to sell my Z-28 to pay for my last year of college. I bought from a neighbor a ’74 Matador sedan. It had the police package which strangely enough had non-power drum brakes all around and a 401 engine. That combination made for some interesting driving. I don’t believe I ever got double digit gas mileage, and getting the car to stop at any speed over 50mph was an adventure.
Even though it was painted fire engine red it was completely anonymous and invisible to the police as I often drove past them at 75mph – back in the 55mph days.
In my alternate history of AMC instead of the Matador coupe, they go back to Pininfarina who reskins the Rebel/Matador/Ambassador platform with a design along the lines of their Fiat 130 Opera prototypes. Like the Hornet, the sedan and coupe share a roof. This is marketed just in time for the OPEC embargo as the first downsized full size car. Then instead of the Pacer, they follow the same strategy with a slightly stretched and improved Hornet platform as the first downsized intermediate.
This strategy accomplishes Ray Chapin’s goal of competing with something ‘different’ than the Big Three, and at the same time recognizes the funds simply aren’t there to engineer compact and subcompact offerings that will be competitive into the late 70s.
In my alternate history of AMC
uh-oh, now you are in my wheelhouse. Most of my scenarios occur in the 50s, but there is one AMC scenario in the 70s:
Instead of selling the V-6 tooling they inherited with the purchase of Jeep back to GM, they keep it, and do what GM did, give the thing a new crank to smooth out the timing.
Borg-Warner was very flexible in how it would configure it’s Type 35 automatic. The Landcrab, Saab 99, Citroen SM and Rover 3500 all had Type 35s.
So use the V-6 and Type 35 to form a front drive powertrain. Then use the development money that, instead, went into the Pacer and Matador coupe, to create a new sedan and wagon that look very much like a 1982 Buick Century, as the 75 Ambassador. Then use the same platform, with a hatchback body and lower level trim to replace the Hornet and Gremlin.
Of course, that scenario uses my future knowledge of where the industry was headed, five years out.
Without that future knowledge, the most likely scenario would be to try and leverage someone else’s platform to save on development costs, like a Nissan Cedric or Toyota Crown, but those companies might not smile on someone they would see as a competitor. Maybe borrow from someone whose prospects in the US were very dim, like the Rover SD-1, with an AMC 304 and more reasonable styling?
In those days, in the US, it was very helpful to have a wagon too.
Totally plausible.
I like it. If they went the Rover route, I have my doubts how viable that would have been. When AMC merged with Renault and started selling lightly revised Renault cars in AMC showrooms, I think one of the biggest headwinds was the inherent strangeness baked into French cars. They just always seemed petit bizarre, and in their own way English cars were a little weird from an American perspective too. They would have to have been heavily modified to seem like a genuine AMC product that their customers would feel at home in.
I think the Matador coupe and Pacer money could have been enough for an original AMC replacement for the Hornet that would be flexible enough for every body style. A more conventional hatchback built off that platform would have reached the market the Pacer did and probably had more staying power. And powered by that V6, would have seemed like a more modern drivetrain!
Instead of the Matador and Pacer AMC should have done a redesign of the Hornet-they could have built the 2dr on say a 111″ wheelbase-that platform could have been shared with the Javelin-and build the 4dr and wagon on say 115-116″ wheelbase and they would have had the compact and intermediate market covered. The Matador was a victim of bad timing; had it come out in 1971-72 it would have had a better reception; by 1974 the “formal” look popularized by Mercedes-and blatantly copied by the Ford Granada along with the personal luxury field with the requisite opera windows were the rage. The Matador looked totally out of place and the Pacer was an answer to a question no one asked.
Maybe it was just a desperation move toward giving the cars a larger presence in a market where competition was becoming ridiculously outsized and AMC couldn’t compete. A Hail Mary with no budget. Oddly, I had An identical first reaction to the Pacer and the fastback. They looked– or I wanted them to be–smaller than the actually were. Both cars would have been quite handsome, I think. Imagine a Pacer the size of a Pinto, and a Matador coupe the size of a Hornet.
This Matador should hide behind a red cape, as it too stirs up some wild raging bull.
Sure, it’s pretty ugly, but from a non-US viewpoint, I gotta say it looked no worse than many Yank tanks of a time that was not Detroit’s finest. And in an era when many a Japanese car had weirdnesses and pustules and swirly gargoyled sticking-out fronts – albeit, on scales infinitely smaller – this didn’t look too different. Just bigger.
New Matador for ’75. Always Wins by a Nose.
Never mind the red cape. This Matador is positively inviting being attacked by a bull. Any rearrangement of its physiognomy would just have to be an improvement.
What were they thinking, to put this into production?
The inspiration?
https://www.hemmings.com/stories/2014/09/08/and-thats-the-truth-frank-gripps-twin-engine-diamond-t/amp?fbclid=IwAR1eIicKtghI_3Emt5cANLV6IQnsvmGtJ8Xo09EUQ5moaKGZLnSDYQ4jIFg
I always thought the 1972 Dodge Monaco and Polara were weird-looking, and these predate the 5 mph bumper era. I have to agree though that the 1975 “Jimmy Durante” Matador takes the cake.
The ’72 Dodge Monaco with its hidden headlights and integrated bumper-grille took inspiration from the 1969-’70 Mercury Marquis. But both designs were predated in a concept styling clay Buzz Grissinger developed for the 1966 Lincoln Continental which didn’t make it into production. Overtones of the 1961 Lincoln Continental are seen in all these.
Don’t overlook the Austin Allegro estate, however you may wish to.
Have you heard the joke about the Allegro?
A little girl is walking home from school.
A new car pulls up along side of her, the driver asks if she would like to go for a ride.
She simply says “NO” and keeps on walking.
Again, the car pulls up next to the little girl, he offers some candy if she will get in the car.
She ignores him and keeps on walking.
In desperation, the driver pulls up once again and offers her a new doll if she will ride with him.
This time the little girl stops, turns to the car and driver, and says;
Daddy, I told you if you bought an Austin Allegro Estate I wouldn’t ride in it!
It somehow just reoccurred to me these had two grille treatments for 74 and 75, neither one is attractive, but the 74 one has more of an AMC quirkiness to it at least. I certainly prefer the round amber gunsight lights (seemingly snagged from the coupe) to the rather tacked on looking rectangular ones anyway.
IMHO, this was ugly, but not even close to the level of ugly the two door Matador was at. I lived like a block away from an AMC dealership, and I remember my friend and I laughing at a Matador as we went by in July of 1975. It was red and had the usual ridiculously undersized wheels and tires most of them had. I always thought Teague’s designs were all weird, even the Javelin was odd, but the Matador was just a train wreck looks wise.
In defense of the Matador coupe I’d say it was designed before the 5 MPH bumpers. Remove those and fit bigger wheels and tires and to me it’s a different car with a very European profile (this one is appropriately perhaps for sale in Bavaria). Not the world’s most beautiful but not bad either.
IMO, AMC was desperate to have a distinctive car in the mid-size/upper mid-size class. Richard Teague was not afraid to take chances with the styling of the cars. This is a bigger miss than hit. But there were other hits that did pretty well for AMC.
AMC had been on a downward slide since the early-mid 60’s. Their cottage industry-like method of building cars was slowly getting legislated out of existence via new safety and emissions regulations. I’m guessing they saw the writing on the wall as early as the late 60’s when the emissions regulations were getting ramped up, with potentially expensive safety regulations being considered (air bags, roll over standards) by the Federal government, being considered for implementation in the mid-70’s.
Only the biggest corporations were going to survive the onslaught of regulation that was coming. I believe only the Big 3 in the US had the capital and reserves to last through the implementation of the new regulations. The domestics managed to fight back or postpone implementation for a while. AMC was a beneficiary of those delays in regulation, but ultimately was too small of a company to make it through that period.
I look at that big nose as a middle finger to the upcoming legislations. Or maybe just a styling quirk to make a mid-sized car appear larger. But I don’t believe it’s the ugliest car of it’s time.
When I was a little kid, my dad’s best friend was the local AMC-Jeep dealer, therefore dad was able to order a new car every July for the new model year arrivals in September. Dad planned to order a ‘74 Ambassador wagon, but decided to wait a little later in the year to do so. About the time he was ready to order, the dealer called and said their district rep had told them of a green Amby wagon ordered by the government with wood grain delete that I heard “fell off a helicopter” but was really, most likely, “damaged on a transporter” and would be sold a a great discount. My cheapskate dad jumped on the offer. But, how disappointed we all were when we went to get our new Ambassador Brougham and realized that the dealer had gotten the VINs mixed up and it was really the horrendously ugly Matador with the awful split grille. Dad got the car anyway, and I remember even in my little kid mind thinking that, yeah, they’ll fix that ugly grille for ‘75, and sure enough, AMC did. I begged my dad to get the ‘75 grille for our car, but it was too late. That July, he had already ordered a Hornet…the scare of the gas crisis was still in close memory and that ugly, dark green Matty wagon was soon history.
Coulda woulda shoulda. AMC , Had it kept the Ambassador rather than the Matdor, could have updated it , especially suspension and steering to compete with the downsized Caprice and LTD. the Hornet platform could have had a total restyling rather than the minor Concord evolutionary design to compete with the Fairmont and use the rear suspension of the Argentine Torino and the rack and pinion steering from the Pacer, win. Then, with the Renault partnership providing good FWD platforms, use them without their cheese based engines and 20,000 mile Automatic transmissions and go with the AMC 2.5 and US electrics and a good FWD trans, maybe the Chrysler one fitted to the Horizon. Replace the V8s with the Douvrin V8 that never got produced and became the V6 . Turbocharge the 2.5 in the Fuego based sporty car and the 21 based Accord competitor, don’t ever call them Renaults and maybe AMC would still be with us. They could have hired 15 year old me to save the company.