It’s morning on a bright summer day in Iowa City in 1962. I may have fallen asleep with a Corvette brochure, but now they’re lost somewhere in the folds of my sheets. The fantasy is over, and its time to face a reality of rampant Rambler Classic wagons with wheezing sixes piloted by (sometimes) boozy but anything but sexy Moms.
This is an actual snapshot of the Niedermeyers at the Lake Macbride Dairy Sweet after a hike. We got there in our black ’62 Fairlane with clear plastic seat covers, but conveniently, there’s a Rambler American parked there too.
Instead of rolling in a ‘Vette to a fancy night club where a jazz band is playing, we’re off to Lake Macbride in our friend’s Rambler Classic wagon, and if we’re lucky, a stop at the Dairy Sweet drive-in for milkshakes or floats afterwards. The distinctive pattern of Rambler upholstery seared into the backs of my thighs and the stain of artificial strawberry on my trunks will be the tell-tale of having crowded in with half a dozen other hot and sticky kids in the back seat. Why did I have to wake up and find you at the curb, Rambler Classic wagon? I was so enjoying my fantasy memories.
These Rambler wagons were everywhere at the time, the choice of the younger families that were so busy birthing and brooding Baby Boomers. This picture, which includes a house that is much more Iowa then Oregon, takes me back to riding in my friend Chris’ identical family Classic wagon, wishing it was a Pontiac Bonneville Safari like the family across the street had.
Let’s face it, Ramblers were about on the same pecking order of a passionate nine-year-old piston head in 1962 as a twenty year-old Kia does today. Well, these cars were the Kias of their time: the most frugal and pragmatic transportation in the land if you needed more room than a VW. Eugene’s Kia dealer once was the Rambler dealer, and was a Daewoo dealer in between. Rambler wisely turned away from trying to compete with the Big Three after a couple of disastrous years in 1954—1956, and identified a niche for frugal Americans, no matter what part of the country they lived in.
And it worked like a charm, as plenty of folks were sick of the oversized chrome-winged flash the big guys were serving up in the late fifties. The nasty recession of 1958 was the final straw. By 1960, Rambler set new records for an independent, and in 1961, another recession year, Rambler was Number Three in the land! A truly remarkable accomplishment; kind of like Hyundai/Kia’s momentum in more recent years.
Of course, it wouldn’t last. The Big Three threw their barrage of compacts and mid-sized cars at Rambler, the Studebaker Lark, and the imports, and it hit hard. Rambler’s heyday was brief and inglorious, inasmuch as the cars were rather dreadful bores, and unevenly styled (that’s being charitable), like the boxy 1961 American and this somewhat but only slightly better Classic. The Ambassador? That long-nosed aberration was truly a joke, trying to compete with the stylish and toned-down new ’61s from GM, especially the Pontiacs.
Obviously, a nine-year-old isn’t thinking about the practical virtues of a Rambler. This Classic Cross Country was the Volvo 245 of its times, with a healthy sprinkle of chromium-laced fairy dust in two tones. It had practical big 15″ wheels when everyone was doing 14- and 13-inch mini-donuts. And AMC actually dropped the V8 option in the Classic line, which probably had everything to do with the fact that the ’62 Ambassador lost its larger platform and was now just a tarted-up Classic. That made all Classics dogs, because that six was a pretty modest affair.
The 195.6 cubic inch 127 (gross) hp engine had its origins in 1941, and was updated with an OHV head along the way. But it was an old school chuffer, with a tiny 3.13″ bore and a massive 4.25″ stroke. Plenty of low-end torque to haul the kids around with, but I remember seeing these struggling up in the Rocky Mountains, with the camping gear lashed to the standard luggage rack over that weird lowered rear roof section and three kids in the back. And was an aluminum-block version for a couple of years, in that brief US fad that resulted in lots of warped heads and the scratching heads of unhappy owners. Cast iron was here to stay, for another forty years or so.
Rambler’s accent on frugality extended to its famous reclining seats, which meant one didn’t really have to take a motel room. Although where everyone changed into their pajamas wasn’t fully explained. With the younger demographic, pajamas were not usually a part of taking advantage of the seats anyway. Mom, can I borrow your Rambler Friday night? Sure, but why don’t you want to take Dad’s Pontiac?
This 1961 Rambler was one year away from the end of the line for the 108″ wheelbase body, having first seen the light of day in 1956. Of course, it was a unibody, a fairly light one at that; even this wagon barely topped 3,000 lbs. The next year, the Classic got the handsome new body that we (mostly) praised here. It was long overdue; eight years was an eternity back then, and it was all too obvious to me at the time that this ’61 was already a rolling antique.
Enough Rambler ragging; I’m not nine anymore, but childhood impressions are hard to totally purge. And I’d be happy to drive this one out to the lake, and stop for a milkshake one the way home; just not with a half-dozen kids in the back, please.
(note: this is a new and revised version of an older post, which can be accessed here)
Related CC Reading
Curbside Classic: 1961 Rambler Classic Cross Country – The Ultimate Motel by L. Jones
Curbside Classic: 1961 Rambler Ambassador – Does Size Really Matter? by PN
Curbside Classic: 1961 Rambler Classic – Classic Rambler by JP Cavanaugh
Curbside Classic: 1961 Rambler American – The Hip Ugly American by PN
Parents had a ’60 Rambler. The dashboard pic here is completely familiar, including the aftermarket AC. As I recall, the dealer felt complacent from the huge demand, and made parents take an available car instead of the features they wanted. So they couldn’t get the good Nash AC, or the split front seat to fit tall dad and short mom. In other words, they couldn’t get the AMC advantages.
The six performed pretty well in the Rockies on a couple of vacations, and once the parents let me drive it up a steep hill on a dirt trail. It climbed nicely.
It always mystified me how AMC managed to engineer exhaust systems with such an unpleasant sound.
Until I owned a Honda CBX (6 cylinder), it never dawned on me a six could actually sound sexy.
So these travelling families are supposed to leave the freeways and hunt down a semi-deserted suburb where they can park under a tree to sleep overnight and not look suspicious? Wouldn’t work where I live, where non-permitted cars can get ticketed for parking for longer than two hours, and that’s for the spaces that aren’t metered. Sleeping in a parking lot may be considered loitering. At least sleeping in your car here isn’t outright illegal as it is in some neighborhoods.
The freeways used to have rest areas that travelers could turn into to picnic or sleep. It wasn’t considered weird back then.
It’s always fun when you take us back to your youthful Iowa City years, Paul–and the automotive stuff provides a double-bonus. I saw those Ramblers regularly back then, though I can’t recall any in immediate neighborhood, which was mostly Big 3 plus some VWs. I do wonder what it was like living in a “campus town” was like then—when the sixties hadn’t quite turned into The Sixties. Thanks for this!
The appeal of this iteration of Rambler wagons hit exactly is simple. It was dressed up in visual bling, at a moment when the competition treated less-than-full-sized choices as stark and barren come-downs, visually. The rest of the specs didn’t matter, because the visuals made the sale, and the rest of the purchase experience was an attempt to find something so wrong that the impulse to buy could be thwarted. Nothing else about the car was that bad. But the visual bling allowed people who preferred slightly smaller and more rational car choices to not feel left out in the pecking order, once the car was parked in a public parking lot.
The pic @ the ice cream shop is taken on a cool day? I notice the car windows are up.
Customers appear to have coats/jackets on.
I drive a Rambler wagon. Great looking style
My parents bought one new in Compton CA….it was a big change from Dad’s prior ’56 Plymouth Plaza, which he bought before he met my Mom, besides being a wagon rather than a 2 door sedan, it was an automatic (the Plaza was 3 speed manual, no options) since my Mom has always been more comfortable driving an automatic than a standard despite learning to drive on a semi-automatic Chrysler Windsor. It probably also had a radio, but not sure about the heater … maybe it did since they were from the Northeast and might have anticipated going back (which we in fact did, later in 1961). The wagon part was likely due to me and my twin sister, who of course also came along after the Plaza.
They must have liked it since their next car was a ’63 version of the same thing. Why only 2 years later? Never asked my Dad when he was around and Mom wouldn’t recall, but I think it was in a sandstorm on the way back from California and Dad didn’t want to get it fixed up. We moved to Pittsburgh (can you imagine moving from southern CA to Pittsburgh in 1961?) and he bought the ’63 update of the same car, including the color (Dad had a thing for green wagons, we had 4 in a row).
However….we were a 1 car family back then…by the mid 60’s our family was doing better much like most others and Dad got a ’59 Beetle as his first “2nd” car. So it wasn’t really a mon-mobile….I’d doubt that many of them were back then (maybe later). Dad took the car to work, and we made due during the week with no car till then. Funny thing we took a trip to Pittsburgh area 40 years later and when we got near our old neighborhood I recognized a small store we used to walk to with my Mom on the highway a little distance from our home. Don’t know how she got the groceries home while tending to 2 toddlers. We moved around a lot in our younger years, we only lived in Pittsburgh till ’62. Anyhow, I think the mom-mobile term is probably more recent, except for weathier families (who probably wouldn’t be driving a Rambler anyhow…the opposite of something you drove for style).
The 2nd Rambler was totalled in ’65 when we’d vacated our home staying at a nearby motel, Dad was crossing route 40 in Catonsville and one guy waved him to turn left in front of him, but the person in the other lane didn’t. My Grandmother was staying with us (we never lived closer than about a 4 hour drive from Grandparents, but this was the closest we ever lived) and picked glass out of my Dad’s skin. Somehow he found his way up to Essex Junction and bought a new ’65 Olds F85 wagon (also green of course) which he picked us up at Grandparent’s house (not sure how we got there either). Halfway through his ownership of the F85 I guess Dad finally got tired of spending all his spare evenings and weekends shopping (when he wasn’t at work) and bought his 2nd car. Us kids though, walked to school (actually 4 trips a day, since they didn’t serve lunch and I guess nobody brown bagged their meal), about a mile each way. But back then I think people routinely did a lot more walking (not so much for their heath as necessity of their situations) than now.
What part of “Pittsburgh”?Was a jumping place back in those days.
Wow CC effect 20/20, My former inspection guy had the same wagon in his panel shop recently, used import it could have been that exact car,
His was fully loaded everything factory original and a nice car, did somebody at Rambler like the 59 Minx rear styling?
Neighbor , back in historic days, had this car in the “4dor sdn”, body. White top, dark blue, blue inside.
Was a clattery, sounding car as I recall.
Got replaced with a “64 Buick”. (2dor hrdtop)
Same color combo.
Don’t know; bet the “Rambler” did better in wstrn “PA”, winters.