These images belong to Mickey’s Motor Sales, in Ellington CT. Most of AMC’s lineup from the period appears, with a Marlin making a guest appearance (a trade-in apparently). Shots seem to cover dates that span from the ’70s to the early ’80s.
Vintage Dealers: AMC in the ’70s-’80s – Come For Your Ambassador, Eagle or Spirit!
– Posted on September 10, 2023
Wow, the shag carpet in the showroom is a new one for me, I for some reason wonder what color it was. But these pictures (especially the third one) make the vehicles appealing, I’d certainly wander around and check them all out, get in, twiddle the knobs, nod my head approvingly etc…
The service bays on the other hand look terribly cramped, the guy working on the 2-door looks really jammed between the front and the wall.
That carpet was the first thing I noticed, too. I actually think I like it, as well the rest of the decor in that showroom… The brick, those PAR38 floodlights on the ceiling, and the glass. I also want to know the color! Seems odd that they were still taking black and white photos all the way up to 1974.
Newspapers were almost exclusively still B&W in the ’70s and ’80s and that’s what these sort of photos were often intended for.
Non-matching front & rear tires on that 2 door in the service bay. Older AMC’s weren’t much favored by teenager car buyers. Yet they seemed to feature mismatched tires more often than other makes. A testament to the innate thriftiness of the typical AMC buyer?
Back the a CJ was one of the least expensive vehicles you could buy… not anymore! AMC had a pretty credible line-up around 1970 but soon changed!
Been in Denver (Applewood) last few weeks visiting our daughter, and our son in Golden, there’s a late ’60s Rebel parked on a street we pass by that looks totally rust free… you’ll never see that in NY!
Great photos! Timely too – I’ve had AMC on my mind this week, since I just started writing a CC on a Javelin I found recently.
But all of this got me thinking: For some reason I can’t recall where the nearest AMC dealer was to where I grew up near Philadelphia. I don’t think our local Jeep dealer (which I recall well) ever sold AMC’s, though I could be wrong. I can think of a few big multi-brand dealers that sold AMC’s but no smaller dealers, which is surprising.
Oh, and I also like the big Rusty Jones cutout on the Wagoneer roof in the 3rd photo!
Not sure if you’d consider it ‘near’ Philly, but I grew up in Doylestown, Bucks County. About 45 minutes north of the city. For decades there was a dealer on Rt 611 called Foster & Kardane Motors. They closed in the early 2000s, but at various points during their lifespan they dabbled in AMC, Renault, Jeep, Eagle, and Chrysler. My dad regularly had his Jeeps serviced there. It was definitely an ‘old school’ family dealer and not as polished as some of the other franchises along the strip, but that seemed to fit the ragtag nature of some of the brands they sold.
The building and showroom still stand and are largely unchanged, although today it’s a generic used car dealer.
https://www.google.com/maps/@40.3310768,-75.1292858,3a,49y,59.6h,87.23t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1shITtu1y1KxliEAcRQ5DlUg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu
Thanks – I don’t remember that dealership at all, though we lived in Montgomery Co., so it wasn’t too close.
Our local Jeep dealer was Mac Motors in Willow Grove – also an unpolished sort of place. I recall the showroom was tiny, with maybe one or two Jeeps in there. Looks like their building was torn down recently, but this was the building in 2019 when it was still standing:
https://goo.gl/maps/myj5q6A7rR7xBcdi7
Interesting. I don’t recall Mac Motors but it looks like they’ve survived as a OEM Humvee parts distributor, and relocated just a few minutes north to Warminster.
https://www.macmotors.com/aboutus.aspx
Gotta love these old independent dealers. They’re still out there but certainly seem to be a dying breed.
EDIT: I might stand corrected. I did a little digging around since my first post, and while I can find mentions of Foster & Kardane, I can’t find 100% proof they ever were a *dedicated* new-car AMC dealer. I vividly recall them regularly having assorted late-term AMCs lining Rt 611 on their lot as a kid in the 80s (Eagles, Concords, etc), but those might have just been recent trade-ins or used cars for sale, and not part of their new car franchise sales.
Very interesting – I had no idea that Mac Motors was still in business. I vaguely recall them selling vehicles other than Jeeps – possibly stepvans and the like, though I’m not sure.
As for Foster & Kardane, the below Inquirer ad from 1984 lists Philadelphia -area Jeep and AMC dealers. Foster & Kardane is listed as being only a Jeep franchise. The other dealership on that list that didn’t sell AMC, Renault and Jeep together was Kohl AMC/Renault, which was also in Doylestown. So maybe Kohl and Foster & Kardane had a franchise agreement that enabled them to keep their respective brands without infringing on each other’s business.
Good find, Eric. Yep…you are correct. I was wrong about F & K being an AMC dealer. Funny, I have zero recollection of Kohl Motors, the actual AMC dealer in D-town, but according to an AMC forum post I just stumbled across (below), they were literally a few hundred yards down the road from F & K. So perhaps your suggestion about a franchise agreement with Kohl Motors might be correct, since F & K did have a steady lot presence of AMCs.
They’ve got a pretty comprehensive list of old AMC-affiliated dealers here:
https://theamcforum.com/forum/lost-dealership-project_topic1185_page10.html
DOYLESTOWN
18901, Foster & Kardane Motors, Jeep, Rt. 611 N. (215)348-9494 (1980s)
18901, Lester A. Kohl Motors., AMC/Renault, 652 Easton Rd. Rt. 611 (215)348-5820 (1980s)
That’s a great list of AMC dealers – quite a few that were a surprise to me.
Looks like Kohl was originally a Nash dealer, so they came into AMC that way, while Foster & Kardane had a Chrysler/Plymouth and Jeep back at least into the early 1960s. I guess they were both successful enough, and so close to each other, that AMC chose not to mess with either one after the Jeep takeover.
Maybe the Marlin driver is visiting the parts counter. 🙂
I will even take the plain jane Hornet of the last photo which with its dish hub cap and its white lettering tires , perhaps hides a H-Code 304 v8 . …but by 1972 this one had 150 horsepower and 245 ft-lb .Looking at them from the side we can see that the stance would be better with a big heavy engine at the front . Let’s make it a SC/360 https://www.curbsideclassic.com/cars-of-a-lifetime/coal-1970-amc-hornet-a-dissertation-on-the-owner-beater-relationship/
Nice new property there .
I remember smaller dealerships like this, Milne Brothers Jeep in Pasadena only carried Jeeps but was a very busy place indeed in the late 1970’s .
-Nate
I’m no AMC expert, but I want to date the 3rd picture to MY 1978, based on the Spirit and Pacer. And what I see in 1978 is that there are 4 Jeep vehicles and only 3 AMCs.
I don’t have sales figures, but I have to believe that by this era the passenger car side was barely afloat and Jeeps were providing the buoyancy.
Currently there is a Spirit with a collectors plate at my neighborhood’s homeless encampment. It looks to be a daily driver too.
I love it ! .
A classic car in decent condition with collectors license tags being driven by a homeless person .
Only in America .
I wish I could post pictures, I’d share some of down and outers around Los Angeles living in motorhomes, some are HUGE behemoths with the slide outs and canopies etc .
Down in South Central where I go there are some that haven’t moved since 2019, I wonder why the L.A.P.D. doesn’t have them towed but they’d have to go inside first to check for living bodies and I can’t imagine doing that ~ ugh .
-Nate
Until last year there was a moratorium on towing RV’s in LA. That’s been lifted but apparently of the multiple contractors LAPD uses to tow, only one can handle RVs, however a bigger problem is that the city has nowhere to store them (no space) and junkyards apparently don’t want to take them, presumably because the recyclable componentry is quite low relative to the overall mass. I can see the city having to tow them out past the Inland Empire to get rid of them…. An interesting conundrum, seems the “campers” are safe for now.
https://www.dailynews.com/2022/05/24/l-a-wants-to-tow-abandoned-rvs-but-city-has-nowhere-to-put-them/
The Spirit replaced the Gremlin for MY1979. The Pacer lasted into the 1980 model year, but they only sold 1,746 of them compared to ~10,000 for 1979, so my bet is that this photo is from ’79. I’m sure there were a few 1979 Pacers still glued to the floor in ’80, though. I can see a separate rear side marker on one of the CJ’s, which dates it no later than 1980 (those were integrated into the tail lamp starting in 1981).
Photos 1 and 4 show the seldom-seen and more-seldom remembered 1974 Ambassador. The Ambassador’s front end was nicely done (for its era), with a very minimal forward bump in the grille. 1974 was a horrible year for larger cars and there would be no 1975 Ambassador.
I have never read a good explanation for how the shorter wheelbase 1974+ Matador got such an exaggerated forward thrust of the hood and grille inboard of the headlights. They should have found a way to adapt the Amby hood, grille and bumper to the Matador, once the larger car went away.
The Ambassador bumper is the same. The Ambassador hood is a different length, so would require a new stamping for Matador. Sales were so poor that the refreshed bumper compliant Ambassador was dropped after just one season, so it’s hard to see that the Ambassador styling was an asset.
Today this would be Bowles Dodge/Jeep in Ellington, CT. The facilities have been expanded substantially and they have a second dealership in Stafford, CT.
I see Rusty Jones sitting on the roof of the Wagoneer.
So these AMC products were protected from the elements nicely.
Tough Americans. (ad slogan circa 1980).
The Jeeps are the only vehicles I see that I’d want today.
Just look at the hood gap on the 74 Ambassador! This was their flagship model! Sadly not uncommon for the times.
That photos of the Eagle reminds me that I saw an Eagle last week, on the road and under its own power. But not a 4wd Hornet wagon nor a Talon, but an Eagle Premier sedan.
Any running Eagle Premier is a rare bird indeed!
I had good luck with my ’89 Premier, but time would show they weren’t generally considered a durable car.
That Hornet looks like the one my grandfather had, he traded in his Ambassador 72 or so when he retired and moved from Brooklyn to central New Jersey.
was just watching some Adam-12. Officer Malloy was very proud of his new AMC Ambassador.
The service manager has two things on his desk that might not be recognizable to moderns. The rotary PBX, and the little flip-up phone number index.
The first picture includes what Pat Foster considers the Car That Killed AMC: the unnecessary Matador Coupe. The Pacer nailed down the coffin one year later.
I still have a rolodex still on the front desk in my office with all contacts, phone and account #’s, on those small cards in alphabetical order. Similar phone also on the desk, actually three of them, except push button. That rolodex has been there since May 1982.
Style oddball cars, and you get ostracized. Great styling, that doesn’t polarize buyers, has sold cars for decades. Apparently, AMC or Dick Teague never respected (learned?) this fundamental.
The weird Gremlin was a hit by AMC standards. The Hornet was a pleasantly styled car that underperformed the market (esp the two door).
AM had a good year in 1963 and sold fewer cars 1964 despite an improved and handsome American. The reason is that GM and Ford introduced intermediates and the Mustang that gobbled AMC’s market for cars smaller than traditional full size. AM’s styling didn’t get worse, but AMC lost sales for no better reason than it was a small fish in a more crowded pond.
The auto industry is a huge business, yet almost every car company in history has gone bust or been swallowed by a larger competitor. That’s the most persuasive evidence possible that there is an inevitable trend toward consolidation. If a small mainstream car company could survive by competing with larger operators, at least one would have survived. So many companies tried and failed that we can conclude it’s impossible. With so many many companies making the attempt, it’s impossible that every single company went under because of bad management. The more likely explanation is that there are inescapable economic forces that persistently squeeze smaller operators out of business.
Yes, Subaru is doomed as an independent operator. It is headed for the AMC Coffin Corner. It’s effectively dead everywhere outside the US and a US misstep or simple undercapitalization will cripple it in the US. I expect that it will end up as a Toyota branding operation in the US and dead in the rest of the world.
Looks to be some rear quarter panel damage on that Hornet in the last photo. The service manager is writing up the estimate while the mechanic does the oil change.
Mom always had one of those address flip up devices. It would last a few years then require a whole new rewrite as friends and family moved here and there.
Sad to say, I never stepped foot within an AMC dealer in my life.
Too many potential customers never did either.
Granted, I was in my very early 20s, when Chrysler bought them in 1987. But I went into Big Three dealers all the time as a kid, collecting the latest brochures. Never AMC. I used to car shop with my dad as a kid, and he never considered AMC products. The Concord wagon could have been on his radar in 1978, when he was looking for a compact wagon.
I had a 74 Matador X coupe, white with black stripes. My dealer was smaller that that one from the photos. Two years before they were a used car dealer when the existing AMC/Rambler dealer closed due to retirement and the franchise kind of fell into their lap.
The gentleman in the 2nd photo looks to be the same gentleman to the left in the top photo. Maybe the top sales rep for the dealership at the time.
IIRC, there was only one AMC dealer in all of New Orleans when I was a kid in the 60’s and early 70’s compared to 2 or 3 Chevy or Ford dealers each. AMC wasn’t on the radar scope at the time.
Did the AMC dealers end up as Dodge/Plymouth dealers in the buyout?
I quite like that late 60’s American wagon there in photo 4. It’s rather restrained compared to that 70’s stuff, and I could drive it without wearing a wide tie 🙂
Bet those AMC showrooms reeked of that cheap 1970s Avon cologne, sold in car shaped green bottles.
I would be all over the American wagon. It looks to be a 67.
Photos belong to Ray Luce and were posted on Kodachrome of the Dead on Facebook. They came from an estate sale of Mickey himself. Location still there as Bolles Jeep Ram dealership.
America’s Volga.
My aunt and her husband about a market near this dealership. We drove past this dealership many times on the way to Lafayette market to see my aunt and her husband.
Okay. I’m a bit surprised, but maybe not all that surprised, to see AMC getting tarred and feathered here. I’ve noticed that this seems to be common amongst folks who grew up from… maybe the late 50’s to early 80’s? I was 9 years old when the last AMC Eagles rolled off the line after the Chrysler buyout, so I’m just far enough removed from the days when dweeby looking Ramblers were still tainting American Motors’ image as they were rolling out some stuff that probably would’ve done really well if their name wasn’t attached to it. 1970 Javelin or AMX, anyone?! Now, I’m not far enough removed from that era that I haven’t been in or around some AMC’s, as there were quite a few still kicking around even when I came of driving age.
Eagles were a well regarded vehicle in my northwest Montana town, and they didn’t seem to be perceived as cheap or downmarket; a lot of the middle to upper class people (the ones who bought decked out Grand Wagoneers) drove them. Sure, there was some interior trim that was a bit too plastic-y and body panel fit was ehh… and the primitive engine emissions controls were kinda sketch, but I felt they were a pretty decent car. I was kind of in love with my neighbor’s SX/4 liftback.
I see a lot of comments on the sometimes frumpy, but more often polarizing styling. I like most of it. I really do. My Dad’s friend had a 1972 Javelin that came up for sale about two and a half years before I could get my license. I really wanted that car, but the logistics wouldn’t work out because of my age. What would’ve made that one even better was if had the avant-garde Cardin interior… wishful thinking. I also quite like the Pacer- especially the coupe variant. I’m familiar with their faults, but I’d still like one. I also like the Matador coupe, and kicked around hunting for a Matador X at one time… my appreciation was from a friend’s aunt owning a burgundy 1974 when we were kids. It looked cool and swoopy parked out front of their house when she came to visit. Very unique, quite a bit different from the cars parked around it, but in an attractive way. It took awhile for Gremmies to grow on me, but yeah, I like them now. The Hornet is pretty okay, but I like it best after it morphed into the Concord/Eagle in 1980. 1978 Concords are kinda weird front and rear, but when they went to the quad headlamps for 1979, then the new tail lamps for ’80, it was right.
Hmm… In these pictures… As I like the SX/4, I also like the Spirit it came from, but more so in sportier guise. I’d still rock it. Maybe the Eagle wagon in the second pic, or the darker colored Spirit behind it. And, I should be embarrassed to admit it, but I’m pretty fond of the frontal treatment on 1974 Ambassador. I didn’t care for it so much on the similar Durante Matador sedan, as it’s much more pronounced. The way the parking lamps wrap around the grille on the Amby, quad headlamps, and the grille texture works well. The extruded aluminum window frames are kinda weird, and the curvature of the roof and back window don’t play too well with each other, but the back end/tail lamps look decent. It’s a little frumpy, but not overwhelmingly so. I’d probably take the wagon with the chemical wood in the top photo if we’re picking Ambassadors.
In a way, bad timing with coming out with models out of sync with what my parents were looking for (after 1963) led to my parents giving up on AMC after owning 2 Rambler Classic wagons in a row (’61 and ’63). In ’65 when the ’63 was in an accident that totalled it, my Dad bought a new ’65 Olds F85 wagon at Val Preda in South Burlington. Our family had grown by 1, and I guess he thought midsized F85 was slightly larger than the compact Classic. AMC didn’t yet have bigger Ambassador, just the one with V8 (Dad’s Rambler’s each had the 6’s) in ’65. He bought the ’61 in Compton, Ca (we moved around a LOT in my Dad’s early career) and the ’63 probably somewhere around Pittsburgh. The ’63 was totalled as we were moving out of our house in Catonsville, Md (in front of our Motel) .
We were on our first tour of Vermont…we lived there twice, my Dad got transferred to Virginia in between (in ’69) and we moved back in ’75. He moved up to full size wagon in ’69, guess he could have gotten an Ambassador Wagon, especially after it came with standard A/C which would have come in handy especially in Virginia.
We never had a 4WD car when living up in Vermont, only rear engine/RWD (a ’59 Beetle and ’68 Renault R10) and FWD (Subaru DL and Dodge Omni). Our neighbor on the 2nd tour owned the South Burlington AMC franchise but my Dad wasn’t in the market when in ’80 they came out with 4WD AMC cars….and he moved out of Vermont in 1982 to Texas where he didn’t need the traction (he didn’t offroad). I moved out of Vermont even earlier, in 1980, still in New England but farther south where I eventually traded my RWD Datsun 710 for a VW Scirocco whose FWD was good enough for me.
That seems to be the case for me, since I don’t buy cars often…that might be a good question to ask curbsiders…which model car(s) might you have bought had they been offered when you were in the market for it? Guess you can always buy it used if that fits your needs.
Fun fact: Brampton AMC factory now (for a little while longer) builds Challengers and Chargers. We had a 1966,660 Ambassador wagon with a six. In that ubiquitous Rambler green of the era. As a small child I loved that interior from day one! And also enjoyed sleeping in the back on trips to Florida. Not the back seat, THE BACK!