(first posted 1/22/2014) A not uncommon accusation around these parts is that folks who haven’t driven a certain car have no right to write articles or comment on them. There’s some validity in that, but then owners of certain cars are all-too often lacking in any objectivity too, especially when it comes to their beloved older cars. Of course, the criticism can go the other way too.
I happen to have an intrinsic soft spot for Ramblers, but don’t have a lot of seat time in them. Whereas the earlier Ramblers from the late 50s were generally considered to be decent to good handling cars compared to the wallowing Big Three cars of the times, by the mid sixties, they were generally being left behind. The few I have driven from that era felt clumsy, with very slow steering and general dullness. Were my perceptions colored by Rambler’s frumpy image? When I stumbled unto this old Road Test from my April 1964 Car and Driver, it gave me a reality check: Apparently not.
click images for full size
Postscript: The so-called “new ohv six-cylinder engines in iron or aluminum” are anything but new, as 1964 was the last year for this very elderly long-stroke design that dates back to the thirties, updated with an ohv head along the way. But even the excellent new sixes that arrived to replace it didn’t fix the other dynamic shortcomings of the American. There really was a reason Ramblers got the rep back then for being old ladies’ cars, even when they were trying hard not to be, appearance wise, like this very attractive ’64 American coupe, Dick Teague’s first assignment at AMC.
About the only thing I can say is that it’s arguably nicer-looking than a similarly-styled Chevy ll, Falcon/Comet or Dart/Valiant.
Not sure I agree as to the ’63 Dart, with its Turbine Car-esque lights and grille, but otherwise absolutely yes. Just as the ’63 Classic is stylistically way ahead of a stodgy ’63 Fairlane. However, this contemporary review confirms what I have always heard about AMC from multiple sources, which is that the chassis didn’t deliver on what the styling promised. The American and Classic had the potential to be the Civic and Accord of their day, but fell short. They were good cars, but not great ones.
Funny enough I think the American resembles the Chrysler Turbine car more than the Dart does even if the overall front end details are more true to it. The Dart basically affixed the Turbine nose to a scaled down 1963 Chrysler Newport/300/New Yorker bodyshape. The American looks much cleaner and better packaged than the Dart to my eye.
I well remember this review. I felt bad for the sharp looking new Rambler! And even as a 16 year old, I thought saying the it was a car for unimaginative people to drive to unimaginative place was a bit much. After all, they were describing it as a “protest” car and are the buyers of protest cars really unimaginative? To me, people who unthinkingly went out and bought Chevrolets were the unimaginative ones!
There is a tipping point, though.
The Prius still has the “protest car” image it used to before 2008, even though its’ fleet, especially taxi, sales are mounting and it’s become the go-to choice for anyone who drives a lot for work with a flat per-mile compensation, because nothing else has come along to fill the imaginative-protest-car segment it revived on its’ arrival back in the early ’00s.
In the early ’70s I frequently flew into Milwaukee and rented cars to drive to John Deere in Horicon, WI. When offered the standard Mustang, Cutlass or Camaro, I would ask, to the incredulity of the rental agent, for a Javalin or anything from AMC, just so I could test the waters. I can honestly say that everything in the Car and Driver article was absolutely true, if not understated. Those things felt like 3rd-world turds on wheels. Had AMC never heard of ergonomics? The pedal placement made that of a 1953 Ford tractor seem inspired. OK, maybe I’m being unfair. My basis for contemporary comparison was my dad’s 1971 Opel 1900 and my own ’72 Fiat 128, cars that were as competent on the back roads of Connecticut as they were on the road to Gallup, New Mexico. Or even my sister’s ’71 Corolla 1200. Nothing AMC built was in the same class as any of these cars. AMC went out of business for a reason.
I guess I am glad all 6’4” of me read this before deciding to get an American as my second AMC. Good thing I prefer Rambler Classics of similar vintage!
It’s an improvement on the last one but it was never going to impress the speed demons at Car & Driver was it?I’d still take a Falcon,Zodiac or Cresta over this
Back when this review was published, there were arguably many “protest cars” on the market — vehicles for practical people who rejected drastic model-car changes, wasted fuel, and other frivolity. Most imports still qualified, and in addition to Rambler-owning neighbors, I remember the quirky family that purchased a Checker wagon.
Anyway, this raises the question of whether, in today’s age of angry-visaged over-marketed vehicles, each seemingly catering to a different “lifestyle,” one can actually buy a new “protest car” in the US today.
(I think a Dacia might do, if we could get those.)
It’s almost like there are not any real “protest” cars anymore because they are all so similar in so many ways. There are cars, sure, that say you don’t care about cars (cough…Corolla…cough) but I wouldn’t call it a protest car.
Honestly, I think TODAY almost any car driven daily (especially if by someone whom can afford a “better” car) that has made it onto this website has a “protest” car…for probably more than one reason.
I drive an AMC Eagle as my everyday car…and an ’88 Town Car for when I want cruise control or AC…but the Eagle gets driven a helluva lot more. The Eagle used to be a driving project…at the time I had a 2011 Camry. If that says anything….
I’ve visited countries where Dacias are quite common; they hardly seem like protest vehicles, but on the other hand they do have a certain Rambler essence to me. Today I drove 150 miles and saw two Toyota Mirai’s and a Honda Clarity. Now those are protest vehicles. The same doesn’t apply to the bazillion Tesla’s I saw on the same roads today.
Closest thing today might be a Subaru. The company’s mainstream products* are marketed as unabashedly practical vehicles, with sensible none-too-powerful engines, unfashionably good visibility, less-than-dramatic styling, and unpretentious but spacious and functional interiors. However, the market has moved markedly in their direction, diluting the “protest” quality of their vehicles.
*Perhaps the BRZ and WRX are the company’s analogues to the AMX and Marlin/Javelin?
The WRX is so prolific though, and has been a very long time, alongside or maybe even a little ahead of Subaru’s bread and butter models gaining mainstream acceptance . The reputation of Rambler (and the anti performance musings of George Romney) however preceded the Marlin and AMX/Javelin and they had an uphill climb to overcome it, which they arguably failed at. The WRX has rally pedigree and has been embraced by young performance enthusiasts since the early 2000s, and still are.
For people my age Subaru is more instantly associated with AWD performance Imprezas than the protest car sentimental “love” marketing campaign currently presents.
I was not old enough to be around the 1950s Ramblers, but this is getting into the AMC era that I remember.
An interesting comparison is with a 1964 Stude Lark R3 that Hot Rod Magazine road tested. The 109 inch wheelbase is that only thing close about those cars. The ancient archetecture underpinning the Stude provided one of the best handling cars on a bad road that the testers could remember. Disc brakes, sway bars front and rear, magnesium wheels, and 335 horsepower – that car was the polar opposite of the Rambler, or anything else from AMC.
http://wildaboutcarsonline.com/cgi-bin/pub9990262549620.cgi?categoryid=9930392601969&action=viewad&itemid=9990425416376
This is why I am a Stude guy and not an AMC guy – Stude in 1961-63 had nothing and tried like hell, while Rambler of that time had gobs of resources in comparison, but did only the minimum necessary to get an acceptable car into the showroom.
To paraphrase Winston Churchill, the Rambler American was a modest car with a lot to be modest about. 🙂
My brother is a Stude man. I’m an AMC guy. IMO there is really no comparison. Early 60s Ramblers were modern in terms of unibody construction, if somewhat dated drive trains. Studes were dated, to ’53, and their engines were antiquated as well. The relative quality of construction produces a very real difference in how the cars feel and drive – though of course neither are meant to be driven with “verve”.
One of my friends had one of these in high school. It seemed like a decent car, she never complained about it and she kept driving it after she married one of my other friends who had a ’70 Torino. I thought it looked pretty sharp, better than the first gen Chevy II or Falcon.
Strange to read this review. My family had a 1964 American as a second car (replacing a 1960 Falcon) and compared to the Falcon it was a performance demon! It seemed to us a much more solid, more powerful, better finished, and better driving car than the Falcon. Ironically I thought it was in the looks department that it fell down – the front end was handsome, but the rear looked feeble.
A performance demon compared to a ’60 Falcon. Yeah, half as much power again in much the same size car will give you that impression! Incidentally, did anyone see the specific output – 138 hp out of 196 inches is excellent for the time. Especially for an ancient long-stroke engine in its last year.
At least the Weather-Eye heater/defroster earned a 10/10 rating. But seriously, did a ’64 Nova with 18hp less from its very modern 194ci six and a two speed Powerglide do any better? How about a Falcon, with the modern 200ci six, two steps above the base engine, yet 22hp down from the AMC unit, again coupled to the two speed Fordomatic.
Having only driven the Valiant, I cant speak on the driving dynamics of the American, Falcon or Nova. C&D, in its “golden age” of snarkiness, compared the American to a Corvair Monza, really?
I’m sure those cars wouldn’t have fared all that well in a C&D test either, and I’m guessing the ancient Nash six/B-W 3-speed was still better than the comparable equipment in a Nova or Falcon. They might be exaggerating a little bit on the lack of power – 0-60 in ~15 seconds wasn’t really all that shabby for a car of it’s stature back then, or even a fullsize car with a lo-po V8. Most accounts do regard AMCs from this era as having the absolute worst steering and handling characteristics of anything in their class, and that’s really where the article slammed the poor Rambler. They didn’t compare it to a Corvair Monza (or Renault R8), though… read that line over again and it’ll make sense.
There really is no excuse for such poor steering – that’s something the Australian press of the time repeatedly slammed the American car makers (and their local offshoots) for. And that wasn’t the enthusiast press; even road tests in the daily newspapers found fault with steering (and even more so with brakes). Having driven sixties Falcons, I would agree. If the American handled worse that a ’62 Falcon, I shudder!
Incredible that it could and still sell, Theres a red 66? rambler American convertible round here somewhere Ive seen it out in traffic a couple of times not a bad looking car, but Ive not driven one, I have however driven a stock early Australian Falcon a 63 it was pretty bad.
Not to mention, the Falcon and Mustang’s trunk floor was the top of the gas tank! Still can’t understand how cheap the bean counters had to be to justify that.
Yeah a 74 Aussie Falcon I had rusted through under the spare wheel water must have been sitting in the wheel well for years before I bought it, but they replaced that idea in 79/80 with the worlds first plastic fuel tank.
Nope. Here’s a link:http://hipf.edu.sa/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/160119-History-of-Fuel-Tank-Development-Pinch-off-removed.pdf
I have a vague memory of Pontiac introducing them in the late ’60s/early ’70s.
Well, Ford Australia said it was the first.
Rambler American – Because hey your Aunt Maude has to have something to drive to church.
This article, unfortunately, sums up the likely generally correct popular opinion that Rambler / AMC cars competed on little more than price and were generally inferior cars.
My in-laws were the AMC demographic. My mother-in-law had a degree, but taught in parochial schools – notoriously low paying, and she bought her 1st car – a ’61? – ’63? American two door sedan.
My father-in-law came on the scene and did route sales for a living. Coffee, tools, etc. When kids came along, they had a ’67 or so Ambassador.
They wanted to supplement the Ambassador around 1977 and bought a Matador. My future wife was quite young but remembers it being astonishingly ugly, made worse by an institutional grey color. They actually managed to return the car under the lemon law! It was replaced by a ’77 or so Chrysler LeBaron sedan. The switch to something with a wiff of brougham that actually ran made them feel like they were on top of the world!
The ’67 Ambassador lived on in storage and it was dug out so my wife could drive it to school. Everything was very close in their small town, so the fact that the car was barely road worthy was not a big deal. It was apparently equipped with an early stop-start system and stalled at every stop sign. She eventually bought herself a 1st gen Granada two door with air and thought she’d made the big time!
Such a waste! Teague penned a clean, and attractive design. Too bad the mechanicals sucked on these cars. Had it offered the performance and handling that it eventually got down in Argentina as the Torino, this could’ve been a hit…possibly a legend.
This article dates from a few years before I got a subscription to C/D. I’m not surprised to find it was a pretty useless magazine even before I started reading it. One thing about C/D, most of us eventually grew out of it.
What do you mean ‘useless’? Granted that the article’s writers were biased against this car, but at least they admitted that right up front. And I found the rest of the review quite entertaining (which a good magazine should be), not to mention that they provided all of the specifications, plus their own driving impressions, making it possible for the reader to form their own conclusions about whether they would want such a car.
They were quite right about the lack of a front sway bar, and this is a sin that AMC continued to commit well into the 1970s. My brother’s 1976 Pacer STILL didn’t come standard with a front sway bar (it was one of the very first junkyard-acquired modifications), and the addition of one really did improve the handling in a significant manner.
By the time that I was of driving and wrenching age, most of these Americans that I encountered were in the boneyards, completely stock and still in remarkably good overall condition. I always wanted to buy one and make a ‘sleeper’ out of it, substituting a superior drivetrain and suspension underneath while maintaining the stock look right down to the OEM wheel covers. I recall how light they were – on engineless cars, it was possible to almost lift the front end off the ground from one front fenderwell.
Big +1 on that.
This article is typical of C&D at it’s best as far as I’m concerned. There’s a very clear separation between opinion and fact built into the way it’s written; something that has, sadly, become a lost art.
My uncle traded his bought-new and treasured 1954 Chevy 210 for a new 1964 American four-door, white over gold, three-speed manual w/overdrive, radio, and white walls. He was not an adventurous driver and loved the American, especially the quiet and good mileage on the highway due to overdrive. Unfortunately my aunt did not appreciate the return to a manual transmission. Despite the need for a change, my uncle was sufficiently impressed with the American to stick with AMC when he traded in for a new, dark blue 66 Ambassador with ps/pb, V8 and automatic. Two years later his daughter bought a new Javelin and they were a happy AMC family for a good while. Clearly not C/D clientele but the other side of the story.
What a great read, although kind of a bummer to hear just how soft and lethargic the pieces underneath that handsome sheetmetal were. The looks suggest that they’re nimble and fun to drive, and every one I’ve seen up close through the years appeared to be a well-built, high quality machine. With only 52% of it’s 2,600lb. curb weight over the front wheels, it shouldn’t be too hard for anyone who is so inclined nowadays to significantly improve on the shortcomings it left the factory with. I’m sure even just switching to some decent, modern rubber would yield passable results… but back then, I probably would have been really let down had I taken one for a spin.
In the mid 60s, I read Mechanix Illustrated, and, when AMC dropped their new light weight 290 into the American to create the Rouge, Tom McCahill loved it. After raving about the power and handling, he said his acid test was “would I want to drive this car across the country?”. With the qualifier of no more than two people, without a lot of luggage, his answer was an emphatic yes.
Whenever I test drive any car, the most important factors for me are, in order, brakes and steering. I have driven one of these things, and they had the worst brakes I have ever experienced. This is not to say the four wheel drums of the era on any car were any good, it’s just that AMC brakes were especially bad.
One has to take Car and Driver of the era with a huge grain of salt. Their claim to fame was hating everything that wasn’t Italian or have 400 horsepower. That said, I do think that C/D’s constant call for cars that handled and braked better did lead to better and safer cars. Nobody would consider buying a car that handled and stopped like a 1960’s sled these days but those cars sure rode smooth!
It looks like money was saved by using the same bumpers at each end.
And why not? They don’t look out of place.
I never understood why more companies didn’t do this, for a small independent it was pretty ingenious. The AMC Cavalier concept took this to the greatest extreme
That would have been quite the trendsetter, as most cars today have the rear wheels well aft. Back in the ’60s I think it was strictly a Peugeot thing.
I think it would be interesting to read a comparable road test from a competing magazine. I know I have, and I’m fairly sure they weren’t as hard on the car as C/D was.
I’ve liked the looks of that Rambler American for a long time. Quite handsome and somewhat sporty-looking. I will suggest that the demographics or target market for this car was likely not someone who read C & D. Should be an acceptable around town car. If you only drive to the grocery store, to church, the library and to a job in town, I still think it meets the basic requirements of a modest, frugal person.
Yeah, I like the style too, but if it drove like that I’d be wanting to upgrade the suspension and brakes before I’d have one. Disappointing. Why should style and dynamic competence be mutually exclusive?
No product exists in a vacuum; people can shop elsewhere. This shows what happens if you take your eye off the competition. You can have a continued presence in a market segment, sure, you can bring out a nice-looking product, but if its performance of intended function as an automobile is substandard people will look elsewhere.
Why would AMC put money into the American for it to be a great car when AMC believed that its future was with the Ambassador and the Classic? That is where AMC was putting its money. Not in this car – they put it into creating the bigger 1965s. Abernethy didn’t want to waste any dough on the American when he believed that AMC was supposed to compete successfully with the Fury, Galaxie or Impala.
AMC abandoned the niche they succeeded in for a Market others dominated. Abernethy screwed AMC with his expansion plans so badly that by the end of 1965, AMC needed to have the US Post Office buy up their leftovers to give AMC enough money to stay open.
This American was a sign that AMC was willing to put a new body on an obsolete car in order to waste money chasing after sales they didn’t stand a chance of catching.
As I’ve noted a couple times throughout AMC week – imagine if the American was a completely new car and AMC spent its resources and assets making it the best available six seater compact. It would have continued the Rambler saga of being the perfect sized car with the best engineering.
Imagine how well AMC would have been able to capture the Market lightning in a bottle by 1974 – if it did.
FWIW, the “New” 1964 American was just a slightly narrowed and shortened Classic/Ambassador. All AMC cars up to 1967 were essentially the same under the skin. It was an early version of “platform sharing”.
And the 1967 and up AMCs weren’t much different under the skin either. They all used the same suspension, which wasn’t really any different from the previous cars.
AMC chose not to invest much into chassis engineering to improve their handling qualities, something the Big 3 were also guilty of, but not always to the same degree. Especially in the sixties, as drivers were starting to appreciate improved handling qualities, AMC was clearly falling behind.
They did finally play catch-up, with the Javelin and AMX, and some of the sporty versions. But there’s little doubt that AMC was a bit late to the party.
So sad. Imagine if AMC had decided this was THEIR market segment and they’d own it! If they’d decided to make the best compact possible, rather than merely being content with a reskin on something which really wasn’t very good in the first place. Being the first company with a successful compact, you’d think they’d want to trade on that (they could be “the original and still the best”) rather than squander that degree of market recognition.
It makes you wonder whether there were any engineers at AMC who were enthusiast drivers. Guess they were all ex-Nash guys rather than old Hudson men. Fifties Nash engineering ruled.
My friends 63 Classic 660 has the old 196 engine, automatic, PS and manual disk brakes.
It has to be the worst driving car I have ever been in for braking, steering, ride and noise. In fact my other friends 65 Falcon with the 200 six felt like a much more modern and better suspended car by a country mile and was much quieter. The 200 six was it’s main weakness and that was where the AMC felt a tad peppier. Of course comparing 50 year old cars today isn’t always fair as there was a great deal of variance between models, engines and lots of time for things to deteriorate. Still both of these cars had well over 100K, were wearing newer tires and brakes, had multiple carb rebuilds and points/spark plug changes and the suspensions were in similar condition. I also remember my grandfather’s mid 60’s Nova with the 250 six and stick and it would blow the doors off either of these wheezers and felt like a hot rod in comparison.
My late stepfather had a Rogue (I don’t recall what year) in white with a dark blue roof. I believe they had more beef in the suspension to handle the V8. As for stout, it was struck from behind by a cement truck and neither he nor my mother were injured. I can’t ask more than that!
My late stepfather had a Rogue… I believe they had more beef in the suspension to handle the V8.
Better suspension and better brakes. Tom McCahill, always an advocate for better suspension and brakes, who tested the Rogue for Mechanix Illustrated had publicly taken AMC to task some years earlier for poor handling, but he loved the Rogue.
Tom McCahill
He focused on AMC’s George Romney, who claimed that the Rambler handled better than U.S. full-size makes. McCahill performed tests to prove him wrong.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_McCahill
Uncle Tom was, IMO, the gold standard for auto tests. Even today, his road tests are hilarious.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBNWBHYp41w
He even did commercials for Chrysler.
Thanks for posting the video. I never heard his voice before. There are a couple spots where you can see his limp, from a broken hip from playing football at Yale.
Even today, his road tests are hilarious.
A wild style of writing, like saying a Jaguar’s heater output felt “like an old lady breathing on my leg”
Too wierd that Mechanix Illustrated never acknowledged his passing in 75. I saw the obit in Time, and was looking for a nice retrospective of his contribution to MI, but it never appeared. MI kept using his name and likeness in car tests and the “Mail for McCahill” column as if he was still alive. The only tip off was the fine print at the end of the article “this report prepared by Tom McCahill Reports Inc”, apparently written by his stepson Brooks, who mimicked Tom’s writing style.
Modernmechanix blog has a number of his reviews online – here’s one for 1956:
http://blog.modernmechanix.com/tom-mccahill-looks-over-the-1956-cars/
It’s unfortunate that Mechanix Illustrated isn’t archived on Google Books like its’ onetime competitors Popular Science and Popular Mechanics.
Of course, it’s a bit of a puzzle who owns it now, Fawcett Publishing was sold to CBS in 1977 and its’ properties scattered to the winds from there – most of the magazines seem to now be in the hands of Hearst, the paperback publishing arm to Ballantine Books, the comics IP rights to DC Comics (that’s a drama in itself).
My dad had the 64 Rambler American Wagon.6 cyl, 3 speed. As I remember, it wasn’t too a bad car. The throttle stuck sometimes. The windshield wipers were vacuum type, operating from engine power. So under acceleration, the wipers would slow down. Rubber door trim came loose . I remember taking long cross country trips in it without any problems. I liked the fold down front and back seats for camping. Got to sit up front on the bench seat with mom and dad. Brother and sister in back, ha ha.
I laughed when I read this car was for “unimaginative people to drive to unimaginative destinations” – nailed it! Most Rambler/AMCs were pretty dull to drive as there seemed little thought given to chassis dynamics nor really nice interiors. Even the much later Concord/Eagle though improved quite a bit, was still very out of date.
They were pretty nice looking and cleanly-styled, however.
I really like the AMC products, regardless of their faults. My Grandpa must have had a soft spot for them as well, as he handed down both a 1965 Classic to my sister and a 1970 Hornet to my brother. I know he was of modest means, and not really a car nut, so these would have been a sensible choice for an older couple like Grandpa and Grandma. Function and price trumped style and performance. The price was good, but they were known for economical long term use as well. The cost to own, over time, was probably a bit less than a comparable Chevy, Ford, or Plymouth. And, with a dealer network that was about as good (at least here in Florida where I grew up), they made for a presumably logical choice for transportation. They were not “protest cars” at all. They were the cars for the people who never made waves. They were not a statement, they were just cars. At a time when people were still flocking to suburban tract homes, all alike with minimum options and about 1200 square feet, these cars fit the same bill. They just said ordinary, basic, and good enough for the job, and that was all a lot of people wanted.
This road test kind of reminds me of when a UK magazine, I believe it was “Autocar”, or maybe it was “The Motor”, tested another later AMC product, the Pacer. That article was titled: “We Test the Pacer… and Wish We Hadn’t!”.
The reason for the Motor’s damning criticism of the Pacer seems to be one of it’s hallmarks: the unevenly spaced doors. The passenger door was a few inches longer than the driver’s because it was thought the additional room would be handy for shopping. However, when AMC had to convert their English imports to right hand drive, this caused lots of problems in the typically crowded parking lots. AMC had no choice but to pull out of the UK market entirely after that little stunt.
As I vaguely recall (it was some 40 yrs ago after all) it went well beyond just the doors. More like the car was sluggish, ugly, evil handling, and poorly assembled…at least through British eyes…as well as mine! …ymmv.
I agree with JFrank – nobody that I ever met was making a protest by buying an American Motors car. They were being
frugaleconomical. I knew three people who owned Ramblers/American motors cars in the 60’s; all three were women do did not care at all about cars and simply wanted reliable transportation and were not people who traded cars. They drove them till they dropped.One was a widow who lived in our neighborhood, perhaps 60, who had a nice sky blue 64 or so Classic. It was a good car for her as she never pushed it beyond its humble limits; I doubt if she ever drove it more than 20 miles at a time and never faster than perhaps 50 miles per hour. In bad weather she stayed home. The second and third were college students who drove a Hornet and a Gremlin, somewhere around 1971 or 72. The Hornet I remember because we were dating, and one very rainy night I learned of the existence of vacuum operated windshield wipers when hers stopped working on an uphill stretch of road. My dad laughed when I told him later “Welcome to the 1930’s”. The girl with the Gremlin showed up one day driving it and pulled over and stopped to talk with me. I made the mistake of leaning my hand on the driver’s door panel, and it bowed in. Freaked out and not knowing what to say, I swung my palm at the lower part of the door panel, and it popped back into shape. Neither of us mentioned it then, and we never talked about it later, although perhaps that’s why I didn’t see much of her after that.
In any case, all of them were perfectly happy with their cars. The cars didn’t do much but the drivers didn’t need much and didn’t care at all.
As a kid growing up in the 70’s, AMC=Nerd….or maybe just weird. Probably not fair, but that is how I felt…here is why:
My Cub Scout leader was a very nice man…but stuttered uncontrollably and was about 300 lbs and always seemed to have mustard stains on his shirt. His son threw balls like a girl. He drove a Hornet wagon.
Mike, the stoned trombone player in Marching band…drove an American….with a back seat full of roaches (joints, not bugs) and an engine Oil light that spent more time on than off.
Lastly, Mr.Cartright, the pale mortician who lived across the street…a Rambler man.
Sounds like a good movie…or a bad nightmare !
These still used trunnion suspensions, and would continue to until 69 or 70(?) where they redesigned it for ball joints and a different shock layout(basically the Falcon design). I have never driven an AMC this old, but I have always been curious as to how much of a drawback that suspension layout had in its inherent old school design or simply it’s geometry(I assume that was also revised with the ball joint suspensions)? Lack of sway bar of course isn’t helping of course, but A!C was far from being alone on its lack of inclusion.
What I got out of this article is context as to why AMC has such a relatively low presence in the classic car community, even beyond just the inherent lower production from rivals, the sanctimonious big-three derision by George Romney really ruffled the feathers of the performance set. It’s one thing to be principled about what your product represents, but the product needs to back it up at the end of the day, and by 1963, with the big three well covered in this segment, it became clear the emperor was wearing no clothes afterall.
I really do like the article, it’s fair and upfront, acknowledging the great Dick Teague styling and low speed manners and addressing in detail the specific faults. This could have been a hatchet job but instead it thoroughly reviewed this car for a gearhead centered magazine, and probably diffused more prejudices with readers than it reenforced.
I didn’t know about the Aluminum engines. How were they, compared to the iron ones? Were the Al ones problematic like Vega engines, or roughly the same?
They were pretty awful, though part of the reason for that is that the antifreeze formulations of the early 1960s were not friendly to aluminum. Also most people were not very scrupulous about cooling system maintenance and many would run plain water in the summer. Corrosion was a big problem. Low coolant and overheating that an iron engine would tolerate meant catastrophic failure in these.
A die-cast engine block with siamesed cylinders and open deck was employed. (The first die-cast aluminum engine from a U.S. manufacturer.) Iron cylinder liners and an iron head were used.)
Most were replaced with cast iron engines in fairly short order.
http://amcrc.com/feature/alum_eng.html
Aluminum block with open deck? Not durable? Hmm, sounds familiar hint: Vega.
A few years later Road & Track magazine did a review of the base model 1967 American that was generally positive.
Unlike C&D they recognized the kind of buyer the car was targeted toward and the type of uses it would be put to without the condescension and snarkiness. Of course by that time at least the ancient 196-series engines were finally gone – through the 1965 model the base engine was still a flathead! There were no doubt other improvements but the Rambler American was still basically the same car from 1964-1969. (The Hornet and its derivatives were largely the same under the skin as well aside from finally getting full ball joint front suspension.)
The power steering in these, by the way, was GM-Saginaw, so the steering itself should not be much different than in the average Chevrolet of the time. If you want really numb steering it’s hard to beat Chrysler’s overboosted system which had about as much feel as the volume control on the radio.
And the guys of Industrias Kaiser Argengina(IKA who’ll be later acquired by Renault) saw the potential of the Rambler American to became the IKA-Renault Torino as MoparRocker74 mentionned in an earlier post.
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-american/cohort-classic-1971-ika-torino-ts-the-legendary-rambler-south-american/
In early 1967, AMC came very closed to insolvency, as the completely restyled Ambassador, Marlin and Rebel failed to catch on with customers. One response AMC made was to re-position the American as its “import fighter” that sold primarily on low price. Note that Road & Track tested a low-line two-door sedan.
The 1964 American tested by Car and Driver was the top-of-the-line 440 two-door hardtop. This model was clearly aimed at someone seeking a more upscale compact.
I would say that each magazine reviewed its respective American with the suggested target market in mind. As a no-frills car for people on a budget who simply wanted to get from Point A to Point B as cheaply as possible, the American worked.
As stylish transportation for people who expected something extra from their car – not so much.
That poor reception of the new 67 models has long been a bit of a mystery to me. They were very nicely styled cars. But competition was tough in that segment with some really good stuff from each of the Big 3. My recall is that these cars lost the “high quality feel” that had marked Ramblers of the earlier two generations. I guess I kind of understand, as even now I would probably choose a Mopar B body or a GM A body or a Fairlane/Comet over one.
The interiors of the 1967 models use more plastic than the previous models, and the assembly quality is below prior standards. The dashboards, in particular, look cheap and poorly assembled compared to prior models.
The mechanical bugs hadn’t been worked out of the cars, either. There is a photo in one of the buff magazines – either Motor Trend or Car Life – of gasoline spilling out of the filler pipe during testing of either a Rebel or Ambassador.
The styling of the 1967 Rebel and Ambassador is very handsome, but customers who placed a high priority on sharp styling most likely gravitated to one of the GM A-bodies. And the GM intermediates gave buyers standard electric windshield wipers (why AMC stuck with antiquated vacuum-powered windshield wipers as standard equipment through 1971 is still a mystery to me).
I had a ’67 Rebel (still badged a Rambler that year) for a while and while it was a nice-looking, comfortable car it definitely lacked the quality feel of the earlier Ramblers. It was also a pretty large vehicle coming from a company that years earlier railed against the “gas guzzling dinosaurs” and “trundling tanks” of its competitors.
You’re right that the dashboard looked very cheap compared to say a ’65-’66 Classic. It was not as bad though as the Hornet/Gremlin a few years later with its ill-fitting assemblage of plastic pieces. Those dashes looked practically home-made! I do remember Tom McCahill giving the Rebel a glowing review.
In the same Road & Track review of the ’67 American, they mentioned that they had also had the opportunity to drive a well-equipped Rogue (basically a high-end American 2-door) with 290 V8, power disc brakes, better interior, heavy-duty suspension, etc. and were favorably impressed with it. However the cost of the Rogue was about $3500 versus the American 220 at under $2000.
The only thing I can figure on the vacuum wipers is that AMC must have had a warehouse full of them to use up! Ditto with using upper trunnions through 1969.
If you have the rest of that article, I’d be interested in reading it.
We’re all prejudiced on cars we grew up with, but I think this review is a bit of a hatchet job. They seem to have decided to test the smallest engine available, not your usual car mag approach. And power steering???
My family’s mid-range 330 sedan had the 232 cu.in. 6, which was probably significantly more energetic than the car tested. At the time we had a summer cottage at the end of several miles of dirt road, and the Rambler was quite thrashable in that environment. Our other car at the time was a 65 Galaxie 500XL 2 door hardtop with the 390 engine. For a teenager the Galaxie was more impressive to be seen around town in, but the Rambler seemed a better handling car, more solid in construction, and more fun to drive on two lane highways than the large and very floaty Ford.
A fair number of Americans were ordered with the base engine and manual transmission. I was looking at a registry of surviving Ramblers compiled by an AMC club. I was surprised at how many 1964-65 Americans were equipped with the flathead six and manual transmission.
Also note that by 1964 AMC no longer had this market to itself. For example, the Plymouth Valiant and Dodge Dart had been greatly improved by 1964.
The Mopar compacts offered much better handling and braking, superior drivetrains and very attractive styling by 1964 (not to mention standard electric windshield wipers!). An American would have been a tough sale against a Valiant or Dart by this point.
By 1964, AMC was facing tough competition from the Big Three. Attractive design covering mediocre underpinnings was no longer enough, which was the basic point of this test.
In the late 1970s, I worked as summer help for the Kenosha County Park System. An older, semi-retired gent who worked with me, had worked in the suspension engineering department at AMC. (I don’t know what position he had, but he did have a very nice house that we could see from one of the parks.) He took the lead in finding places for us to hide our truck & ourselves so we didn’t have to do much work, only the barest minimum is what we did when he was on crew. If this is the way AMC’s suspension engineering department worked, I can see an element of how the poor performance happened. Proper funding matters, sure, but so does good leadership and able followership.
I normally don’t like snarky tone, but the brutal frankness of this article, written in the pre-ironic mid-’60s, makes this read seem almost comedic. I’m glad they at least gave Dick Teague his due for this car’s lovely styling.
The December 1963 issue of Motor Trend also had a road test of the then-new American. They essentially came to the same conclusions as did Car and Driver, just in a less-snarky way. The car that Motor Trend tested had manual steering, with 5 1/4 turns from lock to lock… that’s some pretty slow steering. In the summer of ’64 my parents bought a new American wagon, with a bright red interior, a drab white exterior and no power steering. Dad looked at a lot of different cars when they decided it was time to replace their 1960 Corvair, but I think the deciding factor in the purchase was his friendship with the local Rambler dealer. I personally derived endless amusement from the horizontal speedometer that went up to “12.” After all, that’s some interesting cost-cutting, leaving out the zeros. “Mom, speed up! you’ve only got it up to FOUR.” My most enduring memories of the car center on Mom’s habit of narrating as she drove as she wrestled with the aforementioned slow steering. “I’d better shift into Low for this hill… the pavement’s wet, better slow down…” That sort of thing.
The issue of Motor Trend that I’m referring to is a story in itself. I’m not a big collector of old magazines, but I recently bought this one because it had a cover story on a supercharged Studebaker Super Lark. That’s some interesting timing, since it would have been the last issue to hit the newsstands before Studebaker closed down the plant in South Bend. Boring old American Motors was riding high while Studebaker was struggling, but bringing out some pretty interesting cars in the process.
A scan of that 64 Super Lark road test would be a basis for a great piece here. Just sayin’. 🙂
Scanned and uploaded to the Cohort. 😉
I have that edition of Motor Trend here. One of the things they mention is the rubber bushings in the upper trunnion assembly. These caused a lot of front end problems as the cars aged. (In contrast the trunnions in the Classic and Ambassador would last just about forever as long as you kept them greased.)
Another thing they point out that is that while the brakes were nothing special performance-wise, Ramblers came with a dual master cylinder. (This was a Rambler feature starting in the 1962 model year.)
The test of the Studebaker “Super Lark” in the same issue is great. Amazing what Studebaker was able to do with its 1953-vintage chassis and supercharged V8!
Amazing indeed. The Sherwood Egbert era at Studebaker was a pretty interesting time.
Car & Drivers review of the American is CD at its snarky best, I think in response to George Romney’s anti-speed, anti-racing and anti-horsepower beliefs. I don’t know if Romney’s Mormon upbringing had anything to do with AMC’s products but he was constantly sermonizing against the Big 3s “dinosaurs”-he was all for “practical cars for practical people (or as CD used to say “dumb cars for dumb people). The problem is many people buy cars for the image they project-you simply have to look at Pontiac’s advertising in the 1960’s to see that. Romney saw cars as basically utilitarian vehicles for getting from point A to B and little else, so factors like handling, breaking, acceleration were not of prime concern to him.
Another factor was AMC’s advertising, in ’64-’65 their ad campaign was “The Sensible Spectaculars”-extoling practicality while criticising the Big 3 for their wasteful extravagances. This may have played well to their loyal customers, but to everyone else I think it was a complete turn off. The standard viewpoint of most people-correct or not-was that AMC vehicles were the choice of maiden aunts, librarians, book keepers and tightwads-not exactly the greatest demographic group.
And the thing is it’s just as easy to unravel the motives behind an ad campaign like “sensible spectaculars” as it is an ad campaign touting the virtues of wide tracks and ram airs.
This CD article pretty much dishes out the perfect counterpunch, sensible shouldn’t mean substandard and uncompetitive, it guides the reader into putting two and two together, that sensible really means Rambler doesn’t have the resourses to compete against the big three, and therefore AMC would like to project the notion that they shouldn’t be held to the standard of their peers, because they’re supposedly in it for less noble reasons. But are they? If you’re making a product that is substandard and trying to convince them “it’s ok, because you’re so sensible”, it’s just as much of a deception in the end as the big three selling an otherwise perfectly competitive car on the notion “it’ll get you chicks!” Both used marketing to play into vanity.
By the time, “The Sensible Spectaculars” arrived. It was Roy Abernathy who was at the wheels of AMC and when he arrived he once said “Get rid of that Romney image” but the way he did and some of his moves like deciding to do the Tarpon as the Marlin almost bring AMC close to bankruptcy in 1967.
http://www.javelinamx.com/javhome/basics/prototypes.htm
I love classics and do have my collection. I was Never an AMC fan but recently I purchased 81 AMC Concord coupe DL blue exterior with blue cloth interior got 49K original miles has 2.5 Iron Duke auto Factory AC , Factory Am/Fm , Rear defrost , crank windows just beautiful AMC from past I paid $6,500 for it Not for sale just sharing passion for classics !
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My first car in 1969 was an ’64 Ambassador GT. Equipped with a 327 cu in Packard Marine 4bbl and 3.27:1 posi, very stiff springs and sway bars. I paid $450 bucks for it, it came with a 3 speed torqflite tranny, reclining bucket seats and a slapshift.
Being poor, my mods were limited to head work, a junkyard Holley, and a rebuilt distributor. I fabricated a 2 1/4″ dual exhaust, no mufflers. It was faster than my buddy’s 1966 Mustang 289 4bbl 4 speed. The drum brakes were dreadful.
But he couldn’t stay with me, nothing else much mattered.