Would American Motors have continued to be successful in the second-half of the 1960s if George Romney had stuck around? He stepped down as CEO in 1962 to successfully run for governor of Michigan.
This is an intriguing question because Romney was one of the best U.S. auto executives of the post-war era. His stubbornly unorthodox strategy resulted in AMC achieving record-breaking sales for an independent U.S. carmaker. This was a huge achievement given how hotly competitive the U.S. market was in the early-60s.
In addition, after Romney left, AMC declined to the point where it was eventually taken over by the French automaker Renault. Was a major factor in this trajectory the rejection of Romney’s basic strategy by his successors? Or was AMC’s fall inevitable given intensifying competition and costly new government regulations?
How you answer that question can heavily depend on your basic assumptions about the postwar auto industry. Thus, we will get into the details of how Romney might have proceeded while also discussing how groupthink can color American automotive history.
Romney deviated from Detroit’s norms in three ways
Let’s start by offering an overview of what Romney’s strategy could have looked like. We obviously must make some guesses, but Romney was consistent enough in his approach as CEO from 1954-62 that we can extrapolate a plausible scenario for the rest of the 1960s. Three principles dominated his tenure at AMC:
- Maximizing economies of scale with an unusually narrow range of passenger cars that were not substantially redesigned as often as Big Three competition.
- Focusing on compact and mid-sized cars that emphasized unusually efficient design and superior quality of assembly rather than frequent styling changes, ever-larger dimensions and big-block engines.
- Avoiding mergers and major foreign holdings.
Romney summed up his basic approach in an interview with Collectible Automobile magazine. He assumed that AMC’s best hope for survival was a lineup of slow-changing cars which emphasized quality, reliability and value. Romney suggested that the new-for-1963 senior Ramblers embodied this approach:
“If you’ll take a look at it, you’ll see that the styling was really very simple. The concept was that style was no longer a major factor with people who were basically interested in a good, dependable piece of transportation — one that still looked good, along the lines of a Mercedes-Benz (Foster, 1993, p. 98).
Romney was prescient in seeing why imports would do increasingly well in the late-60s and 1970s against style-focused Detroit fare. However, he also focused on practical cars under the theory that AMC could build them for longer periods of time without expensive redesigns. This would help counterbalance the enormous disadvantages an independent automaker faced when it came to economies of scale.
Romney’s successors rejected his approach
These principles suggest that Romney was strikingly different from almost all other postwar leaders of independent automakers. For example, his predecessor George Mason was an early champion of mega-merger ideas and in the early-50s developed a sprawling lineup that treated the compact Rambler as an auxiliary to big cars.
Romney’s successors had much more in common with Mason’s approach than his own. Roy Abernethy, who led AMC from 1962-67, attempted to compete more directly against the Big Three with a broad and frequently restyled lineup. Roy D. Chapin Jr., who ran the company for the next decade, also developed a sprawling passenger-car lineup that paid even less attention to economies of scale. Just as significantly, he bought Jeep, which significantly expanded AMC’s foreign presence, manufacturing footprint . . . and fixed costs.
Abernethy’s and Chapin’s basic strategies were much closer to those used by the Big Three than Romney’s. In a very real sense, the Romney era represented a rejection of the standard way of running a U.S. automaker. Abernethy and Chapin represented a return to business as usual in most respects.
Could Romney have maintained a narrow lineup?
If Romney had held to his three principles, one of the biggest questions he would have faced was how to respond a massive product-proliferation spree by the Big Three. Whereas General Motors, Ford and Chrysler only offered one basic size of car in the late-50s, a decade later they would offer three — full-sized, mid-sized and compact. By the early-70s GM and Ford would add subcompact cars to compete more directly against entry-level imports. In addition, U.S. automakers increasingly augmented their family cars with niche vehicles such as personal coupes.
Adding a new platform — or even a uniquely styled body based upon an existing platform — was far more costly than merely offering trim or body-style variations. GM and Ford found it easiest to offer such a broad lineup because they could spread their costs across higher volume. That was not the case for AMC, whose entire production in the late-60s often wasn’t as high as a single GM nameplate, such as the Chevrolet Chevelle.
Also see ‘Patrick Foster’s George Romney bio is rose-tinted but valuable’
In the late-50s and early-60s Romney increased AMC’s economies of scale by offering an unusually lean lineup. The Rambler had only two platforms, both of which were kept in production an usually long time for passenger cars of that era. In addition, AMC didn’t offer the usual range of body styles. Rambler was the only U.S. brand that did not field a two-door hardtop for six years and a convertible for five. And when they were finally reintroduced, they were offered sparingly. Until Abernethy took over, only the American got a hardtop and convertible; Rambler’s top-selling Classic was only available as a sedan or wagon.
Could Romney have maintained such a lean lineup through the 1960s without unduly constraining sales? A lot depended on whether he could maintain relatively high volume for core models such as the Classic.
Could Romney have appealed to the ‘youth market?’
Abernethy’s first big attempt at a sporty coupe aimed at a younger demographic was the ill-fated 1965-67 Marlin. Although it sold poorly, at least the car was merely a senior Rambler with a fastback roofline. His second attempt was more ambitious — the Javelin. This direct competitor to the Mustang had unique sheetmetal and a basic body that was not shared with any other AMC. Although the car initially sold well, it likely didn’t earn a profit over its life cycle. That was no small thing in light of AMC’s small size and fragile finances.
Given Romney’s penny-pinching predilections, he likely would have not gone beyond offering a variant of an existing car. Perhaps, like the Marlin, it would have had a unique greenhouse and some sheetmetal differences such as a new fascia and taillights. With the right styling and market position that could have worked.
Also see ‘1965-66 AMC Marlin: How to fix beginner’s mistakes’
However, it is also possible that sportiness was alien enough to Romney that his early efforts would have been as unsuccessful as Abernethy’s. The “sportiest” car Romney had offered during his tenure as CEO was the 1957 Rambler Rebel, a low-volume one-year wonder that was essentially a four-door compact with a big-block engine.
Romney would likely have eschewed his successors’ efforts to join horsepower race, particularly by increasing the size of AMC’s largest V8 engine from 343 cubic inches to 390 and ultimately 401. It is also hard to see him offering any boy racers such as the outrageous 1970 Rebel Machine.
All this doesn’t mean that Romney couldn’t have offered some appealing sporty cars. The IKA-Renault Torino showed how the stodgy American could be transformed into a decent grand touring coupe. By the same token, a better-tuned and styled American coupe could have made a fine entry-level sporty car that appealed to people who wanted a cross between a U.S. compact and an import.
Also see ‘Rambler pays price for not listening to Car and Driver magazine’
Note that the “youth market” didn’t necessarily mean “sporty” — at least as Detroit automakers defined it. The Volkswagen Beetle and microbus were fairly utilitarian but nevertheless developed a cult following among the young. AMC might have better appealed to this crowd if it adopted more international design features that made its cars fun to drive rather than dull as dishwater.
Senior Ramblers would not have mushroomed in size
One thing we can say with a fair amount of certainty is that Romney would not have significantly upsized the senior Ramblers like his successors did. This is not because he was dogmatic about only producing compacts. From 1958-61 the top-of-line Ambassador was offered on a 117-inch wheelbase, which made it almost as long as the full-sized cars of that era.
Even so, Romney would likely have not approved of the 1969 Ambassador being stretched to a 122-inch wheelbase and marketed as a full-sized car, as Chapin did. Indeed, it was unlikely that the nameplate would have been placed on even a stretched 116-inch wheelbase, as Abernethy did for 1965-66.
A key reason why was economies of scale. After the early Rambler Ambassadors sold poorly, Romney decided that the nameplate was not going to generate sufficient sales to justify the added costs of giving it a longer front end. Thus, the 1962 Ambassador was downgraded to a trim variant of the Classic.
I suspect that he also would have maintained the Classic’s general size through the 1960s. The 1963-64 models were only 190 inches long, which was akin to a typical compact. However, the Classic was also 74 inches wide, which gave it shoulder and hip room comparable to mid-sized cars. Where the Classic came up a bit short was in rear leg room and trunk space.
This helps explain why Abernethy’s 1967 redesign added two inches of wheelbase in the back seat and a taller, boxier deck for more trunk room. I could see Romney taking those steps, but without increasing the car’s width and length for stylistic reasons. A late-60s senior Rambler would thus have been quite roomy but much smaller and lighter than Big Three mid-sized cars. And you can bet that Romney would have emphasized that in marketing.
The 1964 Rambler American might have been smaller
One of the biggest wildcards of Romney staying at AMC was how the American would have been redesigned for 1964. Among the design proposals was a car that was narrower by around and inch and shorter by four inches than the American which reached production (Foster, 1993; p. 92).
In theory, that could have put AMC in the best position of the U.S. automakers to respond to rising import sales. In practice, it is unclear as to whether the American’s smaller size would have translated into better fuel economy than more traditionally sized compacts. Abernethy’s American turned out to be relatively heavy, perhaps partly because it shared some components with the senior Ramblers. The 1964 American weighed around 130 pounds more than a comparable Ford Falcon.
Also see ‘Lee Iacocca got lucky with the 1964-66 Ford Mustang’
Another ramification of downsizing the American was that it might not have fit even AMC’s new small-block V8 engine. The only other U.S. car that did not offer a V8 in the second half of the 1960s was the moribund Chevrolet Corvair. Would the lack of a V8 have turned out to be a fatal flaw or an advantage in positioning the American as an import fighter?
Quality control would not have declined
One of Romney’s biggest goals in the early-60s was to improve the Rambler’s quality of manufacture. I suspect that this was one reason why the brand managed to maintain its popularity in the face of an armada of newer and more stylish compacts from the Big Three.
Consumer Reports (1963) complained that the 1963 senior Ramblers were not assembled with their “usual high standards.” This might be understandable given an all-new design in its first year of production. The problem was that under Abernethy, quality control never bounced back. Indeed, the new-for-1967 senior models were riddled with quality-control problems. This undoubtedly hurt AMC’s reputation.
Also see ‘How American Motors abandoned its uniqueness in the second half of the 1960s’
If Romney had stayed, he likely would have maintained his focus on manufacturing quality. I suspect that this would have been a major selling point for AMC cars given soaring sales of imported cars. They were often viewed as put together better than U.S. cars.
The Rambler name wouldn’t have been ditched
One of the most obvious signs that Romney’s successors didn’t think much of his basic strategy was their phasing out the Rambler brand name. Abernethy began this process because he apparently thought the Rambler’s economy-car image was getting in the way of moving upmarket, particularly with the Ambassador and Marlin. Chapin seemed more concerned about giving AMC a more trendy and youthful vibe. Thus, when the compact Rambler was redesigned in 1970, it was renamed the Hornet.
Also see ‘Was the ‘Ford blitz’ to blame for the collapse of independent automakers?’
If Romney had stayed longer at AMC I could see him trying to update the Rambler’s image rather than killing off the name. This is partly because he had worked hard to build up the brand, so was personally invested in it. However, he also might have had a practical reason that has gone largely unmentioned in automotive histories: Changing a brand name is difficult, particularly for a small automaker with limited resources. In the 1950s Romney had gone through the process of discontinuing the Nash and Hudson brand names in favor of the Rambler. Why throw away all of the hard-won brand equity?
The big question is whether the Rambler’s image would have been stronger under Romney than his successors. So much would have depended upon whether AMC offered cars that were viewed as competent import fighters rather than frumpy econo-boxes for old ladies. In the Romney quote shown earlier in this story, his mentioning that the 1963 Rambler looked like a Mercedes-Benz suggests that he might have understood what needed to be done.
Okay, so would Romney have been a net plus for AMC?
We should start by acknowledging the obvious: A longer tenure does not necessarily translate into continued success. A case in point is Lynn Townsend, who did a pretty good job of leading Chrysler in the 1960s but utterly flopped in the 1970s. All executives have a shelf life.
A big reason why Townsend ultimately failed was arrogance. He let his earlier success go to his head. Romney was not immune from this affliction. The failure of the 1961 Ambassador was partly a product of him overestimating AMC’s ability to make inroads in the full-sized car field with a gussied up compact. That said, Romney did learn from his mistake.
What can be said with confidence is that Romney would have challenged Detroit groupthink in more substantive and ongoing ways than Abernethy or Chapin. That could have translated into more solid AMC sales — at least if the success of the imports vis a vis AMC in the late-60s and early-70s was any indication.
The graph below shows total U.S. car and truck market share for independents and foreign automakers. By the mid-60s AMC made up the bulk of sales from the remaining independents, so this graph gives a useful sense of why Romney was correct to be so focused on better competing against the imports.
Could he have succeeded in that goal? I am hedging my bets because the devil is in the details. For example, the redesigned 1964 American could have been nicely sized but failed to offer much of a fuel-economy advantage over larger cars. Or it could have been dog ugly.
By the same token, Romney could have been even more flat-footed than Abernethy in trying to appeal to the youth market, such as by not doing enough to upgrade the roadworthiness of Ramblers. Here again the record is mixed. Romney stuck with old technology such as suspension trunnions too long, but he also made continuous improvements in the 1956-62 Rambler’s handling.
So would Romney have been a net plus for AMC if he had stayed through the rest of the 1960s? I suspect so. This is partly because his successors made so many basic mistakes, but also because Romney displayed a greater understanding of the import threat than any other U.S. auto executive of that time.
NOTES:
Product specifications and production figures are from Gunnell (2002) and the auto editors of Consumer Guide (1993, 2006). Market share figures are from Wards Auto (2017).
Share your reactions to this post with a comment below or a note to the editor.
RE:SOURCES
- Auto editors of Consumer Guide; 1993, 2006. Encyclopedia of American Cars. Publications International, Lincolnwood, IL.
- Consumer Reports; 1963. “Intermediate Sixes.” April issue: p. 177.
- Gunnell, John; 2002. Standard Catalog of American Cars, 1946-1975. Revised Fourth Ed. Krause Publications, Iola, WI.
- Foster, Patrick R.; 1993. American Motors: The Last Independent. Krause Publications, Iola, WI.
- Wards Auto; 2017. “U.S. Total Vehicle Sales Market Share by Company.”
ADVERTISEMENTS & BROCHURES:
- wildaboutcarsonline.com (Automotive History Preservation Society): Rambler (1962, 1965); AMC racing (1972)
- Marlin Auto Club: 1964 Rambler Tarpon concept car
- oldcaradvertising.com: Rambler (1956)
- oldcarbrochures.org: AMC Hornet (1973); AMC Marlin (1967); AMC Matador (1978); AMC Rambler (1969); Ford Granada (1976); Rambler Ambassador (1962, 1963); Rambler Classic (1963, 1965, 1967); Rambler Rebel (1967)
Good abd thoughtful piece, Steve. I would be very curious to see your renderings of a better proportioned Tarpon and the facelifted ’67 you discuss in the post.
CJ, a while back I made the mistake of upgrading my computer’s operating system, only to find that it ruled obsolete the Photoshop program I use to make fake car designs. Adobe has jacked up the cost to the point where I can’t justify buying the newest version of the software until I generate sufficient revenue from Indie Auto to cover its costs.
One option would be to start running “real” ads, but I don’t want to get on that treadmill. My goal has instead been to build up Indie Auto’s donor base and, if that doesn’t prove sufficient to cover the website’s basic costs, to put up a partial paywall.
Thus far I have focused on building readership. I’m not sure it is the right time to begin putting more of an emphasis on fundraising. This is a long way of telling you why there haven’t been any fake car designs posted lately.
I wonder if alternatives to Adobe like Gimp or others online editors like Pixlr might fit the void left by your Photoshop program?
Stephane, that’s a good point. I just haven’t gotten around to doing the research. I’d need a program that worked with a Mac, which hopefully won’t limit the choices. Frankly, I’d rather stick with Photoshop because it does what I need it to do and I know my way around it, but Adobe seems determined to price gouge — and not just with that program. The state agency where I used to work before I retired stopped using Adobe Acrobat because it had gotten too expensive as well.
I’m so sorry about that Steve, your “fake” car designs are great. Nevertheless, your writings on AMC have also been great and a real revelation about how there are no small egos at small car companies.
On the prospect of the 1964 Rambler American being shorter by 4-inches and width by 3-inches compared to what reached production, fitting an AMC V8 should not be too much of a challenge depending on its size and weight relative to the Ford Windsor V8 and SBC V8.
The Ford Windsor has been fitted to South African versions of the Ford Capri Perana and Ford Granada Perana by Basil Green Motors as well as the Ford Sierra XR8, while the SBC was used in the Chevrolet Firenza Can-Am.
Right. Here in the U.S. Chevrolet managed to stuff a V8 in the fairly narrow Vega-based Monza. I would think that whether a V8 would have fit in the American would have come down to the specifics of its design. I was surprised that the 1964 American wasn’t engineered to fit AMC’s existing V8. In theory it should have fit because the car was almost the same width as the previous-generation Rambler Classic. And as mentioned here, some dealers succeeded in installing the old 287 V8 into the American. So the newer-generation 290 V8 might plausibly have fit into an even narrower American.
To me the meta question is whether a V8 option would have blurred the American’s image as an import fighter.
It would depend on what the European benchmark for this downsized Rambler American was as well as what else AMC had in the cupboard as far as smaller engines were concerned in place of the AMC Straight-Six and later Straight-Four engines.
In the case of the latter do they do anything differently but brought forward a lot earlier compared to real-life, provided they can afford it or do they buy in from another company that is linked to them in some way?
As it is this what-if Rambler American would appear to roughly slot into the D/E-Segment categories, with potential to form the basis of a smaller C/D-Segment model.
The V8 option would cater to those looking to downsize without having to give up their love of the V8 as well as more performance originated customers, a related 90-degree V6 in the manner of the Chrysler LA would allow AMC to move away from the Straight-Six in their quest to downsize their range without eventually becoming a handicap.
AMC came out with a brand-new six-cylinder engine in 1964. My guess is that Romney had a major influence on the engine because of its emphasis on durability (e.g., use of seven main bearings).
If Romney had stayed longer, might he have chopped the six into a four-cylinder engine? The relatively low sales of the Chevy II’s four was not cause for optimism, but it is also hard to imagine GM and its dealers giving the engine much emphasis as the horsepower wars heated up in the mid-60s. In addition, if Romney had offered the American in a four, that could have solidified the nameplate’s reputation as an import fighter even if most buyers ultimately went with a six.
Note that Abernethy went in the opposite direction by making the American compete price-wise directly against the Big Three. Sales declined until Chapin came in and slashed prices. By 1968-69 I would think that a four-cylinder variant would have further boosted sales.
A V8 option could have appealed to the same type of boy racers who went for the V8 in the Gremlin. Aside from straight-line performance, the Gremlin V8 wasn’t a terribly good car because it was too nose heavy. However, such an engine might have made practical sense in an American wagon, where weight distribution wasn’t quite as big of a problem and towing capacity was potentially relevant.
Could the AMC Straight-6 have been further reduced to below 3-litres if required, with a related Straight-4 in turn reaching displacements as low as say the Argentinian and South African versions of the Chevrolet 153 4-cylinder engine that were reduced to 110 (e.g. 109.7) and 120 (e.g. 119.6) cubic inches respectively (although the 110 4-cylinder was by way of the 194 6-cylinder)?
IMO, the independents were doomed anyway. Romney bought AMC time by running it not so much as a big 3 company, but a division of such a company, with its own niche in the corporate heirarchy. This worked fine until the various divisions became all things to all people. Look at Chevy in 1966. You could get everything from a Corvair to a Caprice, with everything in between. I’m not that familiar with Mercedes in the 60s, but I’m pretty sure they came with three platforms plus a sports car. A second question-Could you afford Japanese quality on American wages?
Kim, you’ve nicely summed up the dominant perspective. I would offer that VW did perfectly fine in the U.S. with a narrow product niche in the 1960s. So did Honda in the 1970s and first half of the 1980s. I don’t know if Mercedes makes such a good apples-to-apples comparison with AMC because — at least from the incomplete data I have been able to find — it tended to have higher global volume, and competed in more profitable and less vulnerable product niches.
Not sure what you mean about affording Japanese quality — AMC under Romney had already offered a higher level of manufacturing quality than was typical of popularly priced Big Three cars of the early-60s.
You are right. VW had a narrow product niche. However, except for a couple of also rans like Renault and FIAT they had no real competition in their market sector. AMC was superior to the big three in quality, but that wasn’t a very high bar. From what I can remember, the Asian cars weren’t a serious factor until after Romney’s tenure. I was a kid in Green Bay at that time, and the only Japanese vehicles I saw were a few Land Cruisers, which were more like CJ-5s than the SUV/wagon of today. They were well thought of fit and finish and initial quality, but the Japanese simply did not understand the abuse US drivers dished out to their cars, nor the copious amounts of road salt in winter. They were good while they lasted, which wasn’t long.
It’s true that VW didn’t have a huge amount of competition in the early-60s, but it ramped up by the end of the decade. Even so, for 1968 VW sold more than 582,000 units in the U.S. That was around twice as high as AMC even though VW fielded a much narrower product range — all based on one basic chassis. Of course, within a decade VW would start to copy its bigger competitors by offering a larger range of vehicles, but then Honda tried the lean approach. That brand sold quite well in the U.S. despite its relatively small number of entries.
In time Honda would also start to play follow the leader by adding the Acura brand. I’d argue that in the long run Acura would prove to be a net minus for Honda, but that’s another debate.
I don’t really know how to compare the “quality” of the early-60s Rambler to the imports. In a way that doesn’t matter. Consumer Reports lauded Rambler for its superior “fit and finish” compared to other U.S. cars. That undoubtedly helped Romney reinforce the idea that the Rambler offered something distinctly different from standard Detroit fare. If he had stayed, I suspect he would have placed even more emphasis on quality of assembly. Unlike Abernethy, he wasn’t trying to sell his cars primarily on styling and image.
Would it have worked? I suspect so. Whatever else one can say about the caliber of 1960s imports, it was quite clear that the public was hungry for something different. That didn’t change in the 1970s despite Detroit’s entrance into the subcompact field.