Curbside Classic commentator Chris Cieslak (2021) noted that American Motors toyed with the idea of hiring John Z. DeLorean after he left General Motors. I haven’t read enough to write intelligently about why a potential deal fell through, but this does bring up an interesting “what if?” question: Could DeLorean have made much of a positive difference at AMC?
DeLorean’s last day at GM was April 19, 1973 (The Detroit News, 2008). Even if he had become chief executive officer of American Motors fairly soon after that, he would not have been able to stop the ill-fated 1974 Matador. However, he could have plausibly had an impact on the Pacer, which didn’t come out until after the 1975 model year began.
By the early-70s AMC management was so incompetent that it is hard to envision DeLorean making things any worse. For example, just by virtue of being an outsider, DeLorean might have been able to see through the delusional thinking that led to the Pacer’s failure (go here for further discussion).
Would AMC’s size have been too small for DeLorean?
That said, DeLorean would have brought his own baggage with him, which included an increasingly inflated sense of self importance. In addition, his reported penchant for unethical practices could have undercut whatever good he tried to do at AMC (Pappademas, 2018).
However, the biggest potential danger of DeLorean leading AMC could have been that he was used to working at GM — then the world’s largest corporation. It’s no wonder that he had trouble staying within the comparatively meager budget of his own company. Why wouldn’t he have had the same budget-busting tendencies at tiny American Motors?
Also see ‘1981-82 DeLorean illustrates Detroit’s failure to understand the rise of imports’
Of course, AMC would have presumably had more institutional checks and balances on DeLorean than at his own fledgling company. This could have turned him into a reasonably functional executive, in much the same way that GM’s bureaucracy reined him in. Or it could have led to an early departure due to an irreconcilable culture clash.
If DeLorean took over AMC with the goal of introducing a high-priced sports car, I don’t see that as ending well. How could he have made the numbers pencil out any better than they did with the AMX/3 mid-engined sports car, which the automaker had wisely decided not produce?
Might DeLorean have offered a poor-man’s BMW?
Perhaps DeLorean’s best bet would have been to focus AMC’s limited resources on fielding a line of rear-wheel-drive compacts with internationally competitive road manners. A poor man’s BMW of sorts. This was technically doable but DeLorean would have had to move quickly — and make few mistakes along the way.
My guess is that his ego — and greed — would have gotten in the way of him being successful at AMC. Even so, DeLorean might have still left the automaker in better shape than CEO Roy D. Chapin Jr. did when he retired in 1977.
Share your reactions to this post with a comment below or a note to the editor.
RE:SOURCES
- Cieslak, Chris; 2021. Commentator in “CC Cinema: Framing John DeLorean – A Mini Review.” Curbside Classic. Posted 11:29 a.m., July 15.
- Pappademas, Alex; 2018. “Demon Underneath: John DeLorean and the Invention of the Future.” The Outline. Posted December 11.
- The Detroit News; 2008. “The rise and fall of John DeLorean, dashing, maverick automaker.” Posted Aug. 16.
Towards the goal of transforming AMC into a poor-mans US equivalent of BMW, could see DeLorean looking to recruit the likes of Giugiaro and Lotus similar to real-life or establish ties with company (e.g. Renault, British Leyland, etc).
What would be fascinating is an AMC under DeLorean playing hardball with his former employer or outright refusing GM’s offer to buy back the tooling and manufacturing for the Buick V6 line from AMC. Perhaps he could have switched the situation to further benefit AMC than was originally the case when they accepted GM’s offer for what they deemed a worthless engine?
The Buick V-6 engine was nothing to write home about in 1975. It was a rough-running engine that wasn’t very durable. A friend had one grenade at about 80,000 miles in his 1982 Cutlass Supreme, and was told by his mechanic that this happened regularly with that engine.
The reliable, smooth, peppy, economical 3800 V-6 didn’t come about until the late 1980s, after GM had spent a lot of money to improve it.
Did not know it took both the 1977 and 1988 updates to resolve most of the niggles in the Buick V6.
Had the turbocharged version of the Buick V6 in mind, on top of a highly secret experimental diesel version of the 3.8 Buick V6 by the GM technical centre in Detriot using Ricardo Comet Mk 5 combustion chamber (as mentioned in the following link on page 6). Which is fascinating considering the distantly related 215 Buick/Rover V8 would form the basis of Project Iceberg, a BL-Perkins project to develop a 100 hp NA diesel and 125-150 hp turbodiesel version of the 215 V8.
http://www.melbournesteam.com.au/pictures/backissues/SSOct17.pdf
In my historical novel, “The Last Gasp: How John DeLorean Blew Up American Motors”, the story begins when AMC secretly hires John Z in early June of 1973 to become the corporation’s new CEO. Several AMC executives and Board members were unhappy with the amount of money spent to bring the upcoming new Matador coupe to market and they wanted to ensure that the next big money project, the Pacer, was cancelled before it could be developed any further. Their feeling was that DeLorean had great car sense and that he was the right man for the job.
One of John Z’s first major decisions, after killing off the Pacer, and despite protests from AMC’s chief designer, Richard Teague, was to immediately order a drastic reworking of the “Bastard-or” coupe, as DeLorean unflatteringly referred to Teague’s radically styled 1974 Matador 2-door. The redesign was to debut for MY1976.
The restyled Matador hit the showroom floor with a thud as it arrived too late to properly cash in on the mid-size personal luxury trend that GM, Ford and Chrysler had already exploited so profitably. The revised, formal roofline and new rear deck were surprisingly well done but the 76 Matador coupe was a big money loser and was considered a major failure for DeLorean. It would not be DeLorean’s last one at AMC.
To no one’s surprise, John Z pushed to revive the AMX/3 into production early in his tenure as CEO, even though it meant fawning over Teague and doing everything he could to be forgiven for reworking Teague’s beloved Matador coupe. Together, DeLorean and Teague were able to convince the BoD to give the AMX/3 the green light for 1978. Delorean had other plans though, hoping he could rush the car into production for a mid-to-late 1976 intro.
Teague argued the AMX/3 would have to wait in order to be properly federalized and also for a proposal to have the car use GM’s upcoming turbocharged V6 motor. Teague even suggested AMC purchase non-turbo V6s for AMC’s planned reboot of the Hornet compact (which eventually became the 1978 Concord). While fully understanding the irony of his desire for the once AMC-owned powerplant, Teague ran afoul of DeLorean over this. The engine had been sold back to GM in 1974 and DeLorean was said to have told one AMC exec he was only too happy to “sell them back their piece of s**t engine.” John Z wanted nothing to do with GM and purportedly told Teague in no uncertain terms exactly what he could do with his V6 purchase plans. Furthermore, DeLorean wanted to put AMC’s 360 V8 into the AMX/3, which he had not so secretly begun calling the AMZ/1.
Things came to a head at the end of 1976. DeLorean nixed Teague’s request for talks with GM to purchase V6 engines and then he fired him!
DeLorean told AMC’s BoD that the V6 was a bad engine and that buying it would be a costly mistake. He also blamed Teague for the ’76 Matador’s poor sales and strongly implied that Teague actively campaigned against the AMZ/1 after Delorean had proposed the name change.
Publicly, Teague “resigned” from AMC and it was all amicable as far as anyone knew at the time, but privately, DeLorean was seething. He had charmed the financiers into giving him, not AMC, the funds necessary to dramatically restyle the Matador coupe and to produce the AMZ/1. With Teague gone (he quietly went to work for Mitsubishi in March of 1977), the AMZ/1 ended up DOA. No one at AMC could see the sense in it any longer and with Teague now out of the picture, AMC was about to take its last gasp.
Of course, this is ENTIRELY a work of fiction, but OMG, the possible scenarios are exciting and endless! What if DeLorean had become CEO of AMC and not only turned the company around, but surpassed Chrysler to become part of The Big 3?! What would that story entail?
Very funny. The irony is that a federalized AMX/3 might have been a more competent sports car than what DeLorean came up with.
Steve, this was something I had never heard of before, so thank you for shining a light on it and for giving me the inspiration to write my scenario, it was great fun. Despite DeLorean’s enormous ego unfavourably altering the course of his later life, I admit to a bit of a soft spot for him. I think his contributions to automotive history while at GM are a little overshadowed by the car made famous only because of a movie.
Had DeLorean become CEO of American Motors, might he have done what Iacocca failed to do, which was to create a line of profitable sporty compact AWD cars, becoming the American Subaru?
I hope your piece inspires other readers to create their own speculative DeLorean American Motors Corp (DAMC) scenarios!
I try to approach DeLorean with caution. He was a talented auto executive in his earlier years but also seemed to have major psychological issues, such as a personality disorder. Those kind of people can be dangerous when they get into positions power. If what has been written about him is true, DeLorean should have considered himself lucky that GM merely asked for his resignation.
Counterfactuals can be viewed as little more than a party game. However, they can be a useful tool for serious historical analysis. The act of thinking through alternative scenarios can help us see when our historical assumptions may be off base. Counterfactuals can also push back against the tendency to view historical events as inevitable when they may have been pretty contingent.
Even when the discussion gets overly blue sky, I think there’s some value to it. In those instances at least people are engaging auto history in an active way rather than the usual approach of treating old cars like flowers in a garden. Oh, isn’t that pretty. Not that one shouldn’t admire an old car — just that it’s a rather passive activity.
With the amount of fascinating information and speculation you’ve provided on Indie Auto, on AMC alone, you could write a historical fiction novel, Steve and start a whole new genre.
I agree with what you said about DeLorean, also. Far too many people in his position believed that they could out-think and out-manoeuvre those around them. We often attribute it to ego but perhaps, like John Z, others suffered from real mental illnesses, which would neither have been diagnosed, much less speculated on, back in the day.
Regarding counterfactuals, do you think it would have been a game-changer for AMC had they not sold the V6 back to GM and then went on to develop and refine it for future use in their passenger cars and Jeeps?
I don’t have the talent to be a fiction writer, so perhaps someone else will pick up on your idea. How about you?
Regarding the Buick V6, perhaps it would help to walk through the logic chain that AMC might have used.
1) They were too small of an automaker to build more than one type of six, so they needed to pick one after buying Jeep.
2) Their straight six had a number of potential advantages, including:
— It was already used in all AMC passenger cars, so it would cost less to discontinue the V6.
— The straight six was a fairly modern engine with a good reputation for reliability. It also arguably ran smoother than the V6.
— AMC might have been still paying off the cost of the straight six’s development.
— At that point in time the advantages of a V6 may not have mattered to AMC engineers.
— The Buick-originated V6 wasn’t exactly a paragon of great engineering.
If AMC had switched its passenger cars to front-wheel drive in the mid-to-late-70s, the V6 could have been appealing. Romney might have moved in that direction if he had stayed. However, it would have been more affordable for AMC to work with the technology that they already had for as long as possible. So sticking with the straight six and rear-wheel drive was the path of least resistance.
Thanks for your insight, Steve. No sooner did I send my previous reply then I thought to add that it was too bad AMC & GM could not have worked out a cooperative deal to jointly build/develop the V6 further, so both companies could use it as they saw fit. That could have helped American Motors foresee a front-drive future for themselves.
Finally, I strongly feel Iacocca missed the boat with AMC as he could have developed the Eagle brand into something akin to what KIA is to Hyundai. But then that’s speculative fiction of another kind for another day.
Again, thanks for the inspiration and for doing such great work here on Indie Auto, Steve.
The man AMC should have hired was Semon E. (Bunkie) knuesen, whom was more corporate than DeLorean.
Bunkie Knudsen (sp?) went on to be CEO of White Motor after a stint at Ford. How did that work out?
Good question, Alex. I did a quick Google search and an Automotive News obituary for Knudsen said this:
“In 1971, Bunkie became chairman of White Motor Corp., a maker of heavy-duty trucks and agricultural and construction vehicles. He pulled the company from a sorry financial position to that of a profit maker in eight years. Knudsen retired from White in 1980. Soon afterward the company went bankrupt” (Crain, 2003).
Also, here’s a 1982 New York Times article (Friedman, 1982) that talks about White’s decline during the second half of the 1970s.
I’m not so sure DeLorean would have succeeded at AMC. He certainly wasn’t used to working at a company where cash was perpetually short. At GM he had to operate under financial constraints, but those had been imposed by the accountants. It wasn’t because there was any actual shortage of development funds.
If he had come to AMC shortly after leaving GM, he would have arrived just as the 1974 Matador was arriving at the dealers. I’m not sure if even he had enough talent to turn that sow’s ear into a silk purse. While the market didn’t need another Monte Carlo clone, intermediate-size fastbacks were DOA by 1975. The attractive 1978-79 Dodge Magnum was about as “sporty” as this segment wanted, and even it never sold in the volume that AMC needed.
Could he have pulled the plug on the Pacer? By late 1973, the car’s development was well under way. (It would debut in February 1975.) It may have been too late to make any major changes without running up the final cost of the project even more. I don’t see how that design could be salvaged.
What AMC really needed in 1975 was a complete restyling of the Hornet and Gremlin, as sales of both dropped dramatically that year. It also should have saved the Javelin by bringing out what became the 1979 Spirit Liftback as the new Javelin (the basic design already existed as a 1974 “idea” car, the Gremlin G-II).
Those plans strike me as being too modest for someone with DeLorean’s ego, particularly since he would have undoubtedly wanted to “one up” his former bosses at GM.
What AMC’s passenger car division needed in the long run was what it got from Renault – the 1983 Alliance. Unfortunately, that one was cursed by awful reliability, a dealer body that didn’t quite know how to service it, and badging it as a Renault instead of as an AMC.
Geeber, you make a bunch of interesting points. Let me bounce off of a few of them.
If we could get into a parallel universe machine, I would be morbidly curious to see what DeLorean would have done with the Matador coupe. It’s hard to envision how it could have sold well under any circumstances, but I would imagine that he could have positioned and marketed it at least somewhat better. After all these years, I’m still astonished at how bad the 1974 ads were for the coupe. (Indie Auto has spoofed that ad campaign here).
I would like to learn more about the Pacer’s development timeline. For example, Bob Nixon blamed the car’s width on an “11th hour” edict from product planners. When specifically did that happen and how much was the body changed? I remember seeing a spy photo of a Pacer prototype in Motor Trend that had much flatter door sheetmetal than the production version. Did they only change the outer sheetmetal?
At least in theory, DeLorean could have either stopped the Pacer’s development altogether or redirected it. As a case in point, the basic Pacer platform was unduly heavy but it could have worked at least somewhat better as a line of six-passenger family cars that straddled the compact and mid-sized markets (go here for further discussion). As you mention, it would have cost money to shift gears, but AMC already had a track record of doing that — the original redesign of the Matador was apparently ditched in favor of the 1974 coupe.
I agree with you that AMC would have been better off updating its compact line (go here for further discussion). One of the best examples of how AMC overextended itself in the 1970s was how little they did to keep the Hornet and Gremlin up to date. I’d also agree that DeLorean would not have been a good fit even if AMC’s bureaucracy had managed to rein in his behavioral excesses. That said, Roy D. Chapin Jr.’s management was so bad that it’s hard to see how DeLorean could have done any worse.
Regarding the Matador coupe – it was at least acceptable in “X” trim, which featured the styled wheels and, I believe, larger tires. Plus, the X models lacked the vinyl roof, which simply did not work when placed on the swoopy body.
Perhaps DeLorean would have been savvy enough to push the X version, or at least make the wheels and tires from that package standard equipment?
Another question is what he would have done with the Matador sedans and wagons, and the Ambassador. The Ambassador remained in production through the 1974 model year. Would he have kept the Ambassador, or simply transferred its front clip to the Matador for 1974? The 1974 Ambassador wasn’t a beauty queen, but its front end comes off much better than the one used on the 1974 Matador sedans and wagons.
One wonders what would have happened if AMC had given the Hornet the “Concord” treatment for 1975 or 1976, along with a lengthened wheelbase. Perhaps a longer, heavily facelifted Hornet (with a much more plush interior) could have been sold as a “downsized” Ambassador.
As for the Pacer – the photos of the styling prototypes I’ve seen on the internet feature the car in profile, which makes it hard to get a sense of how much curvature there is to the side of that particular model.
AMC did feature a Pacer-like model as part of its “Concept 80” road show from 1977-78, which was designed to convince investors and the public that the company had a future. That car did have much flatter sides, and appeared to be considerably smaller overall than the Pacer. It would have been an interesting entry, provided it was based on a front-wheel-drive platform featuring a transverse-mounted drivetrain. By 1977, AMC, of course, didn’t have any money to put that into production.
The Pacer also suffered from AMC’s “split personality” when it came to engineering. It featured rack-and-pinion steering…but standard drum brakes, which were old hat by 1975. The Pacer’s standard drum brakes were roundly criticized by reviewers. I’m guessing that DeLorean would at least have been smart enough to correct that product planning and engineering “goof.”
At the end of the day, a DeLorean liberated from GM’s bureaucratic culture would still have had to face AMC’s perpetual shortage of cash. Great ideas can’t be brought to market without money, and AMC wasn’t swimming in cash even before the Matador and Pacer debacles. Unless he could have done what Romney did in the mid-1950s – convince lenders that the company had a future, so they should lend it lots of money – I don’t see how he could have succeeded at an independent AMC in the long run. The gas shortage of 1979, regulatory challenges, changing customer tastes and rising tide of imports almost had the Ford Motor Company on the ropes by 1980, and it was a far richer company.
A scenario involving DeLorean’s success at AMC has to assume he could convince financiers to give him the funds necessary to turn the company around. I would also posit that DeLorean would have a plan in place to do so and that despite AMC’s small size, his end game, which would most satisfy his ego, would be to show Detroit how he single-handedly saved AMC, plus made them a player. Even with “meager” resources, getting AMC profitable AND stable, could then have allowed DeLorean to challenge the Corvette with his version of the AMX 3. Or, might he have brought Bricklin into the fold and turned that into his sports car of the future? Bricklin initially used AMC’s 360 CID V8 before switching to Ford 351s.
DeLorean vs Bricklin… clash of the would-be-titans? That’s yet another scenario for another day.
Getting the bankers to lend AMC the necessary funds would have been a big challenge. Chrysler had to seek federal help because bankers simply refused to lend it the necessary money.
Chrysler was a much larger corporation than AMC, and already had Iacocca in the executive suite. Iacocca’s reputation was much better than DeLorean’s in 1979.
If the lenders balked at giving Chrysler money with Iacocca at the helm, I can’t see DeLorean in the executive suite being enough to convince lenders to open the purse strings for tiny AMC.
Steve – The 1982 Times article seems to be more accurate by my memory than Knudsen’s obit. Such an unfortunate situation – I remember when White had White, White Construktor (sp?), Western Star, White Freightliner, Cockshutt, Oliver, Minneapolis-Moline, Hercules Engine and probably many more divisions. The last attempt to merge with the ex-GMC big truck division probably didn’t help matters.
I know this thread is supposed to be about John DeLorean, but thanks for listening.
Look at where we are today – the only remaining American manufacturer of class 7 and 8 trucks is Paccar. IH just sold out to Volkswagen.
That whole scenario reminds me of Allis-Chalmers, International Harvester and others – old names that just couldn’t adapt to the times.
Alex, your comment was helpful because my knowledge about the U.S. truck industry is spotty and I need to learn more about it. That said, Indie Auto does have a review of Patrick Foster’s International Harvester book.
As an aside, the Knudsen obituary was written by Automotive News scion K. C. Crain.
There’s part of the problem. Three truck divisions, three tractor divisions, six egos, your own dealerships competing for sales, and a much larger parts bin than necessary.
I’ve worked at Freight liner for 35 years. We also build Western Star and ThomasBuilt buses. We dominate Class 5, 6, 7 and 8. It’s been that way for many years. White Freight liner was a partnership using Freight liner cabs and chassis.
Here’s another possible DeLorean scenario…
Bringing the V6 back to into the fold was very much a marketing tool for GM who knew that the old Chevy inline 6 wasn’t going to cut it anymore. They needed an engine that seemed right for the times so buying it back made a lot of sense. That could have worked for AMC as well, with the V6 engine making them look like they were back in the game or even ahead of it, for a change.
DeLorean, frustrated that GM didn’t take his Pontiac OHC-6 seriously, might have envisioned the Buick V6 (and future developments of it) as the basis for a whole new range of AMC cars using multi-platform architecture to replace the Gremlin, Hornet and Matador (instead of going with the dead-end, rotary-powered Pacer). AMC could then have built and marketed their inline 6 and V8s as “Jeep Exclusives”.
DeLorean’s new AMC car lines could possibly have challenged and bettered the offerings in Chrysler’s K-car universe. I can imagine DeLorean quite rightly championing such new AMC products as HIS vision of the future for the American car industry, even if it was a rather Romney-esque approach.
The issue is still money. As another writer pointed out, if the banks aren’t lending money to Chrysler, what are AMC’s chances.