Dick Teague nervously checked his fly and centered his tie as he heard the entourage of AMC executives march down the hallway toward his design studio.
He’d made many presentations over two decades but had never felt such a sense of unease. Yet Teague was quite proud of the clay mockups he was about to show. His stylists had performed a miracle. They had taken a body first introduced in 1963 and somehow turned it into a design trendsetting enough to carry AMC into the 1980s.
The proposed wagon really stood out. It had a crisp, European look. As much room as a Torino or Chevelle but a foot shorter and weighing hundreds of pounds less.
As he began his presentation Teague isolated the reason for his nervousness. It was Roy D. Chapin, Jr. The CEO of American Motors was like an overactive kid. He kept on fiddling with his watch and looking around the room. While the other executives seemed impressed with the wagon’s unusual hatchback design, Chapin kept on glancing at a back wall.
Finally Chapin blurted out, “Ah, Dick, not to interrupt, but when you’re done could you explain the sketches over there?”
Teague was horrified. The renderings were an inside joke: “What do you get when you cross a Marlin and an AMX/3? A Matador Coupe!” It was pure silliness. Yet Chapin was clearly intrigued.
Sweating heavily, Teague searched for a reassuring thought. Maybe Chapin would forget (he often did). Or maybe the other executives could talk him down.
“Bad news, Dick,” Teague was told a few weeks later by Vice President Gerald C. Meyers. “Chapin really wants a NASCAR winner — and he’s willing to give up redesigning the sedan and wagon to get it.”
When Teague went home that night he was ready to quit. Maybe VW needed an American designer. Or maybe DeLorean would take over AMC.
NOTES:
When cleaning out some old files I found this short story, which I had submitted as a comment to another auto history website back in 2013. Of course, this is a purely fictional effort to make fun of the decision-making process that led to one of the biggest flops of the 1970s.
I would not be surprised if Teague had been a strong supporter of the Matador coupe, which may still be the world’s largest 2+2 ever mass produced (go here for a critique of his design predilections). Note that the point of counterfactuals like this satirical piece is to shed light on the groupthink that led to the decline and fall of the US auto industry. For more about what is real, go here.
RE:SOURCES
- oldcaradvertising.com: AMC Matador (1974)
- Wikipedia (2021): Image of Richard Teague in 1970s from American Motors Corporation. Color photo edited to black and white.
At least he didn’t put a radiator-style grille on the Matador coupe. That has to count for something, right? Then again, he could at least have designed one for the Matador sedan & wagon.
Well, Patrick Foster thought AMC should have slapped an “upright” grille onto the Matador coupe and called it the
AristocratAmbassador (go here for further discussion).The Matador coupe was the first part of a one-two punch that ultimately sank AMC for good (the other punch was the Pacer). These two sold poorly after the first year or so on the market and drained AMC of the capital it needed to redesign the Matador sedan and wagon (as well as the Hornet) which was already seven years old and desperately needed a redo to keep them competitive. (Having said that, I do believe AMC would’ve eventually been doomed regardless; the recession of ‘79-80 would have crippled them and unlike Chrysler, they weren’t “too big to fail” and would’ve been allowed to go under.