Someone I will call Bob has taken Indie Auto to task for our story about the AMC Ambassador. This discussion does a good job of summarizing what Indie Auto is and isn’t all about, so let’s take a look under the hood. Bob wrote:
“With the exception of the ’74 Matador sedan and wagon, I think the Ambassador was attractive, including the late ’60s and up to the ’74. All car makers started small with a design and that design got bigger as time went on. No secret there. This article is so one sided, ‘I hate the Ambassador and full sized AMCs.’ You said that styling is subjective, that is true and you let your feelings be known. This should be titled ‘Bash AMC’ regardless of your facts. This should be 2 articles, not one. One facts and the second strictly opinion.
Oh and by the way, hindsight sure is wonderful isn’t it? You could tear apart any automotive manufacturer 45 or so years back for what they did, hell you can do it just 20 years back.”
It may be helpful for new readers to know that Indie Auto is a journal of opinion. The Internet already has plenty of “just-the-facts” and fanboy automotive websites, so I have tried to offer something different. Indie Auto analyzes why the U.S. automakers experienced what may well be the largest industrial collapse of the last century (go here for further discussion).
This focus inevitably entails criticism of automakers. And that can anger some readers. My perception is that these folks tend to have what Jack Baruth (2013) once described as a “sucks-and-rocks” attitude.
Also see ‘The 1967-74 AMC Ambassador didn’t measure up in roominess or quality’
The problem with viewing the past in such a stark, white-and-black way is that a reader may fail to see nuance. For example, in complaining that I “tear apart” AMC, Bob does not acknowledge that Indie Auto has written quite positive things about George Romney’s leadership of this automaker. In my book he had a better understanding of how to respond to the rise of the imports than any other postwar U.S. automotive executive (go here for further discussion).
Does Indie Auto ‘bash’ regardless of the facts?
Bob also states that the Ambassador story should be “titled ‘Bash AMC’ regardless of your facts.” That suggests that I am somehow not interpreting correctly the evidence I present. However, Bob is vague about how this is so.
The most concrete example he offers is that American cars “got bigger as time went on.” So why shouldn’t the Ambassador have followed suit? What Bob doesn’t say is that the Ambassador grew far more than the largest Chevrolet, Ford or Plymouth from 1963-74. And as a graph in my story illustrates, Ambassador output mostly went down as the car’s length inched upwards.
The data is pretty clear: Marketing the Ambassador as a full-sized car proved to be a strategic failure for AMC. The tragedy here is that an Ambassador the size of the 1963 models — the last ones designed under Romney — could have sold very well in 1974, when the country was in the midst of an oil embargo.
More broadly, my basic argument is that one reason the market share of imported automobiles soared in the late-60s and early-70s was because American cars grew too big.
Also see ‘Should auto history websites only say nice things?’
Does Bob think that what I have just stated is not true? If so, it would help if he laid out his argument — and supporting evidence — more completely.
Maybe Bob would prefer to step away from such debates and instead wax nostalgic about his favorite old cars. There’s nothing wrong with that. But if this is what Bob wants, Indie Auto isn’t set up to meet his needs. To be blunt, I am a business strategy nerd, so I write about nerdy things. This is not a recipe for high readership, but it’s what Indie Auto is all about.
NOTES:
Market share figures are from Wards Auto (2017). Note that these figures look somewhat different from those typically used at Indie Auto because they are for sales of cars and trucks of all types. AMC production figures were calculated from base data found in Gunnell (2002), Flammang and Kowalke (1999) and Kowalke (1999). Product specifications are from these books as well as the Classic Car Database (2014).
Share your reactions to this post with a comment below or a note to the editor.
RE:SOURCES
- Baruth, Jack; 2013. “Avoidable Contact: Torture, forgiveness, meaning.” The Truth About Cars. Posted March 29.
- Classic Car Database; 2014. “Search for Specifications.” Accessed April 21.
- Flammang, James M. and Ron Kowalke; 1999. Standard Catalog of American Cars, 1976-1999. Third Ed. Krause Publications, Iola, WI.
- Gunnell, John; 2002. Standard Catalog of American Cars, 1946-1975. Revised 4th Ed. Krause Publications, Iola, WI.
- Kowalke, Ron; 1999. Standard Catalog of Independents: The Struggle to Survive Among Giants. Krause Publications, Iola, WI.
- Wards Auto; 2017. “U.S. Total Vehicle Sales Market Share by Company.”
ADVERTISING & BROCHURES:
- oldcarbrochures.org: Rambler Ambassador (1963); AMC Ambassador (1972, 1974)
The imports were not only smaller, they were more space efficient and for the most part, better built. (The Japanese at that time did not grasp how we would slather streets with road salt in winter) In the Ambassador example the wheelbase increase is all forward of the cowl just wasting space and weight.
I’m not sure the second graph really makes an Ambassador specific point. It seems like one could argue from the graph that sales volume of the Ambassador alone (excluding Classic, Rebel and Matador sales) meaningfully increased from 1965 when the extra length ahead of the cowl, which it previously had enjoyed from 1958-1961, returned. And they seem to have held up pretty well through 1970 despite the even longer extra wheelbase introduced in 1969.
That said, the graph clearly does illustrate that overall platform sales declined as the platform grew, mostly at the Classic/Rebel/Matador end. But those started their decline in 1964, when the Classic was still quite a trim vehicle. It is probably not coincidental that the Chevelle was introduced in 1964. It seems doubtful that AMC could have avoided losing sales massively to the Chevelle and Fairlane throughout the 60s even if it held the line on vehicle size. It lacked the production efficiency (something Romney did not fix) and marketing heft to do so.
That said, I do think the upsizing in 1967 was a major mistake. Not because of the size particularly given the market, but because the 1963 tooling had not yet been amortized and because the new body was rushed to market. As I understand it, the financial premise of the two platform strategy of 1963 and 1964 was that the Ambassador, Classic and American would all share doors and the major stampings around the door apertures, and that these would last for 6 years before replacement. Undoubtedly the increased competition and declining sales prompted some amount of panic on Plymouth Road so as to divert from that premise. But at a terrible cost. Even if sales had declined even more in 1967 and 1968 than they did with only a minor restyling of the 1966 body, the corporation would undoubtetly have been in a better financial place than the near bankruptcy that forced out Abernathy and brought in Chapin.
But whether you replaced the Classic/Ambassador in ’67 or ’69, there would have been no obvious answer about whether it should grow in size. As a platform, the ’67 trumped the roominess of the Chrysler B body, previously the most spacious intermediate. Was it not logical for AMC to seek a niche in which it was offering more room than the Big 3?
Note my qualifier, “mostly.” It also doesn’t strike me as analytically meaningful to assess the Ambassador in isolation from the Classic and its successors.
Yes, the 1965-66 Ambassador sold better than the 1963-64, but that would make logical sense given that the lineup was significantly expanded in terms of trim levels, engines and body styles as well as more heavily marketed. The question is whether total sales of AMC’s mid-sized cars grew enough to justify the extra expense. I would argue that this was not the case even in 1965, which should have been a banner year. The main impact of the Ambassador was to cannibalize the Classic, a nameplate that was — as you point out — already under attack from the likes of the Chevelle.
One could argue that moving the Ambassador to a 116-inch wheelbase in 1965 was a decent move because it put AMC size-wise in the mainstream of the intermediate class. One might also argue that increasing the wheelbase two inches in 1967 was a good decision because it gave AMC’s mid-sized body the most rear-seat legroom in its class. If AMC had continued to sell the Ambassador as a luxury intermediate rather than as a full-sized car it might have gained more traction as the brougham era emerged. Alas, AMC did not.
I think you’re right that AMC management should have pushed back the 1967 reskinning and returned to sharing door sheetmetal between the compact and mid-sized cars. But should the eventual redesign have grown further in size? One thing to keep in mind is that the 1967 reskinning already made two important functional improvements over the 1963 Rambler: more rear legroom and more trunk space (due to squaring off the teardrop deck). The biggest mistake was a three-inch width increase that was purely cosmetic and worked against sharing sheetmetal between the two platforms.
From an economies-of-scale standpoint, the single best thing AMC could have done was to consolidate all passenger cars onto one platform. The mid-sized platform might have worked. For example, if the excess fat had been cut from the 1967 body, AMC could have offered a car with similar exterior dimensions to a mid-70s Volare or Granada but without any reduction in interior room or trunk space (go here for further discussion).
That said, the compact platform strikes me as being the better bet. If that sounds sketchy to you, keep in mind that AMC passenger-car sales in the late-60s and early-70s hovered around 260,000 units despite offering a broad lineup. Now consider how well the Valiant/Dart sold during that time period despite their truncated range of body styles and trim levels as well as a design that was not kept up to date. Even if AMC generated only mediocre sales from a modular compact platform, a lower breakeven point would likely have kept passenger-car operations consistently in the black. And by the mid-70s the market for higher-priced compacts expanded enough that AMC could have done quite well.
I think AMC was really on to something with the 1963-64 Ambassador 990s. They were very well-trimmed, and just the right size.
Instead of enlarging the drastically restyling the Ambassador, AMC could have better differentiated it from the Classic by offering a formal-roof hardtop coupe (the basic 1963 two-door sedan roofline would have worked well for this) for the Ambassador, and then offered an Ambassador convertible (but not a Classic convertible).
The Classic hardtop coupe could have offered the sleeker hardtop design that was actually used for 1964-65. I would guess that tooling for a different roofline would have been cheaper than enlarging and restyling the entire car.
AMC would have still had to regularly facelift the basic car to ensure buyer interest – but note that the basic Rambler was restyled in some way every year from 1960 through 1962 under Romney’s tenure.
The Ambassador could have evolved in a number of interesting ways, such as becoming a cross between an Americanized Mercedes and a forerunner of the Granada/Volare luxury compacts of the mid-70s.
The basic challenge was that the Ambassador’s fate was closely linked to that of the Classic and its successors. And if the Classic didn’t do well, neither would AMC. Neither Abernethy nor Chapin got that. Particularly from 1967 through 1970, the Ambassador received more attention, such as more substantial styling updates and a broader range of models. The Classic’s 1967 replacement, the Rebel, was essentially starved to death.
It would have been interesting to see what Romney would have done styling-wise with the senior Ramblers if he had stayed through the rest of the 1960s. I could see him continuing the approach used from 1960-62, where the front and back were restyled in alternate years rather than giving the whole car a reskinning, like Abernethy did in 1965. However, the basic 1963 design had some problems that needing fixing, such as a teardrop deck that limited trunk space. We have covered some of this ground here.
Again – l do love Indie for the discussions – even though sometimes they can include some “tin-foil hat” stuff!
But I can sympathize with participant “Bob” that “bashing” a name plate seems to take place here on occasion. Does it mostly happen with subjects surrounding the “independents”? I don’t know. BUT “Bob” is sufficiently invested in things AMC to suggest that your headline could be changed to “Bash AMC” and my blood pressure has likely had a similar rise due to my perception of your “bashing” of Studebaker. Your Studebaker article headlines include “Lipstick on a Pig” and “Let’s Set Up the Lark for Unflattering Comparisons”. They are inflammatory – not necessarily bad – but DON’T be surprised by a push-back from a seriously invested brand enthusiast. “Bob” has done nothing wrong.
Studebaker and AMC are less known to the public, and that includes the population of auto collectors, enthusiasts and historians. Yes, there are several excellent books on their histories which you have read and from which you quote. But there is an element of depth which Indie seems to often miss.
Perhaps I can suggest that you contact an expert or two from the masthead of the national newsletters of these brands to get a “hands-on” perspective of these companies and their products. Read road tests, too! NONE of them, for instance, mention the lack of a “step-down” chassis (an you mention it a lot) as a talking point. In fact l just read a Road and Track (no less!) test of a ’60 Lark praising it for have flat floors! Talk to these expert folks who own these cars and have had extensive history with them. They can tell you such things as the fact that Studebaker Avantis had instruments that were red-lit at night. My latest Road and Track issue extolls the wisdom of introducing that feature to more cars today, but, as seems the mandate with that publication, it cites a “foreign” brand – 1980’s BMW – as an early example. And can you imagine a recent article in a large-circulation collector car magazine on the subject of “personal luxury” cars – but NO mention is made of Studebaker Hawks? Inexcusable. Poor perspective.
Often Studebaker articles are written today that don’t have the facts straight, or the company and products are erroneously bashed, or worse, Studebaker is just plain forgotten. At least Indie has NOT forgotten, and for that I thank you.
Stewdi, I learned in j-school that pushback was part of the job. I could have deleted Bob’s comment but instead posted it in full and offered a response. This was both for journalistic transparency and to deepen the conversation about why and how we do automotive history.
This is a journal of opinion, so I sometimes use more colorful language than a “just-the-facts” website. My apologies if you were offended by the “Lipstick on a pig” headline. At the same time, I think the metaphor was appropriate. As I have mentioned to you before, it’s entirely fine for each of us to REALLY like a given car regardless of what anyone else thinks. However, facts are still facts — Studebaker’s 1964 redesign sold poorly. A big reason why was because the platform was no longer competitive as a passenger car.
You suggest that I draw upon experts. Are you implying that the published authors I do draw upon – and document using a scholarly citation method – are not as legitimate as those who publish enthusiast websites? If so, why?
Note that I will cite magazine articles when I have access to them. Unfortunately, I had to give away my stash during a big move. However, I have substantially rebuilt my library of books. The cost can add up quickly, so being a retiree living on a fixed income does limit my purchases. Donations can be helpful here. Remember that Indie Auto is entirely reader supported.
I promptly fix errors when readers point them out. I also see a difference between a factual issue and disagreement about how to interpret a situation. For example, you suggest that I have been too negative about Studebaker’s flat floors. I indeed recall a 1963 Consumer Reports lauding the value of that feature. Yet the positive media coverage did not boost Studebaker sales, which tended to fall deeper into the red during the 1961-64 model years.
You also mention the Avanti’s red-lit instrument panel. I have always thought this was cool. The Avanti nevertheless sold poorly.
The bottom line is that I see my niche as focusing on business strategy. And despite the inevitable blowback, I operate from a journalistic rather than a public relations paradigm. I try very hard to continuously improve Indie Auto, but I don’t plan to change its focus. Indie Auto is different by design.
I, for one, find your fact-based viewpoint refreshing and I truly appreciate reading car-based articles that differ from most.
I especially like the opposite opinion articles and anything written about what automakers were considering into the near-future; ie, concept vehicles.
Steve, you had me at “Different by Design” and l’m sure you know why. For others who are not fluent in “Studebaker-ese”, that is Studebaker’s 1964 main ad campaign catch-phrase!
Hi Steve – Yes l do think that SOME, not all, published authors lack “experience” with their automotive subject.
Richard Langworth owned a Studebaker that he thoroughly enjoyed and you only have to read the preface of his “Studebaker: The Postwar Years” book to feel that he not just cared, but had feelings about the subject . The book was published before the Studebaker archives were gathered in one place and made accessible. But he listed some very good “enthusiast-historians” as consultants. Despite a few fact goofs, excusable in part by not having archive access, it was a great effort.
And then there is an example of two other, newer books, both with the same basic title of “Studebaker: The Complete Story”. The older one was written by two owner- enthusiast-historians who devoted 157 out of 339 total pages to Stude’s important pre WWII history. The more recent book had an author who cared, but is much more invested in another brand. There were just 43 pages in the pre WWII chapters. He also wrote a 200 page book on just ONE postwar model of his favorite brand, BUT only 190 pages (and little in the way of new discussions or information) on Studebaker’s entire 114 years (126 years if you want to stretch it!). He is an real enthusiast for his brand and his books on that brand are great and show it! Despite my down-play of it his Studebaker book is an attractive book with quite a few wonderful photos and l’m still glad that l have a copy.
But l’d recommend the information in the enthusiasts’ books if someone really wanted a “feel” for Studebaker, its products and its place in the industry, not just the facts.
Stewdi, have you taken a look at the “Readings” and “Links” listings? Here are the Studebaker-specific books I have thus far reviewed. I have a number of other books that I draw upon but have not yet added to my bibliography, such as some Brooklands compilations of period auto buff magazine articles. I also regularly draw upon my incomplete stash of Collectible Automobile magazines as well as reference books such as the Standard catalogs.
Before sitting down to write a story I will also do a web search, with a particular focus on auto history outlets that I have found credible. However, I am always looking for new sources — and when I find them I add them to the “Links” section. I will often take a look at sites such as the Studebaker Drivers Club but don’t usually find information there that I cite. For example, I rarely quote from anonymous posters unless I am trying to give a flavor for a discussion group’s conversation (here is an example).
I would be delighted to spend some time at libraries with Studebaker archival materials but do not live in a part of the country where that is possible without major traveling. I can’t afford to do so without an increase in Indie Auto revenue. Since this is a reader-supported website, that means more donations.
Even without that travel, I would suggest to you that my Studebaker articles are reasonably well documented — particularly given that they were written on a volunteer basis and made available to you free of charge. You just don’t like my conclusions.
Your right – it’s some (not all) of the conclusions.
AMC people, like “Bob” and Studebaker people have something more in common than just Borg-Warner transmissions and tapered axles. We both come from the perspective of rooting for their beloved under-dog brands. The histories and products of both are often not understood as well as they should be. Journalists are much more used to writing about animals like Barracudas , Mustangs and “Goats” (and now Broncos) than Hawks, Larks and Marlins (especially on-line, where mistakes in presentations on Facebook and YouTube can be brutal)! We get frustrated about this upon occasion especially when we perceive a “bash” or two.
“Bob” and I may lash out at some of your conclusions, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t appreciate Indie and your input and effort.
To add to your Studebaker library, my I suggest 1): a copy of “My Father the Car” by Stu Chapman, available at the Studebaker National Museum and has invaluable insider info about Studebaker’s few production years, 2); “Studebaker: The Complete Story” by Cannon and Fox (out of print and published in 1981, but they’re “out there”), and 3): “Studebaker Bibliography” by Jan B. Young, available from Amazon, makes looking for specific Studebaker references SO much easier.
Looking forward to more Indie (and you can look forward to a donation)!
I get that you have frustrations with the automotive media. However, that’s not a good excuse to “lash out” at Indie Auto. The amount of time I can spend on this website is limited, so I have very little bandwidth for low-grade, “sucks-and-rocks” debates.
One of my major themes has been that the independent automakers could have helped to ease the decline of the U.S. auto industry if they had made some different decisions in the postwar period. Those who consider that “bashing” may find more enjoyment at other auto history websites.