George Denzinger took the time to write a lengthy and thoughtful response to our story, “1971-74 Dodge Charger: Making the most of a questionable idea,” so I am elevating it to the front page as a letter to the editor:
Looking at this article, I think there’s something of an interesting parallel between the 1971-1974 Dodge Charger and the 1974-1977 AMC Matador. Both of these models faced the upcoming personal luxury coupe onslaught in something of a similar fashion. But of course, AMC got there later and got punished far worse.
General Motors “called the shots” in the fashion game in the late 1960s and produced a brilliant pair of cars (1969 Pontiac Grand Prix and 1970 Chevrolet Monte Carlo), just in time for the early cadre of the Baby Boomers to graduate out of their Mustangs and Camaros for something more “grown-up.” Even before the first energy crisis (oil embargo) of 1973, tastes had been trending toward more luxury, and larger sizes to accommodate Boomers with families.
Introductory ads for the 1974 AMC Matador coupe tilted toward sportiness while the 1975 Dodge Charger epitomized the personal luxury coupe. Click on images to enlarge (Old Car Advertisements).
Pity Chrysler and AMC, as they were seemingly in the perennial “runner-up” positions in the fashion game. At the end of the 1960s, Dodge Division had bet on a two-car system for their mid-sized cars: getting away from the two-door version of the Coronet and replacing it in 1971 with the Charger as that car. But by 1975 they were back to the Coronet, the Charger personal luxury coupe and the Coronet sedan and wagon. Hmmm. . . .
Also see ‘Was Mac’s Motor City Garage wrong about the 1974-78 Matador coupe?’
AMC, perpetually strapped for funds and working on the 1974 Matador and 1975 Pacer, still had their older Matador in production during this time (1971-1973). Maybe, had they continued to produce that Matador with styling updates, they may have been able to ride out the personal luxury coupe era fairly well. But clearly they didn’t recognize the light at the end of the tunnel as front of the oncoming train. I am imagining they thought (possibly like Chrysler management in the late 1960s) that the performance/muscle car idiom would last much longer than it did.
For 1976 Dodge made the Charger SE sportier while the Coronet hardtops were relabeled Chargers . . . before becoming Monacos in 1977. Click on images to enlarge (Old Car Advertisements).
Dodge Division did a much better job of pivoting with their existing 1971-1974 car, lux-ing up the Charger to take on the personal luxury coupe role until something suitable could be arranged. It was a competitor to the Monte Carlo/Grand Prix/Cutlass Supreme/Torino Elite/Cougar entries. Yes, the Magnum should have been the Dodge to release for 1975. But Chrysler was going through one of their budget crises again and most likely the 1975 Charger SE was the expedient way to get a competent entry in the personal luxury coupe contest for Dodge dealers.
Also see ‘Should AMC have given the 1974 Matador coupe a luxury spin-off?’
PIty AMC management. . . . Their Matador product planning from the early 1970s released right before the first energy crisis and landed into an environment that was rapidly abandoning the mid-sized muscle car. They gamely tried with the Oleg Cassini and Barcelona editions, but they never seemed to gain much traction, even though the precedent had been set with the Gucci Hornets.
For 1977 Ford transferred the Thunderbird to its mid-sized platform and ditched the Mercury Montego in favor of a full line of Cougars. Click on images to enlarge (Automotive History Preservation Society).
By 1978, the whole personal luxury coupe universe had been largely settled. The major players had survived the 1970s and the GM entries had even been downsized but continued on their ascendant path. The Matador was collateral damage, abandoned for a luxed-up Hornet re-boot, the Concord. The Charger SE was erased from memory and replaced by the Magnum, while the Cordoba got stacked rectangular headlights.
Also see ‘Ford did better than Chrysler in differentiating its 1970s mid-sized coupes’
Over at Ford, the Elite was replaced by the neo-Thunderbird (one of many), with the LTD II reprising the early-1970s Chrysler strategy of a personal luxury coupe, a mid-sized coupe, sedan and wagon. The Mercury Cougar soldiered on as a full-line marque, cheapening its appeal to the point of insignificance by the 1990s.
Another energy crisis arrived at the end of the decade and we waited for the next big thing. . . .
— George Denzinger
ADVERTISING & BROCHURES
- wildaboutcarsonline.com: (Automotive History Preservation Society): Ford Thunderbird (1977); Mercury Cougar (1977)
- oldcaradvertising.com: AMC Matador (1974); Dodge Charger (1975, 1976); Dodge Magnum (1978)
Indie Auto invites your comments (see below) or letters to the editor (go here). Letters may be lightly edited for style.
George, this is a good overview. I wonder what was going on in the management cultures of Chrysler and AMC that would lead them to be so slow to adapt to changes in the marketplace?
Perhaps Chrysler’s motivation for sticking with sporty mid-sized cars so long was that the automaker had been so successful with them in the late-60s. Why step away from the golden goose? Of course, that market almost disappeared remarkable speed in the early-70s.
AMC’s motivation seems almost adolescent. After being the high school nerd all those years, the automaker seemed to want to prove that it could be a hard-core jock. Alas, by the time they were able to strut their stuff, everyone else had graduated and moved on to bigger and better things.
I think you may be correct on both of your observations. For Chrysler, who would have thought that the party would end so soon? On second thought, the less than stellar reception to the E-body Challenger and Barracuda should have been a clue. In a way, it was Chrysler’s Pacer, the first wide muscle car, as it were.
But the Cordoba and it’s clones did yeoman’s work keeping the lights on at Chrysler so it could lurch from crisis to crisis in the 1970’s. I say this as a fan of Chrysler products of that era, knowing full well the quality could vary considerably.
I really believe that due to the lack of funding AMC was perpetually a few steps behind. I think their inability to cash in on the mid sized muscle car market (until they were able to re-design the Rebel/Matador platform) was grating to them. But by the time the funding was available the market had shifted and the moment had passed.
The 1974 Matador may have been a great idea in 1969, not so much when it was released.
Like I’d mentioned earlier, it was released into a perfect storm in the fall of 1973, although it did sell well intially. But folks’ memories of the gas lines were strong, lasting well into 1976, long after gas prices and supplies stabilized.
After the new Matador (and the Pacer shortly after) fell flat in sales, there was little to do other than retreat and retrench. Chrysler came out of the era better, but worse was still to come.
AMC wouldn’t have made much headway with a Monte Carlo clone. It needed to bring something new and different to the segment, but the Matador coupe wasn’t the answer. The Matador coupe looked awkward in base form and even worse with “Brougham” styling touches. The swoopy styling didn’t offer any real advantages over the Big Three competition.
In the intermediate segment, AMC would have been better off focusing on the sedan and wagon. It should have refined and improved (and even downsized) the Matador sedan and wagon to make them better than their Big Three competition. (Not burdening the sedan and wagon with that awful post-1973 front clip would have been one big improvement.) By 1975, the intermediate sedans and wagons were definitely after-thoughts at the Big Three. That represented an opening for AMC.
If AMC wanted more sales in the coupe segment, it should have brought out the 1979 Spirit for 1975 (the basic car already existed in 1974 as a concept car – the Gremlin G-II). A 1975 Spirit would have slipped in nicely between the subcompact Mustang II and 1970-era GM F-bodies. AMC would have had more credibility in that segment than in the personal luxury coupe segment.
Chrysler Corporation’s problem was that it simply followed GM instead of trying to innovate. It was thus always a day late and a dollar short. The Cordoba sold well enough in the mid-1970s, but there was room for only one Monte Carlo clone at Chrysler Corporation. Turning the Dodge Charger into a badge-engineered version of the Cordoba threw out the equity that nameplate had earned in the market (after the Dart, the Charger was what came to mind when we thought of Dodge during that time). At a minimum, the Charger should have debuted with the front clip of the 1978-79 Magnum, and only offered sporty versions with better handling and more subdued trim.
You make a great point about the Spirit — it could have done quite well if introduced earlier in the decade. I assume that AMC didn’t go in that direction earlier because they didn’t want to take sales away from the Hornet hatchback.
If so, that would have made some sense. However, the Hornet hatch really didn’t need such a long wheelbase given its fastback shape, which limited rear-seat headroom. Cut five or six inches of wheelbase behind the B-pillar and the car would have arguably looked better proportioned. Indeed, a Maverick coupe-sized Hornet hatch strikes me as a better prospect than the Spirit coupe because it would have had more room and a less lopsided weight distribution.
C.L. Zinn’s picture book about the Javelin has some really interesting proposed redesigns that were based upon the Gremlin. Some proposals had completely different sheetmetal, but others carried over some parts such as the doors — but cut the height of the roofline and added a more aerodynamic front end. My guess is that pretty much any of these proposals would have ended up selling better than the Matador coupe.
Much like today’s market, where every automaker has to have at least six SUV/CUVs in their lineup, participation in the Personal Luxury Coupe (PLC) market was ‘de riguer’. If you weren’t in the game, you weren’t in the game. While Chrysler and Ford were guilty of following GM, what was the other game plan for the domestics? Understand that I’m not apologizing for the domestics, as they had as much access to technologies as any other company. It wasn’t until the mid 1970’s that small FWD cars were becoming mainstream and the harbinger of change in the US market. The baby boomers who were purchasing pony cars in 1965 were in need of more ‘mature’ transport by 1975. The domestics offered the same old front engined, RWD, space-inefficient, buggy-sprung derivatives of the Conestoga wagon, only dressed up as PLCs. And the market responded, by buying as many (Cutlass Supremes) as they could.
I think with the benefit of hindsight, most folks would agree that the 1974-1978 Matador was a financial disaster after the first year sales bonanza. I think that in that same vein, the bifurcation of the Chrysler Corporation mid-size PLCs into two lines may have been a bad idea, also. But, consider this: The 1969 Grand Prix and the 1970 Monte Carlo were rather successful in their introductory years and the brougham-ification quickly extended to the rest of the GM mid sizers. But by the 1971 model year, Dodge had canned the Coronet coupe in favor of the Charger being the two door of the line, while keeping the Coronet nameplate for the sedans and wagons. Does this action along with the differently styled Matador coupe and sedans indicate a larger trend happening in Detroit thinking at the time?
Even with the acceptance of more mainstream FWD, fuel efficient sub-compact cars happening by the mid-1970’s, would AMC dropping their mid-size line to concentrate on compact cars really have helped their bottom line? I think it’s a mixed bag, really. Probably only AMC could have done this (and really the Concorde did do it), given their prior history selling small cars in a big car market. However, there is some value in selling the bottom end of a large market segment. I think that the Studebaker Scotsman may be a previous example of that phenomenom. However, Studebaker was able to pivot to the Lark for greater (temporary) sales, I don’t think that the economic and regulatory environment was conducive for AMC to do something similar. I feel that CAFE, EPA and crash standards combined to choke AMC to death, at least as an independent company.
At least Chrysler was able to veer from crisis to crisis…
George, I suspect that the only way for AMC to deal with the 1970’s increasing competition and regulation was to consolidate all of its passenger cars onto one platform. Once you get past that decision point then the next question becomes: What’s the best size for a modular platform?
A platform the general size and weight of the 1963 Rambler would have allowed AMC to compete in the top end of the compact field as well as the mid-sized class. That might have worked okay through most of the 1970s but would have eventually required downsizing to meet CAFE standards and a shifting market.
I suspect that a more compact platform would have been a better long-term investment for three reasons:
1) It would have allowed AMC to continue to play to its traditional strength at the bottom of the compact market;
2) In the early-70s there was less competition in the compact field because the Big Three were focusing their attention on the mid-sized and subcompact classes;
3) AMC could have gotten ahead of the pack with a full line that included wagons and luxury models.
Someone on my paper route bought a brand new Cordoba that was dark blue with a white half vinyl top. I loved that car!
In terms of appearance, Matador X had many positive things going for it but just as many negative things. Had they put it on the longest 122 inch wheelbase, the extra 8 inches being forward of the firewall as on the Matador sedan, it would have made the car much more elegant. Hidden headlamps and fender skirts would have also helped. Can envision it being called the Concord and associating itself with the supersonic Concorde. Here’s a work-up that I made some time ago.
https://content.invisioncic.com/r277599/monthly_2022_04/74_Matador_114_122_skirts_lights_nose_fascia.jpg.4b21702d945f71aefb4d76596024c06b.jpg
That last image had the front fender behind the bumper lowered too. Here’s a version with Matador’s original design, which I think was too high but that was the prevailing thinking of the time. The car might have benefited from a liftback too, all trade-offs considered.
https://content.invisioncic.com/r277599/monthly_2022_04/1324366208_74_Matador_114_122_skirts_lights_nose_fasciaa.jpg.cb2c22d81fae7c70aa69a1c813fcb13f.jpg
Regarding George’s excellent question: “… would AMC dropping their mid-size line to concentrate on compact cars really have helped their bottom line?”
That probably would have depended on the compact car offered. I think that for the post-war Independents, carefully targeting specific markets, hitting the bulls-eye with unique, compelling products, and getting a long cycle life out of the investment was the key to success. The 1956 – 1962 Rambler was probably the best example of how to do it right. The car not only saved AMC, it made them stronger than Nash had ever been. Sales of the American greatly helped, but the Rambler was the anchor.
With 20/20 hindsight, were I to try to draw that “perfect line” that AMC could have taken in the 1970s (planning of which would have started in the mid-60s), I think its most important element would have been to redirect the Hornet/Gremlin investment towards a FWD 5-door hatchback on 108 wheelbase, with the fuel tank packaged under the rear seat and the spare packaged under the load floor, above a twist-beam suspension. The doors would have come from what would have been the 4-door Hornet (a 108 wheelbase 5-door Gremlin could have been fairly easily made had AMC wanted to). The front would have looked more upscale like the Javelin and AMX. The engine could have been either a longitudinal or transverse Four, perhaps based on the Six though OHCs would have been preferred. Bosch fuel-injection could have been included, if not initially then within a few years. The car would not have been super cheap, instead would have focused on quality and reliability, and with interior craftsmanship similar to the Javelin and AMX.
Here’s a work-up that I created some time ago and have uploaded to the AACA Forum. I can’t remember where the original Gremlin image came from so can’t provide attribution.
https://content.invisioncic.com/r277599/monthly_2022_04/414956222_1970AMCAMX108FWD.jpg.b11f4c2707aec1e7d17aec647d80cd9b.jpg
Paul, thank you for your intriguing photoshops. Your above scenario makes a lot of sense. I particularly appreciate your point about the 1956-62 senior Rambler; it may have been a dowdy design but it was the single most successful postwar car from an independent automaker.
In the l970s I suspect that a more upright body than the Hornet/Gremlin’s might have served AMC better when it came to a six-passenger sedan and wagon, but its lower and more fuselage shape worked pretty well with coupes and smaller sedans.
I don’t have a sense of how much more a front-wheel-drive platform would have cost compared to, say, the $66 million reportedly spent on the Pacer coupe and wagon. However, it surely would have been more plausible if the intent was to make it AMC’s only passenger-car platform, thereby maximizing economies of scale.
I will try to kill two birds with one stone here and comment on both Steve’s and Paul’s comments… Paul, I took a look at your photochop of the Gremlin with two extra doors and it hit me… A VAM Lerma (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LKG6R_AQQo) is very close what you described. I saw these a number of years ago and was immediately struck by the genius of this idea, a hatchback grafted on the back of Hornet. It also has the sporty vibe that the Rover SD1 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rover_SD1) had upon release.
I should admit that I’m a fan of hatchback cars and this was right up my alley, at least from the looks of it. I’ve never experienced one in real life, only in pictures. I don’t know if anyone else here may have, I’d be curious to see how it stacked up against contemporary US AMC models.
Steve, another friend of mine named Steve has long postulated that AMC should have done a couple of things in the mid-1970’s regarding future cars. The first was to base a FWD car off of the Hornet utilizing the V6 that AMC sold back to GM and the Borg-Warner FWD transmission that Austin was using for the Landcrab. I don’t know what the capital expenditure would have been, but I have to imagine it would have been less than the Pacer, due to the fact that so much already existed and utilizing the Hornet body shell re-configured for FWD would be less expensive than an all new body shell.
This could have been a GM FWD A-body/Chrysler EEK competitor several years earlier than those cars. This could have been released even before the release of the Omni/Horizon in late 1977 and giving Civic, Rabbit and Omni owners a realistic step up in size, while maintaining the characteristics of FWD chassis. In addition, they could have continued selling the Concord as a “just in case” until folks could get their minds wrapped around the idea of a FWD Hornet.
While I love the ‘other’ Steve’s idea, but as we all know it didn’t happen that way.
Yeah, I thought VAM also. Their 3 door would be a perfect hatchback for the Eagle. Like you I;m a hatchback fan but I don’t think AMC could justify both the 5 door and the sportabout wagon. My idea based on my taste would be adopt the Eagle running gear to the Matador sedan and wagon as an alternative to the trucklike SUVs of the era, give the Concord the coupe sedan and wagon (possible making the wagon more wagonlike) and then use the VAM 3 door and 5 door bodies for the smaller Eagle
The BW35 automatic sat under the engine in BMC’s landcrab driven by a chain. Not sure there would have been room under a Hornet hood for that. And chain driven rather than end on transmissions proved to be an engineering dead end. Also, even mounting the transmission under the engine, I’m not sure the width of the Hornet engine bay would have permitted without switching to a strut type front suspension. If you were going to a chain driven transmission, it might have made more sense to buy in the TH425 or similar from GM and mount the fed powertrain in line.
The bigger problem, I suspect, is that AMC’s production facilities would have required major investment to retool for fwd assembly, which was ultimately only available with money from Renault.
I would argue that more bang for the buck in terms of space efficiency in the Hornet and Gremlin could have been realized by replacing the solid rear axle with a semi trailing arm IRS setup.
Do you have a ballpark sense of what it might have cost an automaker of AMC’s size to switch to FWD?
IRS could indeed have been a useful compromise, particularly if introduced with the compact platform redesign in 1970. Add a Europeanesque, space-efficient body and AMC could have become known as the American Mercedes.
I don’t think IRS would have done the Gremlin much good. The rear seat still would have been sandwiched in between the rear wheels. And if IRS weighed less, that would have worsened the already lopsided weight distribution.
That WAS done, if too late.
In sedan, hatch, and wagon:
https://youtu.be/5rf6JO6zXtg
https://youtu.be/qkJFBrHz2Hs
https://youtu.be/BFNDb_kMt9E
https://youtu.be/hpGknElMdGw
https://youtu.be/JWHYWtxp7pw
https://youtu.be/323uHRSCoxo
https://youtu.be/EARmvpsMwXs
Coulda/woulda/shoulda saved AMC?
As they say, “History tells the story.”
https://driventowrite.com/2016/11/02/1986-renault-21-profile/
https://benzin.fr/auctions/show/210gts086mkm01993-5ed77824a0421
https://www.autoweek.com/car-life/classic-cars/a40048029/renault-medallion-station-wagon/
Based on contemporary media reports it appears that AMC used the $150 million investment it secured from Renault in 1979 for retooling Kenosha to manufacture a future Renault based fwd model. That is probably a reasonable proxy.
As far as the Gremlin goes, I would point to the E36 BMW 318ti, which was essentially a 3 series Gremlin. It retained the old E30 semi-trailing arm IRS over the multilink Z axle BMW developed for the newer 3 series generation. I speculate this was not only for cost reasons but also for space efficiency in the truncated platform. The big advantage of semi-trailing arms is the suspension is not only mounted low, but the major elements are aft of the rear wheels. So even if the seats are between the rear wheels, there should be a larger area in which to mount them. And the aft position of the major suspension components should help with weight distribution.
I don’t know how much of the $150 million you cite was needed to update an aging plant as well as to align it with Renault’s production processes, but obviously that’s still a lot of money. The 1974 Matador redesign and the Pacer line together cost around $106 million. If AMC had a more consistent record of profitability in the early-70s they might have been able to secure more funding, but that presumably would have been a stretch. Thus, IRS could have been a useful bridge technology to give AMC a practical advantage in switching to a modular platform.
Your points about the Gremlin are well taken. The main result of IRS from a packaging standpoint might have been a bit deeper (and thus more comfortable) rear-seat cushion and more cargo space. A smaller center hump wouldn’t have mattered a huge amount given that the rear seat could only hold two people anyway. That said, I don’t think IRS would have solved the fundamental problem with the Gremlin: AMC was pretending to offer a subcompact with a compact body. The basic layout worked okay for a sporty hatch (like the Spirit) but wasn’t well suited for a more utilitarian economy car.
Regarding AMC’s cost to retool of the Alliance and Encore – as I recall, Renault basically handed AMC a federalized version of the Renault 9 and 11. The design work and engineering had been done in France (although AMC added a two-door Alliance sedan). AMC didn’t design and engineer the Alliance and Encore from scratch, so that undoubtedly resulted in cost savings.
Even if AMC had made ideal choices with its product expenditures in the late 1960s and early 1970s, developing its own front-wheel-drive family car, and refurbishing the factory to produce it, would still have represented a very significant cost for a small manufacturer.
As for the Gremlin – by 1975, it needed much more than independent rear suspension to remain competitive.
I see a successful Gremlin post-1975 as sort of an American Toyota Starlet. If it could have been made to be dead reliable it could have been forgiven some obsolete technology and inefficient packaging.
George – thanks for bringing that VAM to our attention, I had completely forgotten about it. AMC appears to have investigated the body style in the mid-to-late 60s, see this concept courtesy Old Concept Cars:
https://oldconceptcars.com/1930-2004/amc-amx-iii-concept-car-1967/#&gid=1&pid=1
Totally agree with Steve on the Gremlin being too low. If anyone hasn’t seen his Longer! Lower! Wider! article, it’s very well done. I feel the same way about the American auto industry taking things too far, and used to call some of them pancake cars too. They left the door open particularly for the Europeans.
https://www.indieauto.org/2021/09/22/lower-longer-wider-fixation-of-us-automakers-left-opening-for-imports/
Kim’s idea for a Matador 4×4 is interesting. The Matador X appears to have had a somewhat shorter rear overhang that might have helped the appearance of a wagon 4×4. The James Bond movie with the flying Matador X hints at nice SUV proportions, excluding the long snout.