I feel torn in writing a review about The Complete Book of AMC Cars (2024). New auto history books are rare enough these days that anyone who navigates the gauntlet of getting published deserves applause. At the same time, I think that it is important to point out when pom-pom waving overshadows substantive efforts to advance automotive history.
The book’s cover lists Patrick Foster and Tom Glatch as the co-authors, but look within and one will find Glatch listed as the copyright holder of the text and Foster of the captions. In an acknowledgements page Foster stated that Glatch “wrote the majority of this book’s text, due to time constraints and health issues I was going through during the year and a half we worked on it” (p. 6).
That helps explain a tension between the text, which often reads like it was drawn from AMC press releases, and captions which occasionally criticize management decisions. This gives the book a tail-wagging-the-dog quality.
A reference book with big pictures and bigger spin
The Complete Book deviates from Foster’s solo AMC books by dispensing with a traditional long-form narrative in favor of what might be described as a reference-book format with lots of information McNuggets. The content is organized by year, with subsections for each AMC nameplate.
The focus of the text is primarily product attributes such as new features and production totals. Text is often augmented with AMC advertisements, sidebar excerpts from car-buff magazines and many large color photographs.
The subhead for each nameplate entry draws upon a slogan used in advertising. For example, the 1969 AMX’s subhead is “The first American sports car for under $3,500 since 1957” (p. 105). Showing the marketing pitch for each nameplate isn’t a bad idea, but anchoring the text with it resulted in Glatch’s narrative reading entirely too much like he was a flack on AMC’s payroll.
Also see ‘1968-70 AMX was American Motors’ answer to a question nobody asked‘
For example, his text on the 1969 AMX started out, “You had to go back to the 1957 Corvette to buy a new two-seater for less than $3,500. The AMX was quite a bargain. . . .” (p. 105).
That’s what AMC’s marketeers wanted you to think, but was it really true? I suspect that your average 10-year-old car buff knew that the AMX wasn’t a real sports car — that it was little more than a high-end Javelin with a foot chopped from its middle and the rear seat removed. Yet the AMX listed for around $700 more than a Javelin SST.
Indeed, the AMX was priced higher than a Pontiac GTO, a Ford Torino GT or a Plymouth Road Runner. Glatch didn’t mention any of this. Nor did he note that each of those cars sold much better, perhaps partly because they were more versatile daily drivers (go here for further discussion).
Glatch’s criticisms show up in revealing ways
Rarely is heard a discouraging word in Mr. Glatch’s neighborhood. One exception is when he noted that Jim Wangers described the 1970 Rebel Machine as “a flop” — but added that the car “did wonders for AMC’s image” (p. 122).
Left unexplained was why Glatch thought that was the case given how total Rebel sales fell for the fourth year in a row to under 50,000 units and American Motors lost $56.2 million (p. 124). The collapse of AMC’s mid-size lineup played a major role in the automaker’s financial struggles, yet Glatch steered clear of that topic.
Also see ‘Collectible Automobile’s 1967 Rambler Rebel SST feature is pretty but vapid’
Not that Foster’s captions did a better job of explaining why the Rebel was such a disaster. Even so, he did weigh in on other topics such as the 1974 Matador coupe, which he argued had “missed the market” because it sported a fastback rather than a notchback design (p. 171).
Foster also convincingly argued that the 1976 Pacer’s futuristic look was undercut because it didn’t include a four-speed manual transmission and radial tires as standard like many imports did (p. 163).
Glatch did slip in a few other criticisms. For example, he noted that the Pacer was initially so popular that manufacturing quality suffered. However, “In the end, AMC employees stepped up and quality improved once the assembly lines had found their rhythm, but the Pacer’s reputation was badly tainted by quality complaints” (p. 163). I don’t recall coming across that criticism before.
Elsewhere Glatch was critical of labor. When discussing AMC’s $27.5 million loss for fiscal-year 1975, one factor he pointed to was a strike. “Once again, the Kenosha union had sabotaged the company that paid them by striking rather than continuing negotiations” (p. 162). Left unmentioned was that the strike may have helped AMC reduce its “overstock inventory” (AP, 1974).
Also see ‘Did 1964 Ramblers share more parts between size classes than competitors?’
What little analysis Glatch offered could be problematic. For example, he wondered whether the 1964 Rambler Ambassador’s output of under 19,000 units — down from almost 38,000 units in 1963 — suggested that the car was too much like the Classic despite its higher price (p. 74).
He didn’t mention that the steep sales drop was heavily influenced by eliminating lower-priced Ambassador models to make room for the return of a V8 option for the Classic. The remaining Ambassador 990 models only saw a 21-percent decline for 1964 — far lower than the Classic’s 36-percent reduction.
Inconsistencies undercut book’s value as a reference
I could overlook Glatch’s pom-pom waving if his book excelled as a reference guide for AMC cars. To a degree it does — but with a meaningful problem.
One of the most useful aspects of the book is a series of tables that list specifications and production figures. Alas, these tables are only available for some years — from 1955-69 and 1984-88. The lack of tables for 1970-83 is unfortunate because those were crucial years in the decline of the automaker.
Also curious is that production figures listed in the text sometimes deviated from those in the tables. For example, the production total for the 1968 Ambassador was 54,651 units in the table and 60,872 units in the text (p. 102-103).
Also see ‘Patrick Foster’s 2013 American Motors book has more color, less analysis’
I can understand the discrepancy because I have seen varying figures in the major automotive reference books, but a more hawk-eyed editor would presumably have insisted on picking one set of numbers and using them consistently.
All of this isn’t to suggest that you shouldn’t buy The Complete Book of AMC Cars. I would think that collectors would find the splashy format and upbeat narrative to be worth the price of admission. And as an auto history writer I consider this book at least somewhat useful in quickly looking up a factoid about a specific car.
What this book doesn’t do is contribute much to resolving any of the great historical debates about American Motors.
The Complete Book of AMC Cars: American Motors Corporation 1954-1988
- Patrick R. Foster and Tom Glatch; 2024
- Motorbooks, Beverly MA
“Packard’s James Nance was doing more than gouging American Motors on the price of its engines: he also reneged on their agreement to buy stampings from AMC. Thankfully, engineers Ralph Isbrandt and David Potter had been developing a thoroughly modern V-8 engine for their former employer, Kaiser. The last thing George Romney needed was another large development expense, but the V-8 gave American Motors a powerplant on par with what the Big Three offered.” (p. 28)
“The Pacer would have to be powered by AMC’s much heavier 232 and 258 six-cylinder engines and use existing transmissions and axles. Roy Chapin claimed that, in marketing clinics, potential buyers were ambivalent about the benefits of front-wheel drive. The AMC six-cylinder engine had to be set well back in the chassis, with the rear cylinders actually resting undernearth the windshield and cowl, its location dictated by Pacer’s low hood and cab-forwar design. Serviceability was still generally good, though, aided by the forward-tilting hood.” (p. 158)
“Former CEO Roy Chapin Jr. opined, ‘I don’t think we marketed [the Pacer] as well as we should have . . . I think we should have positioned it more as an alternative to the intermediate cars than as a small car because in terms of interior space and ride, and handling it really [was] much more of an automobile than it appeared to be just by looking at the dimensions.’ Still, Pacer had all the components needed to be successful: an innovative concept, a superb though polarizing design, and advanced engineering. Just one piece was missing . . . luck.” (p. 188)
OTHER REVIEWS:
Speedreaders | Hemmings | Amazon
NOTES:
Specifications and production figures were from the auto editors of Consumer Guide (2006), Flory (2004) and Gunnell (2002).
RE:SOURCES
- Auto editors of Consumer Guide; 2006. Encyclopedia of American Cars. Publications International, Lincolnwood, IL.
- AP; 1974. “AMC workers vote set on contract.” Winona Newspapers. Published Oct. 3.
- Flory, J. “Kelly” Jr.; 2004. American Cars, 1960-1972. McFarland & Co., Inc.
- Foster, Patrick R. and Tom Glatch; 2024. The Complete Book of AMC Cars: American Motors Corporation 1954-1988. Quarto Publishing Group.
- Gunnell, John; 2002. Standard Catalog of American Cars, 1946-1975. Revised Fourth Ed. Krause Publications, Iola, WI.
ADVERTISING & BROCHURES:
- oldcaradvertising.com: Rambler Ambassador (1964)
- oldcarbrochures.org: AMC Ambassador (1974); AMC Matador (1974); AMC Pacer (1976)
I think this remark alone tends to justify your skepticism about the lack of analysis. As you’ve noted before, Chapin had a tendency to spout a lot of rationalizations like this to provide cover for the company’s lack of capital and mediocre sense of direction, and because of the underdog cheerleading toward AMC — something Foster has done a lot to perpetuate over the years — these statements often go completely unchallenged, which is frustrating.
Marketing clinics (even at Ford, which was very big on them) are often used to justify a decision that has already been made, or at least strongly supported, within the company. Their value for product planning is fairly narrow: They can be useful for developing convenience features (something Chrysler did for their second-generation minivans in the ’90s), but relying on them to shape engineering direction is nonsensical unless you’re able to provide actual points of comparison for participants to poke at.
That’s what happened for Ford with the development of the Fiesta in the ’70s. A lot of senior finance guys were very opposed to FWD because it was going to be a lot more expensive, so they insisted on a competing RWD prototype. If they had just sat some marketing clinic participants down and asked them, “Would you pay an extra $100 for FWD?” the answer would certainly have been no, but when participants were presented with the FWD and RWD prototypes side-by-side (and when they were also offered examples of contemporary FWD B-segment cars like the Fiat 127), the RWD version was a dead duck every time. So, Ford eventually grimaced and elected to build the FWD car, even though it involved a total investment of about a billion dollars.
The real problem for AMC by this time was that they were largely unable to afford anything that wasn’t essentially repackaged leftovers, even if the packaging wasn’t terminally eccentric like the Pacer. That’s not a marketing problem, that’s a capital problem, and pretending it’s not to uphold a sort of classic underdog narrative doesn’t do the history any great favors.
Who is pretending that inadequate capital wasn’t a problem? I’m merely suggesting that other factors could also be at play in the demise of independent automakers such as American Motors.
As a case in point, Nash earned a profit through 1932 — the only other automaker to do so besides General Motors. During that same time period Studebaker and Willys went into receivership and Hudson sustained substantial losses. Charles Nash’s exceptional frugality arguably allowed his automaker to better withstand the financial chaos of the Great Depression.
By the same token, American Motors arguably navigated the mid-50s more easily than Studebaker-Packard partly because its head, George Romney, was more adept at managing the automaker’s scarce resources than his overly ambitious counterpart James Nance. And after Romney departed, AMC’s two subsequent financial crises in 1967 and the late-70s were arguably deepened because his successors, Roy Abernethy and Roy Chapin Jr., overextended the automaker.
Does that mean American Motors could have survived another decade as an independent automaker if it had more competent management? Perhaps not, but it certainly could have left the 1970s in a stronger competitive position if the roughly $106 million spent on the 1974 Matador coupe and 1976 Pacer had been more judiciously invested. That might not have been enough to buy a front-wheel-drive platform, but it was presumably enough to come out with a modular lineup of reasonably contemporary RWD compact cars and SUVs.
Note that I haven’t even mentioned marketing. And while one could debate what specific product strategies could have worked best for AMC in the second half of the 1970s, the most important principal involved maximizing economies of scale with the least capital investment. This was a realm where Romney was exceptionally good and Chapin was bad (go here and here for further discussion).