Lately I have been listening to an interview David Crippen did with Richard Teague in 1985. This was a few years after Teague retired from leading the design staff of American Motors (Wikipedia, 2025). The interview was frustrating because there was no written transcript posted and the audio recordings have inaudible passages.
In addition, the conversation — which was apparently conducted in three installments over the course of seven months — struck me as being unusually disorganized for a Crippen oral history. For example, Teague made only the most parenthetical comments about his time at Packard and did not discuss some major AMC designs he oversaw, such as the 1974 Matador coupe.
Instead, Teague spent considerable time talking about show cars and the aborted mid-engined AMX/3. Crippen didn’t help by asking overly basic questions, which suggested that he didn’t do enough homework in preparing for the interview.
All in all, this interview was a missed opportunity because Teague was arguably the single most important car designer among postwar independent automakers. A better-structured interview could have helped us gain greater clarity about key design decisions at Packard and American Motors.
This is not to suggest that the interview was useless. I found it to be utterly fascinating. Teague may have displayed some intellectual blinders, but he generally came off as a smart and amiable guy who offered astute observations on a variety of topics. I will mention a few of them here, but this article is a quick initial take — not a comprehensive overview.
Why did designers unionize if teamwork was strong?
One of the things that most struck me about the interview was Teague’s discussion about the difficulties of hiring designers. He noted that American Motors didn’t have the resources to head hunt staff from the Big Three, so he needed to work harder to cultivate the talent that he was able to find. This may help explain his management approach, which he described as team oriented.
The paradox here is that Teague talked about how American Motors was the only U.S. automaker whose design staff voted to unionize. After that happened, the office culture felt less collaborative — and he blamed the unionization vote on an unnecessarily contentious decision by an upper-level AMC executive.
I came away from the interview thinking that Teague could have been an enjoyable person to work for. However, I also wondered whether he did not acknowledge ways he as a manager may have contributed to the unionization drive.
Why? Because I noticed a rhetorical pattern in the interview. When Teague talked about designs that he felt strongly about, he didn’t give adequate credence to their weaknesses. While it makes sense that he wanted to present himself in the best possible light, I detected a certain amount of denial coloring his perspective.
That strikes me as important, because during the 1970s American Motors management appears to have suffered from a dysfunctional level of groupthink that led to some catastrophically bad decisions — and they generally involved cars whose design didn’t end up selling very well.
‘Camelot years’ did not lead to much higher sales
Another revealing part of the interview was when Teague described the mid-60s as the “Camelot years.” That was when his design team worked on sporty coupes such as the Tarpon, Javelin and AMX. He seemed to relish the design freedom that was given to him in developing Mustang-type proposals.
Teague said that AMC board chair Robert Evans told him, “We gotta be different, Dick. We can’t just be like the other guy.” This operated at variance from President Roy Abernethy’s approach, which Teague described as being just like the Big Three. Teague was stuck in the middle of a power struggle between the president and board chair — and the latter eventually won when Abernethy left in early 1967.
Also see ‘Roy D. Chapin Jr. showed little self awareness when recounting AMC tenure’
“Evans was probably right,” Teague concluded. However, in his car designs he applied the “gotta be different” principle in fairly modest ways, such as by giving the Javelin somewhat more rear-seat room but otherwise not deviating a whole lot from the basic Mustang formula. The Javelin was a nicely executed but fairly derivative design.
Teague insisted that sporty cars such as the Javelin were needed to change AMC’s image from its dowdy Rambler years. However, he didn’t acknowledge that by 1971 sales had not appreciably increased even though the AMC lineup was more sprawling (go here for further discussion). In addition, Teague didn’t address how the Javelin/AMX could have been economically viable for such a small automaker when it had a unique body.
Teague could be inconsistent in his views
I have argued that Teague’s styling played a major role in American Motors losing its independence (go here). Listening to this interview mostly reinforces my take, but I need to acknowledge that Teague often displayed an admirable level of self awareness and offered thoughtful criticisms of management. This leads me to wonder if AMC’s top executives had provided him with more strategic guidance, that Teague’s designs could have sold much better.
As a case in point, if Romney had stayed substantially longer as CEO, he might have held in check what I see as Teague’s biggest weakness as a designer for an independent automaker — he had too much fondness for stylish cars in the Detroit idiom. AMC was simply too small to play that game. Romney, unlike his successors, recognized this. As such, I doubt he would have invested heavily in trendy stand-alone designs such as the Matador coupe or Pacer, which would have undercut AMC’s economies of scale even if they had sold better.
That said, I could also see Teague not being as happy designing slower-changing and more utilitarian Ramblers. As a case in point, he expressed disappointment that American Motors discontinued the AMX two-seater after 1970.
In addition, Teague seemed to be particularly invested in the AMX/3 even though it didn’t make sense for AMC to get into the high-priced, low-volume sports car business. At one point Teague even acknowledged this and wondered why a higher-level executive didn’t cut off the project much sooner.
That two-step rhetorical dance illustrates a pattern in Teague’s thinking. Another example is how he suggested that it was too bad that AMC was not able to increase the size of its V8 beyond 401 cubic inches during the muscle-car era. Nevertheless, elsewhere he argued that a proposed Tarpon sporty compact would have been a more successful car than the mid-sized Marlin even though it supposedly couldn’t have been offered with a V8 engine initially.
In criticizing the Marlin, Teague insisted that fastbacks didn’t work very well on larger cars. That makes sense to me, but that led me to wonder about his assessment of the Matador coupe. I think it was a size too large. Did he?
Was interchangeability experiment really viable?
Teague sounded particularly proud of the 1965 Cavalier show car. The car’s most noteworthy feature was that it had an unusually high level of interchangeability, which he said would have translated into a 40-percent cut in tooling costs.
You can’t tell very well by looking at the above photo, but the doors and fenders are interchangeable (e.g., left front to right back), as are the bumpers and even the hood and trunk lid. Teague sounded a little bitter about resistance to the car, which centered around the front wheels’ incursion into the passenger compartment due to the shape of the door bottoms. Teague thought that could have been worked around with further development and argued that the car was attractive.
The Cavalier reminds me of some of Brooks Stevens’s attempts at radical interchangeability (was he a consultant in this project?). It’s certainly an interesting concept, but I wouldn’t go as far as to agree with Teague that it looked all that good. To my eyes the proportions are off. Could such a car have been successful against more traditional Detroit designs unless it had a meaningful price advantage?
I could only speculate, but I would be more skeptical than Teague that this concept was strong enough to go into production.
Teague’s justifications for the Pacer don’t add up
Teague could be defensive at times, such as in discussing the Pacer. He insisted that the basic concept was prescient but contingencies interfered. These included the loss of a General Motors’-supplied rotary engine that made the car too heavy and the addition of crash-protection measures that made the car too wide.
If what Teague said was accurate, I need to withdraw my suspicion that the Pacer’s width wasn’t a product of engineering choices but rather those made by designers or product planners. It would be helpful if someone who has taken apart a Pacer door would share photos that show where the side-impact beams are positioned.
Also see ‘Six mistakes that killed the AMC Pacer — and American Motors’
From a purely styling perspective I can see why Teague was intrigued by a rotary engine, but it didn’t make strategic sense for a whole bunch of reasons. Nor did the Pacer’s quirky styling easily lend itself to the low-cost variants that AMC desperately needed. And even if all that extra glass didn’t add much weight, it wasn’t very practical and didn’t look all that great anyway.
In other words, I don’t think the Pacer would have been a whole lot more successful even if it had a rotary and was narrower. It was also telling that Teague implied that the car’s total production level was decent (roughly 281,000 units) when it was almost as low as the platform used for the decidedly niche 1968-74 Javelin/AMX (257,000 units). The Pacer was projected to sell 150,000 units per year (Hyde, 2009).
In short, I found Teague’s interview interesting enough that I would like to listen to it again and offer a more detailed discussion. However, you get my general sense of the guy. He comes off as more of a straight shooter than fellow AMC designer Bob Nixon (go here and here). That said, I wish that I could have interviewed him myself and asked more specific follow-up questions than Crippen’s.
NOTES:
Production figures were calculated from Kowalke (1999), Gunnell (2002), Flammang and Kowalke (1999), and the auto editors of Consumer Guide (2006).
Share your reactions to this post with a comment below or a note to the editor.
RE:SOURCES
- Auto editors of Consumer Guide; 2006. Encyclopedia of American Cars. Publications International, Lincolnwood, Ill.
- Crippen, David; 1985. “Richard A. Teague.” the Henry Ford. Interviews conducted Jan. 28, July 2 and Aug. 14.
- 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.
- Hyde, Charles K; 2009. Storied Independent Automakers: Nash, Hudson, and American Motors. Wayne State University Press, Detroit, MI.
- Kowalke, Ron; 1999. Standard Catalog of Independents: The Struggle to Survive Among Giants. Krause Publications, Iola, WI.
- Wikipedia; 2025. “Dick Teague.” Page last edited April 6.
ADVERTISING & BROCHURES:
- oldcarbrochures.org: AMC Pacer (1976); Rambler (1963)
PHOTOGRAPHY:
- 1964 Rambler Tarpon: marlinautoclub.com
- 1965 AMC Cavalier: Photo by American Motors via Wikipedia (public domain)
- 1970 AMC AMX/3: Photo by Mr. Choppers via Wikipedia Creative Commons 3.0. Photo slightly lighted in editing program.
I can confirm that Dick Teague really did like the AMX/3. He owned two of them he kept at his house in Franklin Village. Later on one was sold and the other went to his daughter.
When the AMX/3 was introduced to the press it was one day before Ford showed the Pantera. AMC had found out about the Ford press reveal date and decided to steal some of their thunder.
The AMX/3 might not have been such a bad idea for AMC, or at least there could have been a possibility that it did some overall good for the company. It would not have been built in the US. Just like with the Pantera it would have used some US components (mostly the engine) shipped to Italy as the entire car was built there. It sure would have driven showroom traffic for the dealers and gotten a “buzz” about AMC. The idea of “halo cars” has been successful for lots of makers, and not just in the US, to demonstrate some prowress.
Would AMC have suffered the same problems that Ford did with the Pantera? Can’t say on that but Ford had a number of issues that AMC might have avoided. 1. The early Panteras had problems caused by weak frontend structures that cause a total recall of all the cars. This can be traced to a lack of proper development. 2. Ford connected up with DeTomaso. He, the person, had a long history of over promising and way under delivering. The production expectation from DeTomaso was never achieved. Would AMC have found the same problems with their planned solutions? They did have BMW do development work so maybe they would have avoided at least some of the same problems of the Pantera.
Tidbit as all this relates to GM and the Corvette. Apparently, the Corvette folks were quite worried about the Pantera and its potential to be successful and take away the standing of the Corvette. This was a part of the reasoning for some of the mid engine Corvette proposals of the time. But as the Pantera faded away as a threat the Corvette could remain on its regular path.
In the interview Teague talked about how the bean counters couldn’t get the numbers to pencil out in such a way that the AMX/3 could be priced competitively against the Pantera. And after talking about the AMX/3 for a remarkably long portion of the interview, he acknowledged that it may not have made business sense for AMC to try entering such a rarified market niche. The AMX/3 was slated to cost around $10,000, which was more than twice as high as the two-seater AMX.
The other factor is that product-planning decisions can be a zero-sum game whereby if you spend money on X you can’t spend it on Y. Even in the best-case scenario whereby the AMX/3 could be built in a price-competitive manner, would it have been the best use of AMC’s limited dollars? Perhaps it would have made more sense if the automaker had been trying to move substantially upmarket, but that wasn’t the case. The AMX/3 seemed to function primarily as a fun little project for the design team. Even Teague implied that it was a bit of a distraction.
My attempt was at showing a way that the AMX/3 could have a legitimate justification. While writing my response I found that the development started in May 1967. https://www.autoevolution.com/news/amc-amx-3-the-early-70s-american-supercar-that-almost-made-it-into-production-170560.html
It may well have been a distraction from where the most pressing needs of new mainstream development funding were needed. But, to what extent would something so, call it exciting and unexpected, have driven positive attention to AMC and resulted in showroom traffic by buyers that would not have otherwise considered any AMC model? How much funding would of been required for the AMX/3? How would that have compared to the mainstream funding amount?
What one does see with the AMX/3 is how its body side character line is what led to the Matador coupe’s body side.
You make a good point that the AMX/3’s side styling may have inspired the 1974 Matador coupe. Teague liked the shortness of the AMX/3’s tail but I think it looked a little stubby. The Matador coupe had a more graceful arc. I just wish the car had been placed on the smaller Hornet platform and perhaps called the Javelin. I suspect that it could have been a decent seller, particularly after the Mustang switched to the Pinto platform.
Regarding high-end halo cars, when independent automakers introduced them during the postwar era they were justified by insisting that they would drive positive attention — and showroom traffic. Here I’m talking about the Studebaker Avanti, Hudson Italia, Kaiser Darrin and Nash-Healey. Alas, after the flush of newness wore off each of these cars ended up being weak enough sellers that their automakers struggled to sell off their inventory. Is a halo car a net plus when it needs to be heavily discounted in order to stop collecting dust on dealer lots?
The AMX/3 would have made more sense if AMC had been rolling in money and could afford to subsidize a halo car long enough to build a sustainable market niche. However, at that point AMC was struggling to break even after almost going under in 1967. It arguably didn’t have a margin of error — particularly after purchasing Kaiser-Jeep.
Alternately, the AMX/3 could have been most helpful if it had been introduced as part of a relatively high-end line of internationally competitive compact sedans and coupes that shared basic components and marketing buzz. In other words, if AMC had tried to become the American Mercedes. That would have been an intriguing strategy, but AMC management was too scattershot and reactive to go that direction. And, frankly, it could have been risky unless they moved upmarket gradually over the course of a decade. Romney might have been more inclined to go that direction than either Abernethy or Chapin because he had a more international outlook.
Teague’s comments about the Cavalier’s panel interchangeability are interesting. (If I recall correctly, the front and rear bumpers on the 1970-72 Hornet are interchangeable.)
The devil is in the details, but if Teague and AMC had paid more attention to this type of cost savings during the late 1960s and early 1970s, that would have freed up more money to spend in other areas – such as upgrading the interior trim, along with the steering and manual transmissions. By 1975, Consumer Reports was dinging AMC cars for slow manual steering and clumsy manual transmissions.
Unfortunately, he ignored his own counsel when designing the Pacer and Matador coupe. The Matador coupe didn’t even share panels with the sedan and wagon!
I’m baffled by his belief that GM’s rotary engine could have helped the Pacer. By 1985, it was painfully apparent that GM could not reliably execute new technology (or, at least, technology that was new to GM). The Vega’s engine, the Oldsmobile Diesel, the front-wheel-drive X-cars and the Pontiac Fiero proved that one.
One wonders how a GM rotary engine would have fared any better. Even Mazda had trouble with the rotary, and soon installed conventional engines in the GLC and other non-sports models.
Yup, the Hornet’s bumpers were initially interchangeable, which was the last vestige of the Romney days. If Teague had been that interested in interchangeability he could have at least proposed that the mid-sized and compact bodies once again shared inner-door frames on four-door models. Instead, the Hornet got a more dramatic “fuselage” shape that essentially prioritized trendy coupe-sedan styling over practicality. That was Teague’s thing — he had a decent eye for good styling but needed guidance by upper-level management who paid attention to such things as economies of scale.
Even in the 1985 interview Teague sounded like he thought the rotary engine still had promise. What I don’t get is why AMC’s bean counters would have ever allowed a fairly clean-sheet new platform to be built around an untested new kind of engine that had to be bought from another automaker. Putting aside the rotary’s likely teething problems, how could a GM-built engine have possibly penciled out compared to building their own engine? And then later AMC bought the tooling to build a VW four-cylinder engine that was incompatible with its existing product line. AMC’s lack of strategic thinking during the 1970s was really quite stunning.
Back in the early 70s the rotary was the wave of the future. Four stroke efficiency with two stroke power, ditching a lot of fiddly moving parts, what’s not to like? Rotary engines were already going in mass production cars, and For once AMC had a shot at being early adopters.
What’s not to like? In general, new technology can have teething problems, and the rotary engine obviously did. Remember that AMC wasn’t taking just a minor risk by offering the rotary as a top-end option for the Pacer like Mazda did with many of its cars in the early-70s — AMC designed its almost clean-sheet new platform exclusively for the rotary. That was a huge mistake, because when they were not able to get a rotary they had to belatedly shoehorn a conventional six-cylinder engine into the car that didn’t fit very well (the cab-forward windshield got in the way of access to the engine).
In addition, AMC was trying to buy a rotary from another automaker with a mixed reputation for launching new technology (e.g., recall the problems GM was having with the Vega engine) rather than making it themselves. Not only was AMC reliant upon someone else for quality control, but purchasing the engine was likely more expensive than if they had built it themselves. And since the Pacer was fairly low priced, that may have had a meaningful impact on their already slim profit margins. For a small automaker that struggled with profitability, that was a questionable strategy for what was intended to be a high-volume car.
Also note that Teague was still praising the rotary engine in his 1985 interview, despite its failure to go mainstream. He didn’t sound like he was willing to acknowledge that gambling on that engine had been a bad idea.
Having owned three Mazda RX-7s, yhe 13-B rotary was / is a great engine in a car that kept its value, although thirsty and emissions were a problem as regulations tightened up…but I don’t recall a Vega engine winning the 24-Hours of Le Mans.
Once again, A.M.C. had almost zero business investing money in any vehicle proposal outside of its core products that could not be a guaranteed winner. The Javelin may have seemed like a good idea in 1965-1966, but did not make enough of a lasting impression after two styling cycles to survive.