The first-generation Marlin gets no respect, particularly compared to the two-seater AMX. The Marlin tends to be treated as one of American Motors’ biggest flops. Meanwhile, the AMX has been lauded as a valuable halo car that helped change AMC’s dowdy image.
What often goes unmentioned is that the AMX sold almost as poorly as the original Marlin. For 1965-66 AMC produced almost 15,000 Marlins. This was a few hundred less than AMX output in 1968-69.
Both nameplates likely lost money but the AMX may have spilled more red ink. Whereas the Marlin was merely a new body style based on the mid-sized Classic, the AMX used a radically shortened floorpan from the Javelin.
The Marlin was introduced in February 1965 as a Rambler, but for 1966 was called “Marlin by American Motors.” Why not change the cars rather than throw away the Rambler’s brand equity?
One reason why the two cars were — and still are — viewed differently is because the AMX more closely fit Detroit groupthink.
Foster called AMX ‘awesome,’ Marlin a ‘failure’
As a case in point, Patrick Foster all but gushed while listing the AMX’s high-performance features, which mirrored those of the Big Three’s sporty coupes. He described AMX as “awesome” and a “true Grand Touring machine,” (2013, pp. 99-100). In contrast, Foster dismissed the Marlin as a “dismal failure” that was a “perfect example of what happens when an old man tries to decide what a young man’s car should look like” (p 85).
Foster went on to insist that “there was nothing wrong with the Marlin’s styling” (2013, p. 85). His beef was with the decision to place it on a mid-sized platform. AMC should have instead followed in the footsteps of Ford, whose compact-based Mustang was wildly successful.
Although advertised as a “sports car,” the 1968-70 AMX was merely a two-seater Javelin with high-end equipment. No wonder it sold poorly (Old Car Brochures).
Foster is likely correct that the Marlin would have been more popular if it had stuck with AMC stylists’ original idea. The 1964 Tarpon show car offered a fastback similar to the Marlin but was based on the compact American (Wikipedia, 2015). However, I would agree with those who have argued that the Marlin suffered from styling so awkward that it undercut the whole point of the car.
The weird lip below the trunk lid resulted from designers wanting the fender corners to jut out like fins while still using the Classic’s relatively flat bumper.
For example, an Automotive Quarterly writer called the Marlin “the ugliest vehicle yet to come from Detroit” (auto editors of Consumer Guide, 2015). And AMC designer Bob Nixon dismissed the design as “one of our worst show cars, I think, and one of our worst production cars” (Foster, 2014).
American Motors ignored its Hudson heritage
The Marlin is an example of how an automaker can misfire when it enters a new field. This was only the fourth two-door hardtop American Motors had developed since it was formed from a merger of Nash and Hudson in 1954. Between 1958 and 1962 AMC didn’t even offer any two-door hardtops.
The homely 1963 Rambler American was the first new two-door hardtop developed by American Motors.
This helps explain why AMC didn’t have much stylistic DNA to draw upon when it decided to come out with a sporty coupe in the mid-60s. What might have made the most sense was to build upon the heritage of the early-50s Hudson Hornet, with its aggressive stance and legacy of NASCAR victories. Alas, up until Hudson alumnus Roy D. Chapin Jr. became CEO in 1967, AMC ignored this branch of its corporate family tree.
Instead, the Marlin echoed the 1949-51 Nash’s bulbous fastback. Two-tone paint gave the design a tapered, “fishtail” look.
The 1949-51 Nash had a fishtail-like fastback design that sold well despite its aging platform (Old Car Brochures).
In theory, a full fastback could have worked. However, the proportions can be awkward when applied to a family car body. A relatively short hood and long deck can make the C-pillar took overwhelmingly large. The 1966-67 Dodge Charger is a good example.
The 1966-67 Dodge Charger’s full fastback was even more massive than the Marlin’s because it did not taper inward and had odd ridges along the roof edges (Old Car Brochures).
You want a coupe that looks good or is roomy?
The Marlin’s fishtail shape could have resulted in a less massive C-pillar than the Charger’s. Unfortunately, AMC management decided to give the Marlin unusually generous headroom for a fastback.
Paul Niedermeyer (2014) said it best: “That forced the roof line to stay horizontal for way too long, and the overly-long extended rear side windows only added to this set of issues. Sorry, this is not cool. It was much cooler to be jammed into a crowded rear seat with limited headroom.”
Behold, the Marlin’s large C-pillar — as seen from the moon. The unusually thick and tapered roofline was reminiscent of an opossum.
AMC designers have complained that CEO Roy Abernethy ruined the Marlin’s lines by insisting that the roofline’s height be increased (Marlin Auto Club, 1996; Foster, 2013). That argument has some credence, particularly if it caused designers to tack on an outer-ring chrome band around the windows that draws attention away from the overly thick roof top.
Even so, a lower and flatter roofline would have exacerbated the Marlin’s stretched toffee look. This resulted from using the overly squat door windows of hardtop Ramblers combined with long rear-quarter windows and a full fastback.
The 1965-66 senior AMCs had an angular look that worked better in a notchback. Output for the 1966 Rebel surpassed 7,500 — almost 2,000 more than the Marlin (Automotive History Preservation Society).
AMC designers Richard Teague (Wikipedia, 2015a) and Bob Nixon (Foster, 2014) later argued that the design concept would have worked better on the smaller American platform. However, Niedermeyer (2014) was correct in pointing out that the Tarpon looked pretty awkward too.
The compact Tarpon suffered from the same stretched-toffee look of the Marlin (AMC press photo courtesy Marlin Auto Club).
Over time AMC got better at styling small coupes
Within a decade AMC got a lot better at designing sporty coupes. The 1968 Javelin’s semi-fastback look proved to be one of the most lauded of the late-60s. However, the Javelin’s downside is that it had very little family resemblance to any previous AMC product.
Indeed, the Javelin had a “me-too” quality to it, with an upturned rear that mimicked the 1965-66 Ford Mustang and coke-bottle side styling similar to the 1965 Chevrolet Corvair.
The Javelin’s semi-fastback roof preserved rear-seat headroom and had better proportions than the Marlin’s. Too bad that it didn’t look more like an AMC (Old Car Brochures).
The 1973 Hornet hatchback was the first AMC sporty coupe that successfully integrated AMC’s design heritage with efficient packaging. The swept-back C-pillar and taillights drew from Rambler styling cues. Meanwhile, a tapered fastback hinted at the Marlin without repeating its ungainly full fastback profile.
The 1983 Hornet hatchback’s C-pillar had a vaguely Marlin quality but stopped well short of the full fastback treatment (Old Car Advertisements).
Unfortunately, this was peak AMC. The automaker would develop only one more small sporty coupe — the 1979 Spirit liftback — but it had a generic look.
The 1979 Spirit liftback lacked the lovely curves of its predecessors. The car looked generic — and sold accordingly (Old Car Brochures).
Of course, AMC would also take another stab at a mid-sized sporty coupe in 1974. It’s too bad that the Matador coupe’s unique sheetmetal was not shrunken down to the Hornet chassis and offered as the next-generation Javelin. Such a car would have looked even better than the Hornet hatchback.
Instead, AMC repeated its biggest mistake with the Marlin, which was to assume that the bigger the sporty coupe, the bigger the profits.
Fake Marlin integrates first and second generation
Let’s return to the first-generation Marlin and sketch out how it might have turned out at least somewhat better.
The fake Marlin shown below goes for style rather than roominess. The roofline is lowered, the rear-quarter window is shrunk and the fastback slope is increased. The deck is given the illusion of being shorter via coke-bottle fenders, wraparound taillights and European-style bumpers. Weird rear-quarter body sculpting is ditched and rocker-panel chrome is mostly blacked out.
Fake 1966 AMC Marlin. Click here to enlarge (base image courtesy Old Car Brochures).
These are not terribly original ideas — AMC adopted many of them when the Marlin was restyled for 1967. The result was a much cleaner design except for two problems. For starters, a three-inch increase in width and slab-sided sheetmetal made the second-generation Marlin look ponderous.
Even worse, the Marlin switched to using an Ambassador front end. This gave the 1967 model better proportions because of a four-inch longer wheelbase ahead of the cowl, but the the more upright fascia clashed with the fastback body style.
For 1967 the Marlin’s fastback looked better but clashed with the more luxurious quality of its Ambassador front end (Old Car Brochures).
In a comment in Curbside Classic, Ate Up With Motor (2014) described a “withering review” by Car Life magazine, which dismissed the 1967 Marlin’s resulting look as “confused” (Clarke, 2004; p. 97). That’s a good summary statement.
Half-assed marketing didn’t help 1967 Marlin sales
Marlin production fell to a hapless 2,545 for the 1967 model year. This was far lower than AMC’s top-of-line notchbacks, where volume surpassed 12,000 for the Ambassador DPL and 15,000 for the Rebel SST. It apparently didn’t help that the Marlin was priced midway between the SST and DPL but offered many of the luxury features of the latter.
The rationale for the Marlin was reduced in 1967 when regular hardtops were given semi-fastback styling (Old Car Brochures).
One contributor to the Marlin’s dismal sales may have been a deemphasis in AMC marketing. The 1967 full-line brochure buried the Marlin behind the Ambassador and Rebel. That’s not surprising because AMC’s notchbacks were arguably industry leaders in styling for 1967.
Thus, the irony of the 1967 Marlin. Teague quite rightly called it the best styled of the Marlins (Wikipedia, 2015b). Even so, this wasn’t enough to keep the car viable when AMC’s regular hardtop was restyled. They received a semi-fastback look with a resemblance to the Marlin but better proportioned. The regular hardtop was also more practical, both in terms of rearward visibility as well as usable trunk space.
There’s a place in the world for a fastback
One could reasonably argue that the market for full fastbacks was small enough that the Marlin — no matter how good — never had a chance to bust the sales charts. As a case in point, the Ford Mustang’s fastback generated only 20 percent of that car’s total production between 1965 and 1973.
AMC bragged about the Marlin’s trunk space, but its lid opening was small (Old Car Brochures).
On the other side of the coin, Ford’s Torino GT fastback outsold its sister notchback coupe by a three-to-one margin in 1968-69 and the entire Charger line in 1970. In addition, Fairlane 500 fastback sales were roughly even with the notchback during 1968-69 (go here for further discussion about the fastbacks of the late-60s).
This suggests that AMC might have been more successful with a mid-sized fastback if it had been offered as a Classic/Rebel in a number of trim levels. In addition, why didn’t AMC play to its practical reputation by offering a fold-down rear seat and even a hatchback?
The 1966 Charger offered the practical features one would expect from Rambler. Meanwhile, the Marlin was the epitome of a frivolous styling exercise (Old Car Brochures).
The 1966 Charger outsold the Marlin by an eight-to-one margin despite a roughly $600-higher price tag. As Niedermeyer (2014) noted, the Charger offered more “cool” features such as hidden headlights. However, I suspect that the Charger’s unusually versatile interior packaging may have been a plus for at least some buyers. In contrast, the Marlin was merely a styling exercise with a marginal trunk.
Whereas the Marlin was hurt by too many compromises, the Matador coupe represented the opposite: The design was so sporty that it couldn’t adapt to a market shift toward luxury (Old Car Brochures).
AMC made even bigger mistakes with Matador coupe
Since this is a halo car, for the moment let’s put aside utilitarian considerations. If the Marlin didn’t have so many stylistic beginner’s mistakes it might have generated more sales — and respect. Alas, AMC didn’t have the right touch. Although the company would get good at compact coupes, it never figured out the secret to success in the mid-sized class.
Most notably, the 1974 Matador coupe had better-integrated styling than the Marlin . . . but its emphasis on sportiness failed to satisfy a market increasingly obsessed with broughamtastic luxury.
Unfortunately, the Matador coupe wasn’t just a body style that could be quietly discontinued after sales collapsed. The car had unique sheetmetal whose high costs AMC likely had no hope of recovering (see further discussion here). At least the Marlin proved to be a small mistake.
NOTES:
This is an expanded version of a story that was originally posted April 4, 2016. Production figures calculated from the Standard Catalog of American Cars, 1946-1975 (Gunnell, 2002). Dimensions are from the Classic Car Database (2015).
Share your reactions to this post with a comment below or a note to the editor.
Clarke, R. M.; 2004. “AMC Marlin: A Reflection of Difficulty, Built in Small Numbers.” Reprinted from Car Life, April, 1967 in AMC Rambler Limited Edition Extra 1956-1969. Brooklands Books, Surrey, UK.
Paul Niedermeyer’s (2023) recently reposted story about Volkwagens of Brazil offers a helpful addendum to our Scirocco discussion. The automaker’s Brazilian arm went the farthest in giving the Beetle chassis a variety of more modern […]
The Matador “was so sporty that it couldn’t adapt to a market shift toward luxury”. Seriously? It was boring, with a peculiar front end that looked like it was designed by a Martian, & overweight. “Sporty”? On what planet?
Kevin, I gather that you don’t like the Matador coupe. I actually don’t either — I think it was a disaster that went a ways toward killing AMC as an independent automaker. That said, I’m perplexed by your comment. AMC’s intent was clearly to produce a sporty-looking mid-sized coupe. Perhaps my comment would make more sense if you took a look at this story: “Should AMC have given the 1974 Matador coupe a luxury spin-off?”
And I’m not seeing how the Matador was, in any fashion, “sporty”, leaving off ugly or not. That strikes me as suggesting the Eldo or Toro was “sporty”. Ad copy claims to the contrary, they weren’t. Anything much bigger than a Nova has no business calling itself “sporty”, unless it’s got a) over 400hp or b) a prancing horse or trident in the grille badge.
The Matador “was so sporty that it couldn’t adapt to a market shift toward luxury”. Seriously? It was boring, with a peculiar front end that looked like it was designed by a Martian, & overweight. “Sporty”? On what planet?
Kevin, I gather that you don’t like the Matador coupe. I actually don’t either — I think it was a disaster that went a ways toward killing AMC as an independent automaker. That said, I’m perplexed by your comment. AMC’s intent was clearly to produce a sporty-looking mid-sized coupe. Perhaps my comment would make more sense if you took a look at this story: “Should AMC have given the 1974 Matador coupe a luxury spin-off?”
And I’m not seeing how the Matador was, in any fashion, “sporty”, leaving off ugly or not. That strikes me as suggesting the Eldo or Toro was “sporty”. Ad copy claims to the contrary, they weren’t. Anything much bigger than a Nova has no business calling itself “sporty”, unless it’s got a) over 400hp or b) a prancing horse or trident in the grille badge.
I guess that it’s too bad you weren’t in AMC management at the time and knocked some sense into their heads.