One downside of partnering with another automotive historian on a media project is that you inevitably have to negotiate editorial details. That can be particularly challenging if one of the partners has considerably more stature.
The third episode of The Last Independent Automaker illustrates this problem. Joe Ligo (2025) is listed as the lead producer, but Patrick Foster’s historical analysis appears to dominate the episode. That wasn’t such a bad thing in the first two installments, when his take was mostly uncontroversial. However, Foster is arguably weakest in his analysis of the first half of the 1970s (e.g., 1993, 2013).
Applying Foster’s narrative to a video format has weakened it further. This is because a 30-minute episode can’t fit as many historical details as a magazine-length article, let alone a book. In addition, the The Last Independent’s script spends precious airtime on character sketches of executives that have such a positive spin that they may as well have been written by the automaker’s press office.
The episode is titled “The Odd Couple.” This refers to CEO Roy D. Chapin Jr. and President William Luneberg. Chapin was presented as a sophisticated finance and marketing guru whereas Luneberg was a tough-talking manufacturing expert.
Our dynamic duo is lauded for decisions such as investing in high-performance cars, coming out with the Gremlin, introducing the Buyer Protection Plan and purchasing Kaiser-Jeep. This is a standard Foster narrative — and in fairness it makes some good points. However, it can also be questioned in meaningful ways.
Did performance cars and the Gremlin revive AMC?
In the episode, AMC collector Josh Greenplate gave Chapin credit for “realizing that they needed to capture the baby boomer market, and the way to do that was with performance.” A narrator then itemized AMC’s racing exploits as well as muscle cars that supposedly “lured buyers to the showroom” (Ligo, 2025).
It’s true that Chapin spared no expense in trying to change AMC’s image when he became CEO in 1967 by coming out with a series of sporty cars such the Javelin, AMX, Rebel Machine and Hornet SC/360. But even after five years, production in calendar-year 1971 was less than 236,000 units. That was only 7,000 passenger cars above the bad old days of 1967, when American Motors teetered on the brink of bankruptcy (Hyde, 2009).
Just as significantly, even the Javelin likely lost money — and undoubtedly diverted scarce resources away from more rapidly updating a high-volume, mid-sized platform whose sales were collapsing (go here for further discussion).
Also see ‘Was Richard Teague’s best sporty coupe the 1973-77 AMC Hornet hatchback?’
The episode also spends a significant amount of airtime praising the Gremlin. Yes, it was a cheap way for AMC to come out with a smaller car. Yes, the quirky styling and name stood out. However, the Gremlin was woefully uncompetitive as a subcompact and diverted scarce resources from a potentially better-selling, entry-level compact coupe.
In addition, the Hornet two-door sedan was lauded for sharing its greenhouse with the four-door model. The downside of that strategy was the car’s boxy styling may have limited its sales compared to the popular Ford Maverick and Plymouth Duster, which had much sportier coupe proportions.
AMC didn’t match the competition until 1973, when it came out with a hatchback that had a semi-fastback roofline. However, sales were limited because a lower-priced coupe was never offered (go here).
On the Buyer Protection Plan and absorbing Jeep
Although I would agree with Foster that the Buyer Protection Plan was a smart idea, it should also be noted that it was a defensive move on two fronts.
First, because AMC was apparently so cash strapped that a redesigned mid-sized lineup for 1972 was aborted, so it didn’t have anything else to drive showroom traffic. Second, the beefed-up warranty was a response to a major decline in manufacturing quality since George Romney stepped down as CEO of the automaker in 1962 (go here).
To auto historians, perhaps the least controversial move of Chapin and Luneberg was to purchase Kaiser-Jeep. However, here Foster arguably painted the decision in brighter colors than it deserved. The episode noted that Jeep’s manufacturing facilities needed significant updating, but left unsaid was that AMC had saddled itself with too broad of a lineup of cars and trucks to keep current. Perhaps most ominously, the automaker couldn’t easily consolidate production in one plant if economic conditions required it . . . as they eventually would.
Also see ‘The downside of auto historians writing about their friends’
Perhaps it would have been too inside baseball for a PBS series to mention that AMC could have entered the all-wheel-drive market more cheaply if it had come out with Eagle-type models a decade earlier rather than buying Jeep. However, it would be interesting to see Foster respond to such blasphemy.
The episode’s only major criticism of management came at the end. “By 1974 American Motors executives were cocky,” Foster stated in a voice over. “They thought they were geniuses and everything they touched would turn to gold, and all of a sudden they had almost unlimited money that they could do whatever they wanted” (Ligo, 2025).
I think that “reckless” is a more accurate term for management than “cocky” — and that it showed up earlier than Foster suggested. In order for the ill-fated Matador coupe to be introduced in the fall of 1973, it would have needed to be approved well before then. Might that have been in 1971, when passenger-car sales were well below a breakeven point of roughly 275,000 units (Business Week, 1970)?
NOTES:
Production data and specifications were from the auto editors of Consumer Guide (2006), Flory (2004), Gunnell (2002) and Hyde (2009).
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.
- Business Week; 1970. “American Motors’ crucial year.” Oct. 3: p. 17.
- Gunnell, John; 1993. Standard Catalog of American Light-Duty Trucks, 1896-1986. Second Ed. Krause Publications, Iola, WI.
- Flory, J. “Kelly” Jr.; 2004. American Cars, 1960-1972. McFarland & Co., Inc.
- Foster, Patrick R.; 1993. American Motors: The Last Independent. Krause Publications, Iola, WI.
- ——; 2013. American Motors Corporation: The Rise and Fall of America’s Last Independent Automaker. MBI Publishing Co., Minneapolis, MN.
- Hyde, Charles K.; 2009. Storied Independent Automakers: Nash, Hudson, and American Motors. Wayne State University Press, Detroit, MI.
- Ligo, Joe; 2025. “Episode 3: The Odd Couple.” The Last Independent Automaker. Public Broadcasting Service. Posted May 17.
ADVERTISING & BROCHURES:
- oldcarbrochures.org: AMC Rebel Machine (1970); Jeep Commando (1972); Jeep Wagoneer (1976)
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