I have mixed reactions to Joe Ligo’s (2025) fourth episode of his six-part television series on American Motors. This 30-minute program focuses on the automaker’s two final big-ticket redesigns before losing its independence: the 1974 Matador coupe and 1976 Pacer.
The episode offers a few interesting historical nuggets about how American Motors navigated the mid-1970s. However, Ligo presents such a sanitized view of management’s reckless decisions that the script could have been written by the automaker’s media-relations office . . . with only a few fairly petty exceptions.
Why the lack of journalistic independence? After all, Ligo’s series, called The Last Independent American Automaker, is being aired on the Public Broadcasting Service, which has a proud tradition of showcasing tough-minded documentaries.
I could better understand the public relations tone of the episode if Ligo had been covering a current controversy in the U.S. auto industry. Automakers have been known to put considerable pressure on media outlets that run what they perceive to be negative coverage.
Ligo didn’t have that potential problem because American Motors disappeared decades ago and a goodly number of the automaker’s mid-70s leadership have died. So why the sanewashing?
Four factors could have helped to fuel sanewashing
Perhaps one reason for the episode’s lack of journalistic rigor was the lead writer Patrick Foster. Although he may be one the most knowledgeable AMC historians, Foster also has problematic biases, such as a publicly stated friendship with then-CEO of AMC, Roy D. Chapin Jr. (2018). His writings have largely given Chapin a free pass, yet ironically Foster’s first AMC book (1993) was still more critical of mid-70s management decisions than the narrative presented in Episode 4.
Why is that? My perception is that as Foster has achieved more prominence for his automotive histories, his writing has taken on an increasingly p.r. tone. Perhaps he sees that as a way to sell more books. There would appear to be far more fanboys of specific car brands than serious students of automotive history.
Another factor could be that Ligo — who is listed as the lead producer of the series — appears to have more background in producing feature stories than “hard news” (The Drive, 2025). It also struck me as telling that in a recent article Ligo (2025b) wrote about the The Last Independent Automaker, he focused on the logistics of finding vehicles to film. Sure, visuals are important — but not in the absence of strong historical analysis.
I also wonder whether funding for the series impacted the tone of coverage. Ligo (2025c) raised almost $23,000 in small donations through a gofundme.com portal and garnered a number of grants. Even if there were not explicit strings attached to any funding source, might Ligo have tried to avoid ruffling the feathers of contributors whose views aligned with AMC management?
The Matador coupe was given a thorough sanewashing
The biggest problem with the episode’s script is that it has a stenographic quality — it repeats with only modest questioning the talking points of management.
For example, the Matador coupe was presented in a mostly positive light: “With strong initial sales, a few NASCAR wins and a role in a James Bond movie, it was off to a good start.” The main negative noted was that the coupe did not share body panels with the sedan and wagon, thereby “making it more expensive to manufacture.” However, this was stated so obliquely that the casual viewer might not pick up its significance to AMC’s survival as an independent automaker.
Also see ‘Was Mac’s Motor City Garage wrong about the 1974-78 Matador coupe?’
The Matador coupe was one of AMC’s three most costly new designs of the 1970s, but over a five-year production run output totaled only around 106,000 units. In his first AMC book, Foster estimated that the coupe’s develop costs were so great that it “had to sell over 80,000 units” per year (1993, p. 190).
If that was correct, then American Motors may have taken a financial bath on the coupe. And because it was a stand-alone design, the automaker’s mid-sized sedans and wagons had to soldier on with one of the oldest designs in the U.S. auto industry — and a 1974 facelift that was downright ugly.
Episode treated the Pacer somewhat more critically
By the same token, the Pacer was presented as an innovative idea that suffered from bad luck, such as General Motors’ failure to sell AMC a Wankel engine. Voice-over commentators argued that a last-minute switch to a six-cylinder engine was the reason for the production Pacer’s increased weight — which resulted in mediocre gas mileage for such a short car.
Left unexplained was why the Pacer was almost as heavy as much larger cars such as the Ford Granada and Plymouth Volare even though they had similar drivetrains. I would have also liked to have seen Meyers pressed on why the Pacer had not been designed from the outset to fit an AMC six-cylinder engine given long-standing development issues with the Wankel, GM’s spotty record with new technology and the extra cost of not building their own engine.
Also see ‘Six mistakes that killed the AMC Pacer — and American Motors’
Unlike with the Matador coupe, the episode acknowledged that the Pacer had serious problems. Those included controversial styling, manufacturing quality lapses and strategically questionable marketing. Also acknowledged was that Pacer sales collapsed after its promising first year and that by 1977 overall AMC passenger-car sales fell to dangerously low levels.
I was most surprised by Foster’s response to Vice Chairman R. W. McNealey’s proposed strategy of dropping passenger cars to focus on the still-hot-selling Jeep line. Foster said that “probably his idea was the best, but it was just too painful.” That struck me as a shift. In one of Foster’s (2013) AMC books he lamented the phasing out of the brand name by its new-found foreign partner Renault.
Lauding Ligo’s effort while calling for deeper analysis
Just to be clear: I think that we should encourage people like Ligo to produce auto history content — particularly when they represent the next generation. We should also have some grace when criticizing first-time ventures. If Ligo dares to brave the slings and arrows of a follow-up project, I would imagine that he would find a variety of ways to do it better. My hope is that he would pay more attention to deepening the script’s analytical rigor. I would suggest that you can do so while still being entertaining to a general audience.
My frustration with Episode 4 is that television programs have the potential to reach far more people than small-time blogs like mine. Because of this, the narratives that Ligo presents could color the viewpoints of a whole lot of people about why American Motors lost its independence.
Also see ‘Richard Teague’s styling helped to kill American Motors’
As I typed that last sentence I heard in the back of my head some other automotive historians who have insisted that AMC was “doomed” anyway. Over the long run that may have been the case, but I would respond: Why can’t we be analytically sophisticated enough to hold more than one idea at a time in our heads?
Yes, tightening regulations and foreign competition were making it harder and harder for American Motors to survive on its own. However, the automaker might have lasted longer as an independent or at least negotiated a better deal with a partner if AMC’s management team in the 1970s had not operated in such a consistently reckless fashion. We historians should not be in the business of “normalizing” rank incompetence by corporate management — even if we count some of them as friends.
NOTES:
Specifications and production figures are from the auto editors of Consumer Guide (1993, 2006). Automobile Catalog (2025), Flory (2013) and Gunnell (2002).
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.
- Automobile Catalog; 2025. “Full detailed specifications listing and photo gallery.” Accessed May 28.
- Flory, J. “Kelly” Jr.; 2013. American Cars, 1973-1980. 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.
- ——; 2018. “My Friend Roy.” Hemmings. Posted Sept. 23.
- Gunnell, John; 2002. Standard Catalog of American Cars, 1946-1975. Revised 4th Ed. Krause Publications, Iola, WI.
- Ligo, Joe; 2025a. “The Pacer.” Episode 4 of The Last Independent Automaker. Aired on PBS May 5.
- ——; 2025b. “How My Team Tracked Down Over 35 Weird, Original AMC Cars To Film For Our Documentary.” The Autopian. Posted May 23.
- ——; 2025c. “The Last Independent Automaker – a documentary.” gofundme.com. Accessed May 28.
- The Drive; 2025. “Joe Ligo.” Accessed May 28.
ADVERTISING & BROCHURES:
- oldcarbrochures.org: AMC Matador (1974)
About the only thing AMC did correctly in terms of product development in the seventies was the Hornet. The Matador, Pacer and Gremlin were truly different, but not necessarily in a good way. It is my opinion these products irreparably harmed AMC. At least the downsized Jeep and the crossover derivatives from the Hornet were delivered in the 1980’s but by that time AMC was pretty much a lost cause.
I wouldn’t include the Gremlin as one of AMC’s mistakes; given the state of their finances the Gremlin approach was a very innovative and cost-effective way to get into the subcompact field. Where AMC went off the rails was in designing the ‘74 Matador coupe as a standalone product instead of a more common design that would have included redoing the sedan and wagon; even if the coupe had sold well (which it didn’t), it condemned the already stale sedan and wagon to a slow death (and yes, their Jimmy Durante facelift should have resulted in Teague’s immediate firing).
Even worse, the failure of the Matador (and of the ‘75 Pacer) drained the company of the money it should have spent on redoing the Hornet, which was already in its fifth year on the market by 1974 and rapidly growing stale as well.
I agree that the Gremlin was a good way to plug a market segment with a very cheap solution.
As for the horrible nose job, I might want to temper the critisizm of Teague without understanding the corporate dymanics that got to that solution. It would make a large difference on how the blame gets spread around if that was something dictated by non-Design management and approved over the objection of Design.
As we look at this time period of AMC they had a long list of areas that needed addressing with a financial pie too small to do all that needed to be done.
The 1974 Matador sedan and wagon’s nose had a similar shape as the extended snout on an aborted 1972 reskinning. It arguably worked a lot better on the latter design because all of the sheetmetal was new, so the grille could be lower and better integrated. In addition, the prototypes shown in Foster’s 2013 AMC book didn’t have 5-mph bumpers, so they looked a lot less bulky. Meanwhile, if you look under the hood of a 1974 Matador coupe, you’ll see inner bracing for an elongated snout, so that leads me to wonder whether it was shared with the sedan and wagon.
I remember seeing sketches in car-buff magazines a few years earlier of a Hornet with an similar elongated snout, so that suggests to me that this was a theme that Teague had been developing for multiple models. In other words, it seems like a reasonable guess that he came up with the original idea. Perhaps once management decided that only minimal money would be spent on facelifting the 1974 Matador sedan and wagon, it was also decided to carry over the inner bracing from the aborted reskinning because it would also fit on the longer-nosed coupe.
So, in a sense Teague may have been stuck with the basic shape but was unable to make it work better by redesigning the front fenders as well as the hood. However, it would surprise me if management came up with the theme to begin with. In addition, I would be surprised if Teague was micromanaged on that truly ugly grille. If he had the clout to get management to produce the Matador coupe and the Pacer, surely he could have talked them into a better looking grille for the 1974 sedan/wagon.