(EXPANDED FROM 6/11/2021)
The comment thread in the previous post about George Romney (go here) has generated a robust discussion that deserves a substantive response. I thought the best way to do so would be to expand on a story that I wrote four years ago. Yes, Virginia, we are going to do a deep dive into that old devil, the counterfactual.
Our question is deceptively simple: Would American Motors have continued to be successful in the second-half of the 1960s if George Romney had stuck around? He stepped down as CEO in 1962 to successfully run for governor of Michigan.
I find this to be an intriguing question because Romney was arguably one of the best U.S. auto executives of the post-war era. His stubbornly unorthodox strategy resulted in American Motors achieving record-breaking sales for an independent U.S. carmaker. This was a huge achievement given how hotly competitive the U.S. market had become in the early-60s.
Your conclusions could depend on your assumptions
After Romney left, American Motors declined to the point where it was eventually taken over by the French automaker Renault — who, in turn, sold it to the Chrysler Corporation.
It very well may have been inevitable that AMC would be eaten by a bigger fish due to intensifying global competition and costly new government regulations. Nevertheless, might the automaker have survived longer if it had maintained an updated version of Romney’s basic strategy?
How you answer that question can heavily depend on your basic assumptions about the postwar auto industry. Thus, I will get into the details of how Romney might have proceeded while also discussing how groupthink can color American automotive history.
Romney deviated from Detroit’s norms in three ways
Let’s start by offering an overview of what Romney’s strategy could have looked like. We obviously must make some guesses, but Romney was consistent enough in his approach as CEO from 1954-62 that we can extrapolate a plausible scenario for the rest of the 1960s. Three principles dominated his tenure at American Motors:
- Maximizing economies of scale with an unusually narrow range of passenger cars that were not substantially redesigned as often as Big Three competition.
- Focusing on compact and mid-sized cars that emphasized unusually efficient design and superior quality of assembly rather than frequent styling changes, ever-larger dimensions and big-block engines.
- Avoiding mergers and major foreign holdings.
Romney summed up his basic approach in an interview with Collectible Automobile magazine. He assumed that AMC’s best hope for survival was a lineup of slow-changing cars which emphasized quality, reliability and value. Romney suggested that the new-for-1963 senior Ramblers embodied this approach:
“If you’ll take a look at it, you’ll see that the styling was really very simple. The concept was that style was no longer a major factor with people who were basically interested in a good, dependable piece of transportation — one that still looked good, along the lines of a Mercedes-Benz (Foster, 1993, p. 98).
Romney was prescient in seeing why imports would do increasingly well in the late-60s and 1970s against style-focused Detroit fare. However, he also focused on practical cars under the theory that AMC could build them for longer periods of time without expensive redesigns. This would help counterbalance the enormous disadvantages an independent automaker faced when it came to economies of scale.
Romney’s successors rejected his approach
Romney’s principles were strikingly different from almost all other postwar leaders of independent automakers. For example, his predecessor George Mason was an early champion of mega-merger ideas and in the early-50s developed a sprawling lineup that treated the compact Rambler as an auxiliary to big cars.
Romney’s successors had much more in common with Mason’s approach than his own. Roy Abernethy, who led AMC from 1962-67, attempted to compete more directly against the Big Three with a broad and frequently restyled lineup.
Also see ‘AMC’s Roy D. Chapin Jr. succumbed to the illusion of bigness’
Roy D. Chapin Jr., who ran the company for the next decade, also developed a sprawling passenger-car lineup that paid even less attention to economies of scale. Just as significantly, he bought Jeep, which significantly expanded AMC’s foreign presence, manufacturing footprint . . . and fixed costs.
Abernethy’s and Chapin’s basic strategies were much closer to those used by the Big Three than Romney’s. In a very real sense, the Romney era represented a rejection of the standard way of running a U.S. automaker. Abernethy and Chapin represented a return to business as usual in most respects.
How would Romney respond to product proliferation?
If Romney had held to his three principles, one of the biggest questions he would have faced was how to respond to a massive product-proliferation spree by the Big Three. Whereas General Motors, Ford and Chrysler only offered one basic size of car in the late-50s, a decade later they would offer three — full-sized, mid-sized and compact.
And that was just the beginning. By the early-70s GM and Ford would add subcompact cars to compete more directly against entry-level imports. In addition, U.S. automakers increasingly augmented their family cars with niche vehicles such as a variety of personal coupes.
Also see ‘AMC’s Roy Abernethy was increasingly hemmed in but not without options’
Adding a new platform — or even a uniquely styled body based upon an existing platform — was far more costly than merely offering trim or body-style variations. GM and Ford found it easiest to offer such a broad lineup because they could spread their costs across higher volume. That was not the case for AMC, whose entire production in the late-60s often wasn’t as high as a single GM nameplate, such as the Chevrolet Chevelle.
In the late-50s and early-60s Romney increased AMC’s economies of scale by offering an unusually lean lineup. The Rambler had only two platforms, both of which were kept in production an usually long time for passenger cars of that era.
Romney deviated sharply from the standard lineup
Romney also didn’t offer the usual range of body styles. For example, in a remarkable deviation from Detroit groupthink, Rambler was the only U.S. brand that did not field a two-door hardtop or convertible for five years. And when they were finally reintroduced, they were offered sparingly.
Until Abernethy took over, only the American got a hardtop and convertible; Rambler’s top-selling Classic was only available as a sedan or wagon. He quickly changed that by giving the entire lineup a hardtop and convertible, but in the process that jacked up the automaker’s fixed costs.
Could Romney have maintained a lean lineup through the 1960s? A lot depended on the continued success of core models. Geeber (2025) rightly pointed out in an Indie Auto comment that once General Motors introduced a broad array of new mid-sized cars in 1964 that sales of the mid-sized Classic and Ambassador fell. Meanwhile, after Chrysler restyled its compacts in 1963, they arguably ate into Rambler’s traditional customer base because of their superior engineering.
That may well have been true, but I would suggest that the question wasn’t whether Rambler sales would have maintained the near record levels of 1963, but whether they would have bottomed out at profitable levels as competition intensified. We will return to this question after running through some other factors.
Could Romney have appealed to the youth market?
Abernethy’s first attempt at a sporty coupe was the ill-fated 1965-67 Marlin. Although it sold poorly, at least the car was a relatively inexpensive addition to the lineup — a senior Rambler with a fastback roofline.
His second attempt was far more ambitious: the Javelin. This Mustang competitor had unique sheetmetal. Although the car initially sold well, it likely didn’t earn a profit over its life cycle. That was a problem in light of AMC’s small size and fragile finances.
Given Romney’s penny-pinching predilections, he likely would have instead fielded a variant of an existing car. Perhaps, like the Marlin, it would have had a unique greenhouse and some sheetmetal differences such as a new fascia and taillights. With the right styling that could have worked.
However, it was also possible that sportiness was alien enough to Romney that he would have been as unsuccessful as Abernethy. During his AMC tenure he only offered two somewhat sporty cars: the 1957 Rebel and 1961-62 American convertible.
The Rebel has achieved some fame as an early muscle car even though it had four doors, but the American suffered from an ancient platform. The redesigned 1964 models were a big improvement, but Car and Driver magazine was still scathingly critical of its roadworthiness (go here for further discussion).
Romney likely would have avoided horsepower race
I think it a reasonable guess that Romney would have eschewed his successors’ efforts to join horsepower race, particularly by increasing the size of AMC’s largest V8 engine from 343 cubic inches to 390 and ultimately 401. It is also hard to see him offering any boy racers such as the outrageous 1970 Rebel Machine.
All this doesn’t mean that Romney couldn’t have offered some appealing sporty cars. The IKA-Renault Torino showed how the stodgy American could be transformed into a decent grand touring coupe. By the same token, a better-tuned and styled American coupe could have made a fine entry-level sporty car that appealed to people who wanted a cross between a U.S. compact and an import.
Note that the “youth market” didn’t necessarily mean “sporty” — at least as Detroit automakers defined it. The Volkswagen Beetle and microbus were fairly utilitarian but nevertheless developed a cult following among the young. AMC might have better appealed to this crowd if it adopted more international design features that made its cars fun to drive.
Romney showed signs of investing in better engineering
As Geeber (2025) noted, AMC would have needed to invest in better engineering. Even if the automaker had steered clear of more exotic features such as independent rear suspension and four-wheel brakes, it could have significantly improved the roadworthiness of its cars by upgrading the steering, brakes and handling. Some archaic features also needed to go, such as suspension trunnions and vacuum-operated windshield wipers.
During his tenure Romney placed enough of an emphasis on improving the mechanical aspects of Ramblers that I could see him continuing to do so more than Abernethy or Chapin, both of whom mostly focused on styling.
In addition, AMC cars tended to be “decontented” under Chapin, such as by getting rid of reclining bucket seats just as they were becoming a popular feature among imports. I would argue that this would prove to be a penny-wise and pound-foolish strategy.
Senior Ramblers would not have mushroomed in size
One thing we can say with a fair amount of certainty is that Romney would not have significantly upsized the senior Ramblers like his successors did. This is not because he was dogmatic about only producing compacts. From 1958-61 the top-of-line Ambassador was offered on a 117-inch wheelbase, which made it almost as long as the full-sized cars of that era.
Even so, Romney would likely have not approved of the 1969 Ambassador being stretched to a 122-inch wheelbase and marketed as a full-sized car, as Chapin did. Indeed, it was unlikely that the nameplate would have been placed on even a stretched 116-inch wheelbase, as Abernethy did for 1965-66.
A key reason why was economies of scale. After the early Rambler Ambassadors sold poorly, Romney decided that the nameplate was not going to generate sufficient sales to justify the added costs of giving it a longer front end. Thus, the 1962 Ambassador was downgraded to a trim variant of the Classic.
I suspect that he also would have maintained the Classic’s general size through the 1960s. The 1963-64 models were only 190 inches long, which was akin to a typical compact. However, the Classic was also 74 inches wide, which gave it shoulder and hip room comparable to mid-sized cars. Where the Classic came up a bit short was in rear leg room and trunk space.
Abernethy was right to make senior Ramblers roomier
Abernethy’s 1967 redesign added two inches of wheelbase in the back seat and a taller, boxier deck for more trunk room. I could see Romney taking those steps, but without increasing the car’s width and length for stylistic reasons. A late-60s senior Rambler could thus have been quite roomy but much smaller and lighter than Big Three mid-sized cars. Indeed, they could have straddled the compact and mid-sized classes — much like a mid-70s Ford Granada or Plymouth Volare.
This would have been a significantly different strategy than what Abernethy and Chapin used. Their mid-sized offerings became increasingly indistinguishable from the competition in size, price and features.
In addition, up through 1970 the Ambassador was given more emphasis in order to gain a foothold in the full-sized field. That effort ultimately failed but served to starve AMC’s mid-sized offerings of more frequent styling updates, models and marketing. Abernethy and Chapin mistakenly put the promise of higher profit margins per car over sales volume.
The 1964 Rambler American might have been smaller
One of the biggest wildcards of Romney staying at AMC was how the American would have been redesigned for 1964. Among the design proposals was a car that was narrower by around an inch and shorter by four inches than the American which reached production (Foster, 1993; p. 92). Note that Romney left American Motors in early 1962, so Abernethy had at least a little room to put his stamp on its development.
In theory, a smaller American could have put AMC in the best position of the U.S. automakers to respond to rising import sales. In practice, it is unclear as to whether that would have translated into better fuel economy than more traditionally sized compacts. Even Abernethy’s American turned out to be relatively heavy, perhaps partly because it shared some components with the senior Ramblers. The 1964 American weighed around 130 pounds more than a comparable Ford Falcon (go here for further discussion).
Another ramification of downsizing the American was that it might not have fit even AMC’s new small-block V8 engine. The only other U.S. car that did not offer a V8 in the second half of the 1960s was the moribund Chevrolet Corvair. Would the lack of a V8 have turned out to be a fatal flaw or an advantage in positioning the American as an import fighter?
Quality control would not have taken a back seat
One of Romney’s biggest goals in the early-60s was to improve the Rambler’s quality of manufacture. This may have been a major reason why the brand managed to maintain its popularity in the face of an armada of newer compacts from the Big Three. However, this was partly achieved by unusually long production runs for the Rambler’s platforms.
That came to an end in 1963 when the senior Ramblers were redesigned. Consumer Reports (1963) complained that they were not assembled with their “usual high standards.” This might be understandable given typical first-year teething issues. The problem was that under Abernethy, quality control never bounced back. Indeed, the new-for-1967 senior models were even more riddled with problems. This undoubtedly hurt AMC’s reputation.
Buyer Protection Plan hints at the selling potential of quality
If Romney had stayed, he likely would have maintained his focus on manufacturing quality. The 1963 models would presumably have still had had quality glitches, but he would have been more aggressive in getting back to the point where Ramblers were viewed as having superior build quality. I suspect that this could have been a selling point for AMC cars given soaring sales of imported cars. They were often viewed as put together better than U.S. cars.
Those skeptical of this strategy might consider the impact of AMC’s Buyer Protection Plan. It appears to have stabilized AMC sales when introduced in 1972. The initiative, which included an unusually strong warranty for that era, was a surprisingly Romneyesque move. It was arguably the single most successful step Chapin took to give AMC cars a unique selling point.
The Rambler name wouldn’t have been ditched
One of the most obvious signs that Romney’s successors didn’t think much of his strategy was their phasing out the Rambler name. Abernethy began this process because he apparently thought the Rambler’s economy-car image would get in the way of moving upmarket, particularly with the Ambassador and Marlin. Chapin seemed more concerned about giving AMC a youthful vibe. Thus, when the compact Rambler was redesigned in 1970, it was renamed the Hornet.
If Romney had stayed longer at AMC I could see him trying to update the Rambler’s image rather than killing off the name. This is partly because he had worked hard to build up the brand, so was personally invested in it.
However, Romney also might have had a practical reason for sticking with the Rambler that has gone unmentioned in automotive histories: Changing a brand name is difficult, particularly for a small automaker with limited resources. In the 1950s Romney had gone through the process of discontinuing the Nash and Hudson brand names in favor of the Rambler. Why throw away all of the hard-won brand equity?
The big question is whether the Rambler’s image would have been stronger under Romney than his successors. So much would have depended on whether American Motors offered cars that were viewed as competent import fighters rather than frumpy econo-boxes for old ladies. In the Romney quote shown earlier in this story, his mentioning that the 1963 Rambler looked like a Mercedes-Benz suggests that he might have understood what needed to be done.
Could Romney have updated Rambler’s image?
Indie Auto commentator DECG50 (2025) shared an example of a family member who as late as 1974 refused to drive an AMC Hornet because she “wouldn’t be caught dead driving a Rambler.” This illustrates the difficulty of improving the reputation of American Motors cars.
Even so, the Hornet epitomized Chapin’s aggressive effort to run away from the Rambler image. The Rambler brand name was demoted to a nameplate and then dropped altogether, the logo and dealer decor were dramatically redesigned, and new markets were entered with cars that had much trendier styling than during the Romney era.
By 1971 AMC was no longer your father’s Rambler. But despite all of those changes, the automaker still struggled to sell enough cars to achieve profitability. The main thing that temporarily helped American Motors was an oil embargo in 1973-74 that spiked sales of smaller, more fuel-efficient cars.
Could Romney have done any better? We should start by acknowledging the obvious: A longer tenure does not necessarily translate into continued success. A case in point is Lynn Townsend, who did a pretty good job of leading Chrysler in the 1960s but utterly flopped in the 1970s. All executives have a shelf life.
Also see ‘Five questions about Aaron Severson’s take on American Motors’
A big reason why Townsend ultimately failed was that he let his earlier success go to his head. Romney was not immune from this affliction. The failure of the 1961 Ambassador was partly a product of him overestimating AMC’s ability to make inroads in the full-sized car field once compact sales soared. That said, Romney did learn from his mistake.
Okay, so would Romney have been a net plus for AMC?
What can be said with confidence is that Romney would have challenged Detroit groupthink in more ways than Abernethy or Chapin. That could have translated into more solid sales — at least if the success of the imports vis a vis AMC in the late-60s and early-70s was any indication.
The graph below shows total U.S. car and truck market share for independents and foreign automakers. By the mid-60s AMC made up the bulk of sales from the remaining independents, so this graph gives a useful sense of why Romney was correct to be so focused on better competing against the imports.
Could he have succeeded? I am hedging my bets because the devil is in the details. For example, the redesigned 1964 American could have been nicely sized but failed to offer much of a fuel-economy advantage. Or it could have been ugly.
By the same token, Romney could have been as flat-footed than Abernethy in trying to appeal to the youth market, such as by not upgrading the roadworthiness of Ramblers. Here the record was mixed. Romney stuck with old technology such as suspension trunnions too long, but he also made continuous improvements in the 1956-62 Rambler’s handling.
I would also agree with Geeber (2025) that Romney could have been pressured into making bad moves such as investing in a money-losing pony car if sales slid enough that dealers panicked. In short, any number of things could have gone sideways.
With those caveats in mind, I suspect that Romney would have been a net plus if he had stayed through the rest of the 1960s. This is partly because his successors made so many basic mistakes. However, it is also because Romney displayed a greater understanding of the import threat than other postwar U.S. auto executives.
NOTES:
This story was originally posted on June 11, 2021 and expanded on June 26, 2025. Product specifications and production figures are from Flory (2005), Gunnell (2002) and the auto editors of Consumer Guide (1993, 2006). Market share figures are from Wards Auto (2017).
Share your reactions to this post with a comment below or a note to the editor.
RE:SOURCES
- Auto editors of Consumer Guide; 1993, 2006. Encyclopedia of American Cars. Publications International, Lincolnwood, IL.
- Consumer Reports; 1963. “Intermediate Sixes.” April issue: p. 177.
- DECG50; 2025. Commentator in “George Romney talked about why he gambled on the Rambler.” Indie Auto. posted June 26 at 2:50 p.m.
- Flory, J. “Kelly” Jr.; 2004. American Cars, 1960-1972. McFarland & Co., Inc.
- Geeber; 2025. Commentator in “George Romney talked about why he gambled on the Rambler.” Indie Auto. posted June 26 at 11:21 a.m.
- Gunnell, John; 2002. Standard Catalog of American Cars, 1946-1975. Revised Fourth Ed. Krause Publications, Iola, WI.
- Foster, Patrick R.; 1993. American Motors: The Last Independent. Krause Publications, Iola, WI.
- Wards Auto; 2017. “U.S. Total Vehicle Sales Market Share by Company.”
ADVERTISEMENTS & BROCHURES:
- autohistorypreservationsociety.org: Rambler (1962, 1965); AMC racing (1972)
- Marlin Auto Club: 1964 Rambler Tarpon concept car
- oldcaradvertising.com: AMC (1972); AMC Matador (1974); Rambler (1956, 1964)
- oldcarbrochures.org: AMC (1974); AMC Hornet (1973); AMC Marlin (1967); AMC Matador (1978); AMC Rambler (1969); Chevrolet Chevelle (1964); Ford Granada (1976); Nash (1952); Rambler (1962, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1967); Rambler American (1962)
Good abd thoughtful piece, Steve. I would be very curious to see your renderings of a better proportioned Tarpon and the facelifted ’67 you discuss in the post.
CJ, a while back I made the mistake of upgrading my computer’s operating system, only to find that it ruled obsolete the Photoshop program I use to make fake car designs. Adobe has jacked up the cost to the point where I can’t justify buying the newest version of the software until I generate sufficient revenue from Indie Auto to cover its costs.
One option would be to start running “real” ads, but I don’t want to get on that treadmill. My goal has instead been to build up Indie Auto’s donor base and, if that doesn’t prove sufficient to cover the website’s basic costs, to put up a partial paywall.
Thus far I have focused on building readership. I’m not sure it is the right time to begin putting more of an emphasis on fundraising. This is a long way of telling you why there haven’t been any fake car designs posted lately.
I wonder if alternatives to Adobe like Gimp or others online editors like Pixlr might fit the void left by your Photoshop program?
Stephane, that’s a good point. I just haven’t gotten around to doing the research. I’d need a program that worked with a Mac, which hopefully won’t limit the choices. Frankly, I’d rather stick with Photoshop because it does what I need it to do and I know my way around it, but Adobe seems determined to price gouge — and not just with that program. The state agency where I used to work before I retired stopped using Adobe Acrobat because it had gotten too expensive as well.
I’m so sorry about that Steve, your “fake” car designs are great. Nevertheless, your writings on AMC have also been great and a real revelation about how there are no small egos at small car companies.
On the prospect of the 1964 Rambler American being shorter by 4-inches and width by 3-inches compared to what reached production, fitting an AMC V8 should not be too much of a challenge depending on its size and weight relative to the Ford Windsor V8 and SBC V8.
The Ford Windsor has been fitted to South African versions of the Ford Capri Perana and Ford Granada Perana by Basil Green Motors as well as the Ford Sierra XR8, while the SBC was used in the Chevrolet Firenza Can-Am.
Right. Here in the U.S. Chevrolet managed to stuff a V8 in the fairly narrow Vega-based Monza. I would think that whether a V8 would have fit in the American would have come down to the specifics of its design. I was surprised that the 1964 American wasn’t engineered to fit AMC’s existing V8. In theory it should have fit because the car was almost the same width as the previous-generation Rambler Classic. And as mentioned here, some dealers succeeded in installing the old 287 V8 into the American. So the newer-generation 290 V8 might plausibly have fit into an even narrower American.
To me the meta question is whether a V8 option would have blurred the American’s image as an import fighter.
It would depend on what the European benchmark for this downsized Rambler American was as well as what else AMC had in the cupboard as far as smaller engines were concerned in place of the AMC Straight-Six and later Straight-Four engines.
In the case of the latter do they do anything differently but brought forward a lot earlier compared to real-life, provided they can afford it or do they buy in from another company that is linked to them in some way?
As it is this what-if Rambler American would appear to roughly slot into the D/E-Segment categories, with potential to form the basis of a smaller C/D-Segment model.
The V8 option would cater to those looking to downsize without having to give up their love of the V8 as well as more performance originated customers, a related 90-degree V6 in the manner of the Chrysler LA would allow AMC to move away from the Straight-Six in their quest to downsize their range without eventually becoming a handicap.
AMC came out with a brand-new six-cylinder engine in 1964. My guess is that Romney had a major influence on the engine because of its emphasis on durability (e.g., use of seven main bearings).
If Romney had stayed longer, might he have chopped the six into a four-cylinder engine? The relatively low sales of the Chevy II’s four was not cause for optimism, but it is also hard to imagine GM and its dealers giving the engine much emphasis as the horsepower wars heated up in the mid-60s. In addition, if Romney had offered the American in a four, that could have solidified the nameplate’s reputation as an import fighter even if most buyers ultimately went with a six.
Note that Abernethy went in the opposite direction by making the American compete price-wise directly against the Big Three. Sales declined until Chapin came in and slashed prices. By 1968-69 I would think that a four-cylinder variant would have further boosted sales.
A V8 option could have appealed to the same type of boy racers who went for the V8 in the Gremlin. Aside from straight-line performance, the Gremlin V8 wasn’t a terribly good car because it was too nose heavy. However, such an engine might have made practical sense in an American wagon, where weight distribution wasn’t quite as big of a problem and towing capacity was potentially relevant.
Could the AMC Straight-6 have been further reduced to below 3-litres if required, with a related Straight-4 in turn reaching displacements as low as say the Argentinian and South African versions of the Chevrolet 153 4-cylinder engine that were reduced to 110 (e.g. 109.7) and 120 (e.g. 119.6) cubic inches respectively (although the 110 4-cylinder was by way of the 194 6-cylinder)?
IMO, the independents were doomed anyway. Romney bought AMC time by running it not so much as a big 3 company, but a division of such a company, with its own niche in the corporate heirarchy. This worked fine until the various divisions became all things to all people. Look at Chevy in 1966. You could get everything from a Corvair to a Caprice, with everything in between. I’m not that familiar with Mercedes in the 60s, but I’m pretty sure they came with three platforms plus a sports car. A second question-Could you afford Japanese quality on American wages?
Kim, you’ve nicely summed up the dominant perspective. I would offer that VW did perfectly fine in the U.S. with a narrow product niche in the 1960s. So did Honda in the 1970s and first half of the 1980s. I don’t know if Mercedes makes such a good apples-to-apples comparison with AMC because — at least from the incomplete data I have been able to find — it tended to have higher global volume, and competed in more profitable and less vulnerable product niches.
Not sure what you mean about affording Japanese quality — AMC under Romney had already offered a higher level of manufacturing quality than was typical of popularly priced Big Three cars of the early-60s.
You are right. VW had a narrow product niche. However, except for a couple of also rans like Renault and FIAT they had no real competition in their market sector. AMC was superior to the big three in quality, but that wasn’t a very high bar. From what I can remember, the Asian cars weren’t a serious factor until after Romney’s tenure. I was a kid in Green Bay at that time, and the only Japanese vehicles I saw were a few Land Cruisers, which were more like CJ-5s than the SUV/wagon of today. They were well thought of fit and finish and initial quality, but the Japanese simply did not understand the abuse US drivers dished out to their cars, nor the copious amounts of road salt in winter. They were good while they lasted, which wasn’t long.
It’s true that VW didn’t have a huge amount of competition in the early-60s, but it ramped up by the end of the decade. Even so, for 1968 VW sold more than 582,000 units in the U.S. That was around twice as high as AMC even though VW fielded a much narrower product range — all based on one basic chassis. Of course, within a decade VW would start to copy its bigger competitors by offering a larger range of vehicles, but then Honda tried the lean approach. That brand sold quite well in the U.S. despite its relatively small number of entries.
In time Honda would also start to play follow the leader by adding the Acura brand. I’d argue that in the long run Acura would prove to be a net minus for Honda, but that’s another debate.
I don’t really know how to compare the “quality” of the early-60s Rambler to the imports. In a way that doesn’t matter. Consumer Reports lauded Rambler for its superior “fit and finish” compared to other U.S. cars. That undoubtedly helped Romney reinforce the idea that the Rambler offered something distinctly different from standard Detroit fare. If he had stayed, I suspect he would have placed even more emphasis on quality of assembly. Unlike Abernethy, he wasn’t trying to sell his cars primarily on styling and image.
Would it have worked? I suspect so. Whatever else one can say about the caliber of 1960s imports, it was quite clear that the public was hungry for something different. That didn’t change in the 1970s despite Detroit’s entrance into the subcompact field.
One measure of quality could be a manufacturer’s warranty costs per vehicle. Not perfect, but a start.
One car-buff comment: After the ’53 assembly problems, the ’54-and-up Studebakers were also often cited in magazine tests as being superior in fit/finish too. Just sayin’.
But that was after the disastrous cost-cutting launch of the 1953 Studebakers with thinner=gauge sheet metal and frames that forever plagued Studebaker with a bad quality reputation to its end as an automaker.
There are a number of imports that successfully offered “less is more” in the 60’s and 70’s; Volvo comes readily to mind. Rambler started to gain a following for practical and higher quality offerings in the early 60’s but obsolete engineering and later poor quality threw the early success’ away. I am old enough t remeber then and by the early 70’s both issues put “stink” on whatever product they offered.
Interesting article on Hagerty by Joe Ligo on the AMC proposed business plan by the CEO loser to Gerry Myers. It identifies the extent of the problems AMC faced with more development money needed than they could generate. Some interesting facts about the financials.
Here is the link to the article. McNeely’s actual memo to the board is in the article. It lays out that there was an inevitability for problems with the car side of the company – too much investment needed for insufficent profit. What made money was Jeep and it required investments that would at least be profitable. Highly questionable if Romney could have solved the dilema either.
https://www.hagerty.com/media/automotive-history/the-man-who-wanted-to-save-amc-by-killing-its-cars/
In retrospect, McNeely’s approach looks more realistic. However, I am curious as to why he didn’t call for moving Jeep production to Kenosha, because it had a more well-rounded set of facilities with higher production capacity. I would also suggest that the situation wasn’t as either/or as presented in choosing between cars versus trucks. For example, in more recent decades we have seen a variety of examples of platform sharing between SUVs and passenger cars, so perhaps there was a way to come up with a compromise that allowed AMC to maintain a foothold in the passenger-car field with at least something akin to the Eagle.
My sense is that if Romney had stayed he would have focused like a laser beam on the compact market. At the very least he could have built a lineup of cars that eclipsed the Chrysler A-body compacts in breadth of models — and that could have translated into a profitable niche which carried the company through most of the 1970s. However, once CAFE regulations hit AMC would have had to make a pivot.
Meyers seemed to assume that AMC needed to go downmarket with a FWD platform, which all but required tying up with a foreign automaker. A less-discussed alternative was to go somewhat upmarket with a line of internationally-flavored compacts that ultimately shared a platform with a downsized Jeep line — all built out of Kenosha.
By the time Chapin retired it was effectively too late to save AMC’s passenger-car aspirations. And given development lead times, I wonder whether McNeely could have gotten his proposed downsized Jeeps into production before the bottom fell out of the U.S. economy.
Chapin stayed too long. If he had left in early 1975 — when it was clear that the Matador redesign had been a bad idea — that might have given McNeely more room for a restructuring.
My take is that McNeely identified that AMC had too many development funding needs than they could hope to cover properly. He also identified that the compacts and sub-compacts lacked sufficient profitability to warrant large scale investments yet at the same time they had notable technical catching up needs to be “market standard.” For one reason or another AMC had not made those tecnical changes early on and now they had multiple antiquated solutions crying for money in a low margin segment.
AMC was on a business tightrope. Need more money to pay for the product developments they need to undertake. But, their traditionally strong market segment has been invaded by GM, Ford and Chrysler. Each of them have the money for the product developments. AMC was also facing lower amoritization rates against their competitors too so their unit costs were going to be higher – more profit squeeze.
Although projecting the demise of AMC is not fun, McNeely did foresee what the inevitable situation was going to be. They needed a merger/takeover in their future. Would Romney have faced up to this too? If under Romney would he have been able to secure a better partner than Renault? Or, is Romney being viewed as the “great saviour” because he he solved one crisis but was long gone when the inevitable other one couldn’t taint him?
If you go back and reread what I have written about Romney, I have never presented him as a “great savior.” I think talking about Romney’s approach is helpful because he did a somewhat better job than other postwar U.S. automotive executives in recognizing changes in the American market such as the import threat and the need for smaller and better-built cars. He also understood economies of scale far better than any other postwar executive of an independent automaker. Those would prove to be big pluses in the late-50s and early-60s — and arguably still had utility in the years ahead.
However, I have also itemized what I thought were the mistakes that Romney made during his tenure (go here) and in the above essay raised questions about whether he would have been as successful if he had stayed.
It strikes me as reaching to think Romney would have stuck around through the late-70s, but if a Romneyesque successor had been in charge I suspect that AMC could have been strong enough that it didn’t need a Renault-style tie up. That was necessary because Chapin had driven AMC into the ground. It had no other choices.
No doubt Romney would have been better for AMC than the Abernethy or even Chapin. But he would have faced new challenges. Superior manufacturing quality was certainly a selling point, but VW offered that to buyers, along with a youthful, counter-culture image. AMC cars were definitely not “youthful.”
As for the quality of the 1963 models – I get the impression that was the result of AMC introducing an all-new body and interior, and a new way of manufacturing the cars (with the Uniside construction technique). It wasn’t because of rushed development or using cheaper materials, as was the case with the 1967 Ambassador, Marlin and Classic.
Based on Romney’s comment about the Mercedes-Benz, I suspect that he had the potential to shift AMC in a more international direction in its car design and engineering if he had stayed. Of course, that’s pure speculation, so who knows.
I agree that the problems with the 1963 cars were the result of them being new — and if Romney had stayed he would have been much more aggressive in cleaning things up. However, that still could have undercut the brand’s reputation at a time when competition was becoming increasingly intense. AMC arguably didn’t have any wiggle room for mistakes.
That’s why I would criticize Romney for not learning from the quality-control problems of the redesigned 1956 models. Instead of coming out with the high-volume models in 1963, he could have instead introduced a relatively low-volume model first in 1962 or 1962 1/2 (e.g., a two-door hardtop halo model) with the goal of fixing the inevitable production bugs before rolling out the rest of the mid-sized lineup.
But Romney resigned in February, 1962, to run for governor of Michigan, so it was up to Roy Abernathy to make the final decisions on the 1963 Rambler marketing decisions.
I’m confused by your comment. The decision to bring out the redesigned Classic in 1963 was Romney’s decision, not Abernethy’s.