Question by David M: The American Motors Corporation never had a luxury car brand. Why is that?
General Motors Corporation has the Cadillac, Ford Motor Company has the Lincoln, and Chrysler Corporation had the Imperial. But The American Motors Corporation never had a luxury car brand. I was just wondering why.
Best answer:
Answer by William
My mom worked for American Motors in Milwaukee for many years. AMC was an outgrowth of the Rambler Co. and Nash corporation. They built small, economical cars. In fact, Nash motors was the ONLY car manufacturer in the U.S. to make a profit in EVERY year of the depression. Some years it was only in the thousands of dollars, but it was always positive. Their entire history was based on building small cars. They never tried to build a luxury car. On the plus side they did have some really good stylists. The Gremlin and the Pacer are now laughed at, but at the time, they were regarded as pointing the way to the future. None of the other manufacturers had the balls to try the things that AMC tried. A lot of their cars, like the Challenger, are pretty hot looking. They also proposed cars in the 60′s and 70′s that had open rear seats in place of the trunk. (They called them “Ramble Seats” as a take on the old “Rumble Seats” like my Model A has.) But their entire corporate culture was aimed at building good cars that were relatively inexpensive. They did get into some elite stuff, such as the Oleg Cassini designed interiors in the early 70′s. The American Eagle, with a 4 wheel drive chassis under a normal car, was also nice looking. But the “snooty” cars were foreign to the brand and not that popular. They didn’t have the money to move as quickly as Ford and GM during the first oil embargo in 1973-1974, and after that, they never had the money again to outrun the big guys. So it was a slow, downward spiral until Chrysler bought them out. They partnered with Renault for a while before Chrysler, but the Frenchies had their heads stuck up their butts. They did come out with the Concorde, though. I think the analogous situation would be the Volkswagen “New Bug”. Volkswagen made it’s reputation on small, cheap cars. Then they brought out the new “Bug” and it suddenly had a luxury car price. I always said that the new bug was a really good $ 10,000 car. Too bad they wanted $ 28,000 for them. To change the stature of a company takes a lot of effort and money, and they shouldn’t be trying to do it unless it fits in with a 30 year strategy. Unfortunately, most companies now are just dealing with an executive’s 2 year strategy to get stock and cash out, so making a change like that is not usually successful.
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