I’ve always been fond of AMC. They’re like America’s lovable losers of the car industry, always seeming to be up against the ropes, coming up with clever solutions to problems while never actually, you know, completely figuring things out. But they had some pretty significant achievements in their Nash/Hudson past, like making the first really mass-produced unibody cars or being an early evangelist for fully reclining seats or keeping the torch of American compacts aflame.
In my head, I sort of think of Peak AMC as starting in the early ’70s and going into the ’80s; the 1950s and 1960s AMC is Rambler-era for me, and that feels different from the Gremlins, Hornets, and Pacers era, which amped up the weirdness. This 1969 brochure I stumbled upon is from the tail end of the Ramber-era – it was the last year of the Rambler name, even – but I think has some seeds of the glorious weirdness that AMC would blossom into in the ’70s.
It wasn’t all Ramblers, though. AMC had an attempt at a premium sedan, too, the Ambassador, and that’s a good place to start to talk about some odd brochure choices. You can see a hint of this up top, in that top graphic, where the text references “wood sides of the ’20s” because AMC had some weird 1920s fixation when it came to luxury. I think those dogs own that wagon, too.
They sort of explain this 1920s fetishization on this page, where they talk about LaSalles and Pierce-Arrows and Packards, suggesting that the Ambassador is the successor to those storied marques. They note the car’s “massive grille and bold, almost straight-line sides, only slightly sculptured” and while I get the big grille stuff, was having a minimum of sculpted sides a big deal for luxury car buyers?
And what the hell is up with that gray, funereal-seeming photo there? Those grayscale sculptures in that grassy field and the cement-gray car all add up to a sort of necropolitan kind of look that I don’t really understand in this context? What are they going for here?
They’re also excited to show the back seat there in a ’20s-style interior, for some reason. Were late ’60s car buyers really craving the look of interiors from almost 50 years prior?
They also had the Rebel line below the Ambassador, and there was a nice big Rebel wagon that you could take to… a muddy blasting area? What’s going on here, exactly? Look at this group of people:
We’ve got three hard-hatted workers, excavating or mining or something, something involving blasting and no radio transmitting. That one worker is also looking right at you like he wants to jump from that photo and stab you, over and over again. What’s his problem?
And who are the other people there? We have the winner of the local Eleanor Roosevelt lookalike contest there, and who may be her partner, rolling his eyes while sitting on the tailgate. Are they local politicians inspecting some new building site? Are they just woefully lost tourists who drove into deep mud and a blasting zone? Are they looking at those maps to figure out how to get the hell out of there?
The brochure also talks about AMC’s muscle car, the Javelin, yet chooses to focus on some unexpected traits of the car. Like how much glass area it had. Because that’s what people used to do with their muscle cars, people would pull their GTOs and Mustang Mach Is up next to one another and whip out tape measures to see who had the most glazed area. The winner would get the pink slip of the loser!
They also made special note of the Javelin’s “massive contour bumper” which, again, was exactly what every gearhead drooled over, massive bumpers with contours. It is a cool bumper, I’ll admit, and I like seeing AMC’s famous flap-type door handles called out, as these would see use on pretty much every AMC in the ’70s and ’80s.
For the Rambler part of this brochure, I think what I like best are these group photos of the imported cars the Rambler was competing with. They note that the Rambler had way more cylinders and power than most of the competition, but look how damn cute that Fiat in the front row is.
They did the same with the Rambler wagon and these imported wagons, which include a Volkswagen Type 3 Squareback and a Datsun and a Fiat and Toyota and maybe an Opel?
Oh, AMC. You give and give and give!
Images: AMC
It makes perfect sense once you realize those are Weeping Angels and the car is the TARDIS from some time period when its chameleon circuit was still functional.
The brochure seems to have a Wind In The Willows theme, with the Ambassador spending a week at Toad Hall and the wagon set to board a steam launch on Windermere… but then how did the same wagon end up with Bob and Jennifer from the Ketchup Advisory Board getting lost on their way to Lake Woebegon?
Anyway, the last thing I associate with Pierce-Arrows and Hispano-Suizas is “bold, almost straight-line sides”
The choices made in the Ambassador brocure photos seem to presume their potential buyers fancied themselves as Great Gatsby protagonists.
The glaring guy in the hard hat looks a bit like Dean Stockwell in/around his Blue Velvet days. With a bit of Dennis Hopper thrown in for malice.
Those dogs are Salukis, right? Don’t see them much in real life.
Salukis, yes, I think you’re right..
Those long snouts are very attractive (to me). 😉
Sight hound trait, like greyhounds. which is weird, because it means they hunt by sight, not scent.. despite the nose..
A family in my town had an Ambassador SST stretch limo in the late ’80s
https://www.hemmings.com/stories/1969-amc-ambassador-limousine/
(Check out how they did the doors.)
The story was their dad went to an auction and this was the last car left at the end, nobody wanted to even bid on it. If it wasn’t free, it was too cheap to pass up.
My pal and his brothers had permission to hoon the crap out of it, and eventually I think it got crushed. What fun it was to turn brodies in a stretch, though.
Lesser third-world dictator vibes there.
Once the Office of the Governor of Wisconsin, the chairman of American Motors and maybe the funeral home in Kenosha had theirs, there were no customers left.
God to find a nice 2-door 68-69 SST Rebel without an engine swap…
I learned to drive on a 1968 Rebel hardtop with the six and power nothing. Very handsome car though.
Popular Science did car owner surveys in those years and one thing they found is that the Ambassador had the highest average owner age of any car they surveyed. So yes, buyers of that specific model were nostalgic for the 1920s.
That’s what came to my mind when I saw this. Ambassador buyers in 1969 were likely not only older but conservative in behavior and spending. Someone born in 1915 would have been 54 in 1969, in their prime earning years and longing for the days “when people who made money could keep it” instead of having it taxed to pay for things like public schools and urban renewal. And, after all, Bill Mitchell was aiming GM’s styling in the direction of Cords and Duesenburgs and other interwar classics with cars like the Riviera, Toronado and Grand Prix, while landau bars had landed on the Thunderbird’s fattened B-pillars. Maximalism was big, even if AMC’s slightly sculptured side panels missed that target by a mile.
It should be noted, in the top shot, the car is parked dock side (a common brochure trope). And, I think, the picture of the 1920s style sofa might be inside the yacht that is at the dock.
Jazzy. Glassy. Guess all the good adjectives were taken. They forgot bankrupt.
Wold’ve been funny if they used “gassy” trying to refer to gassy milage.
Nowadays we have almost no glass area and they actually have to install cameras so we can see out without hitting anything.
So, blindy?
Throwback styling references to the roaring 1920’s are what Ferrari should have done recently: Fast and Luuce.
It helped sell AMC, so perhaps an electric prancing horse?
You mean like those merry-go-round escapees that you use to drop a quarter into at the strip malls?
The period from ~1965-~1975 was very interesting in the import vs. domestic car wars.In 1965 most buyers bout the most car they could afford, “most” meaning biggest, heaviest, largest engine. As time went on, buyers started to recognize other factors in their buying decisions, things like economy, build quality, handling, etc. and things started to change. The wars were starting to increase in 1969, and Rambler was still suggesting that you should buy cars by the pound.
That fiat in the middle of the last photo REALLY gives VAZ2102. I know one is basically a rebadge of another but if this brochure is of its place and of its time, does that basically mean that a soviet car was officially sold in the US?
It’s a Fiat 124. The original Lada was based on the 124 beefed up for Russian conditions and was sold in Canada. The 124s sold in the US were all Italian-made, though.
For anyone who knows the Doctor Who episode “Blink,” that photo is terrifying.
The position of the bird-looking one in particular indicates that IT HAS MOVED BECAUSE SOMEONE ALREADY BLINKED.
A DEATH-DEALING DUCK!
Dammit, you beat me to it.
Best scary aliens they ever dreamt up
The adipose were pretty funny.
I’m a huge fan of massively contoured bumpers, but that’s not relevant here.
I want to add my appreciation of “necropolitan”. I imagine every goth yout’ might aspire to that as they advance their careers.
But would they drive a Nash Necropolitan?
Oh, that’s surprisingly difficult to say.
Harold’s Jaguar hearse from Harold and Maude would’ve fit right in there.
Yes, Salukis of the time were known to favor Ramblers, and then AMCs, for whatever reason. However if those are actually Borzois it is an unusual photo, since they have always preferred Ladas.
“necropolitan”
Nice.
thank you for noticing!
Ah yes, like when your neapolitan ice cream all melts together.
“Don’t make me key this CB mike.”
That profile shot of the grey Ambassador, where it looks like it’s about to run straight over that girl with hand outstretched in futile resistance to her fate, is some Grade A rich man narcissist bullshit. Go ahead an read the text and try not to puke a little.
“Once upon the 1920’s people who made money could keep it. And buy things with it. Great estates. Yachts…”
“And run over prole children with impunity. Because daddy toils in your factory, and what the fuck is he going to do about it? If he raises a fuss, there’s a Jazzy bumper for his other little urchins“
Intro scene to a horror movie called Blasting Area:
Shirt and Tie Dan there has already lost his pupils – indicating the virus has taken hold. He eats the map (the only map) then attacks Eleanor Roosevelt. Macho men all scatter but my dude with the Charles Bronson stare stays to fight.
Fast forward to the end and CB Stare drives slowly out of Blasting Area in the Rebel with what’s left of Shirt and Tie Dan strapped to the (standard) roof top travel rack.
Rating the impossible
Then there’s the impossible. Using the front bench seat as a sofa. Oh, I had a cousin who’s parents did that, although I think their’s was a Buick. However, that’s not the impossible part.
WHO IN THE HELL DOESN’T COVER THEIR SOFA IN THICK CLEAR PLASTIC IN 1969!
Don’t let the opulent-looking interior design fool you, if there’s no plastic cover then it must be a rumpus room sofa. Only the Good Sofa – the one kept in the living room for Company – would have been covered in plastic.
Oh, look who had cousins that could afford to get a sofa that didn’t come from a junkyard..
We were safe from plastic at home, but our 1962, 1965, 1968, and 1971 Ramblers had those god awful plastic seat covers. The cars were all traded in in 3 years so what was the point?
Fiat 850 in the US? That must have been interesting…
Why does it look like somehow that wagon in the topshot has parked on a British train station during the LNER Teak days? And with Greyhounds? Where did they find that…railway coach? Is that a railway coach? And where would it have been in Wisconsin? I know we got a Gresley A4 and carriage for the National Railway Museum up in Green Bay but I don’t think we had those in the ’60s…
Where on Earth is that AMC parked?
Another Wisconsinite here.
I think it’s on a dock on the Mississipi river. Lots of rope and a loading ramp.
I’m actually an Illinoisan (sorry, though if it helps I’m from downstate?) But, yeah, that might just make sense. Right next to a riverboat or something of the like.
Ever been to McHenry, IL? Was it named after your ancestors?
I’ve been in the county (Illinois Railway Museum is there) and if it’s named after the same guy the fort in Maryland is named after, then yes.
Apparently, according to Wikipedia, it was named for Major William McHenry, a prominent US Army officer in the Black Hawk War.
I think it’s a 20s wood motor yacht
That would make sense. Might be on Lake Michigan (or Winnebago) or the river. I see the handrail now. Definitely not a train.
Lake Michigan would have been right outside the plant. Drive off the assembly line and go pick up your dogs in Kenosha’s harbor.
And trains don’t usually have ramps. The train-to-platform height is predictable, so trains use steps. Boat-to-pier height is not predictable
Not sure what’s going on in that photo, but the guy sitting in the back of the wagon looks kinda like the guy whose face melted off when they opened the Ark of the Covenant.
They got lost, wound up in a construction zone, and he is exasperated at his wife turning the whole thing into a party.
A LOT of car styling cues in the 1970s were based on details from luxury cars of the 1920s and 1930s, that was sort of what most people pictured when they thought about opulence. Someone in their 60s was born in the 1900s/1910s, and that was their frame of reference based on influences in their teenage years and young adulthood
I’m going with the lost tourist theory; note the detour sign. Temu Eleanor there is either flirting with the construction guy or explaining how she levitated to that spot, because how else did she keep her shoes so clean?
That top shot: so much brown. It’s like the first wave of ’70s brown-ness washed over Kenosha.
I always thought AMC had the best low-profile door handles.
And, most importantly, aren’t motor powered for function but, also, remain functional to open a door when your battery is dead.
While I would think not bad for aero.
Those really are pretty cool-looking.