You Should Probably Watch A Bunch Of Old AMC Commercials To Start Your Day

I was talking to my morning colonic guy (I use a different people for my mid-day, mid-afternoon, early evening, and late evening colonics, because that’s the only way to get around my state’s archaic legal restrictions about how many colonics one can get in a given day) about the Good News regarding the long-defunct American Motors Corporation (AMC). It’s a crime that most people born after, say, 1995, are somehow unaware of the joys AMC once provided the world.

The amount of time I had during my colonic was, of course, limited, so what I usually do in situations like that is provide a few old AMC commercials for my intended AMC-proselytizing target to watch, stored on a cheap tablet I buy in bulk from Alibaba, so it’s no big deal if they decide to keep it or break it in half in a rage as they realize all of the AMC joy they’ve been denied all their lives.

The set of commercials varies pretty wildly, but these were the ones I had on my most recent batch, and I think it would be beneficial for you to watch them too, from a soul-health perspective.

We’ll start with a commercial about AMC’s muscle car, the Javelin:

Ah, finally, a commercial car that shows a powerful muscle car never actually being, you know, pushed to do any muscle car things. And, even better, the person that owns it seems genuinely inconvenienced by his choice of car, though I do like his excuse not to drag race being that he has a “bowl of goldfish” on the seat next to him.

Why’d that guy even buy a Javelin? He seems to do nothing but suffer with that choice.

This next commercial, from 1973 and for AMC’s compact car (made from a cut-down Hornet), the Gremlin, shows how the Gremlin can, let’s see, outrun an angry person on foot after the Gremlin driver makes the dickhead move of stealing a parking space:

AMC chose some interesting things to focus on in their commercials, as we saw in these first two, where it shows a person seemingly ill-matched with their car and the other using the car to both start and avoid a road rage situation.

But what about people who want to really abuse their cars? AMC has you covered!

One notable thing about this commercial is that at least there’s a bit of gender parity here, because most ads from the ’60s that showed comically bad drivers tended to focus on women; at least here we have some men portrayed as being terrible drivers.

I know what you’re thinking, though: what about the six-foot party sub industry? Are the highly specific needs of this crucial industry adequately addressed by AMC’s advertising? Great question. And I’m happy to say yes, AMC did understand the importance of this crucial market of oversize sandwich makers, and their wide-body Pacer was up to the challenge:

Did I already use this commercial before in an article about the AMC Pacer? Yes. Yes, I did. I also used this other Pacer ad:

In that other article, I likened the Pacer wearing the skin of what looks to be a Ford LTD, and noted how much this resembled the macabre Aztec xipe-totec ritual. I was pretty excited by that reference. I still am.

Since we’re talking about Pacers now, I guess we can also watch this 1975 review of the Pacer from our man Bob Mayer:

It doesn’t fare too badly, considering how badly most ’70s American cars did. The rear seat trim coming off is a bit embarassing, though, as is the fuel economy, which was under 15 mpg in the city and only 16 on the highway. Yikes.

Okay, one more: this one isn’t exactly a video, it’s more of an old-school filmstrip, one used for AMC dealers to help sell Hornets:

I know the video quality is pretty poor, but I do love the illustrative style here, especially the extended visual metaphor of customers testing cars as literally “trying on” cars:

Okay, Cold Start is late enough, so I’ll stop here. Besides, I have my mid-morning colonic in 30 minutes, and I need to prepare!