You're missing something

["Mahoney, John" <jmahoney@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I expect that many readers not taxed by King Charley or struck by Ivan the
Terrible are off to Cordova or to Chilson's, but for those left at home who
like to ride back in time, here's a story that CBS won't bother forging.
And it's all documented fact.

In the first two fiscal years of existence (1954-1956), the American Motors
Corporation lost $37,773.905 and faced what was then called "a shaky
future."  In 1957, AMC lost another $11,833,200 --- but it went on to
survive for thirty more long years as part of the "Big-5" and then of the
"Big-4."  Ma'am, just the facts.

In 2004, our remaining Big-3 American automakers (or Big-2, depending on how
American "American" is...) hold the smallest domestic share in our history
and the biggest of them is now learning what AMC and Studebaker-Packard once
knew.  If you can't sell your cars, you might have to give them away.  If
General Motors' newest model, the Oprahmobile G6, is the car of America's
future, then the future of American motors is of American Motors' past.
Those are facts.

On 9/16/51, Hudson Hornet (with Marshall Teague driving in Langhorn PA) took
its eighth "first" in that year's American stock car racing (and in 1953,
Hudson would win almost four times that many events) when Hudson sales
ranked just behind those of Cadillac.  That's a fact.

On 9/16/56, die tooling for American Motors' 1958 production began.  Unknown
to the public, the press, and even to most AMC employees, Hudson was dead
already.  The "Hudson Ambassador" mockup and the "confidential" previews
were, in fact, not fact.  There would be no more Hudson cars or trucks after
nearly four million built over nearly fifty years.  There would be no more
"fabulous" Hornets [Hudson's historically-documented terminology, not
today's flim-flam man fabrication-of-fact] until AMC revived the name for
eight compact years in the 1970s.  AMC Hornets (even the 700-some SC/360s)
were not Hudsons.

The rest is history.  Of facts.