Fifty years ago...

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

While you were enjoying a new '73 Hornet (nota sub Rosa: if that car's your
AMC dream, look alert if/when my '79 Spirit goes on the market; it's equally
well documented [every time driven or even started logged], even "newer"
and, in the real sad AMC world, worth but a fraction of what any comparable
"other make" model would be...), you may have missed another golden moment.
Golden anniversary, that is.

On October 1. 1954, the Studebaker-Packard merger was finalized, seven
months after James J. Nance ended his attempt to include his Packard with
George Mason's Nash-Kelvinator and A. Edward Barit's Hudson in the creation
of AMC.

On October 8, Mason unexpectedly died [of pancreatitis and pneumonia], so
George Romney took leadership of the five-month-new AMC.  His first crisis
came fourteen days later, when Packard unexpectedly exercised its buy option
on the Murray body plant --- a desperate measure demanded by the unexpected
acquisition of Briggs by Chrysler --- and Romney discovered that the
AMC-Packard body-engine agreement was neither ironclad nor reciprocal.  That
contract's legalese did not require Packard to purchase AMC-made bodies but
it did demand that AMC pay cash for Packard V-8 engines.  Nance would not
re-negotiate.

In the very month that Chevrolet's small block hit the showrooms, Romney had
to order Meade Moore (head of Nash engineering) to initiate rush development
of an AMC V-8; and get it into production ASAP.

One month later, Romney again re-organized the new AMC from the tripartite
concern (Hudson Motors, Nash Motors and Kelvinator Division) it had barely
begun to be, into a four-part structure of Automotive, Hudson Special
Products, Appliance, and Export and Securities Divisions.

Finally, that November, he named Roy D. Chapin, Jr.* as Assistant Treasurer
of AMC.  50 years ago, your AMC future was beginning.  And it was beginning
with challenges.

*While his father, who had been with Hudson since 1909, had unexpectedly
died [of pneumonia --- and today's idiots can't manage to provide flu
vaccine!] seven days before his 53rd birthday [on February 16, 1936], Roy
Jr. joined Hudson (engineering) fresh out of Yale in 1938 and entered the
sales department in 1940.  He was a regional manager of sales by 1946 (when
he was also elected to the Hudson board), the assistant Detroit zone manager
of sales by 1948 and was promoted from special representative for the Hudson
Sales Corp. to assistant sales manager of the Hudson Motor Car Co. in the
middle of 1951.  While you call him famous for becoming AMC Chairman and CEO
in 1967, Roy Jr. was first a Hudson man.

As, BTW, was another AMC feature?  The "comfortable full-sized double bed"
was available as a "sleeper kit" --- on Club and 4-door sedans --- by Hudson
--- in 1939.

Sweet dreams!

(Assuming anyone's still interested in AMC history...)