Touchdown

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

While my expected "let-down" weekend ended in so much fun with a car guy
who's just two years older than I am but who knows two hundred times as much
old-car stuff (I may never look at another post-war car again!), I'll land
on planet AMC [?] again and launch a question he threw.  "What if AMC had
taken more from its Hudson side than from Nash?  Wouldn't it have become a
more successful car company?"  (Ooh; the curse of another Boston bambino...)

That done, I'll try to focus on real [or semi-real] AMC.
   
>>
Also adding to the possibility of a console appearing
in something other than 2-dr hdtps, you don't know
what some one with some juice at the factory had
installed in a car. 
<<
>>
Why not a console, 4 speed (or floor shift)
bucket seat wagon?  Other companies offered them.  As we have seen,
Ambassadors could at least be ordered with console, floor shifter and
buckets.  
<<

Yes, in the early years when Chapin could still coach using an Abernethy
playbook, AMC did try to be many things to many people.  In the haste to
post/run on '71-'73 Mat/Amb cushion/console detail last week, I left out
more on how differences in SST/Brougham trim availability were clearly drawn
by marketing.  The choice between "luxury" nylon or "sport" vinyl was just a
way to make two or three hundred dollars more --- as laughable now as the
twenty or thirty dollar model differences in the 1930s --- in MSRP.  But
choice only works when there are more than a few buyers.

My point in tracing the specific trail of bucket/cushion/console choice was
to show how the ever-creeping economies required to keep AMC alive also
caused AMC to undercut its own limited chances for success and for survival.
While Detroit/Japan ultimately killed Kenosha, AMC itself helped them along.


>>
They often had solid reasons for not offering
'anything that fits' into differing models. It's
a matter of sales strategy. The most obvious example
I can give is the Gremlin/Hornet/Javelin V8
availability. AMC figured if you could order a Gremlin
with a 401, why would you bother to buy a Hornet or
Javelin? Thus, Gremlin was restricted to 304, Hornet
to 360 and Javelin got the 401.
<<

And, because they were always such a small player, when AMC ignored that
stratagem, they, not their competition, took the hits.  Javelin and Matador
coupe wouldn't have vied for the same buyers in 1974 had they been built by
GM, Ford (or Mopar?), but as AMC product, despite sizing and slotting in
different car categories, there simply weren't enough AMC types to make both
lines succeed, irregardless of a pony car decline.  Mustangs and F-bodies
didn't die when Javelin landed short of target (and that other "iffy"
domestic built its last E-bodies in March of 1974), but history repeated
itself a dozen (and another dozen) years later when each was married and
then eaten [semi]-alive.  Studebaker/Packard?  N-K/Hudson??      

>>
As for why the bucket restriction, well, as I figure,
the stitching pattern of the buckets is far different
from that on the wagon's folding rear seat. So the wagon's
rears mimic the regular front units only...leaving one
less piece to create and stockpile. Now, the four door
....that's a good question, as it shares it's back seat
pieces with the two door....so the bucket-matching rear
of the two door fits the four-door, too...meaning
buckets in a four door would have been an easy no-
brainer option (no matter how few get ordered). Perhaps
Mr. Mahoney has an good idea why?
<<

Fast-fading memory makes good ideas fewer every day, but I do remember that
a bucket-seated Ambassador 401 wagon done for one of the Detroit VPs was
among the not-so-uncommon "hot-rod" big cars built to specific order.  While
tales of convertible A-scheme SC/Ramblers may not be too believable, well
into the mid-to-late '70s, semi-custom creations were still being done when
a boss called.  The triple-white '78 Barcelona II coupe was latest and most
special (although some '80-up Spirit 360s were rumored to have been
factory), but not all nine [?] '75 Matadors (coupe and sedan) equipped with
[the "no-longer-available"] 401 V-8s wore sirens and "Police Department"
decals.   

Finally, to take such "they couldn't happen" a bit cars closer to today,
let's look back just five short years.

Sixty-eight 11U Camaros with 1998 VINs were built but that color was not
even available until 1999.  It was not a special package, nor limited to a
particular model (V-6 coupes and Z28 convertibles were included; not SS
[unique body parts] and Y3F package [extra tack-ons]), not special-order and
not some super-secret RPO.  (But they weren't as special as the one-off
Estes Z-28 convertible twenty years earlier; that car may be worth over
$200k tomorrow!)

No, they were GM fleet cars, later sold at auction to dealers who could sell
them off their lots.  Why were they built in the first place?  They were
required to set up the paint line so the new color would be "right" when '99
production began.

And BTW, they weren't even the rarest of 5-year-old F-bodies.  There was
only one 31U (Yikes!) Camaro.  It should become valuable too someday.  It
also was a 6-speed!

(Bright Green Metallic wasn't as wild as some green AMCs though...)  
    
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2496464570

W-ow!