Hot

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

"AMC is the next 'big' thing!"

"AMC prices are really rising!"

"AMC is soaring in popularity!"

"AMC musclecars are totally hot!"

Final comment courtesy Paris Hilton (media mannequin with sloe eyes and
slower mind) who thinks "hot" is the hottest [sole?] descriptive in use.

Not!  

Whether Beverly babes or Podunk people think about AMC at all is totally
irrelevant: "cool" AMC cars will be the next "hot" collector-car choices
when even "cooler" Big-Three models become too "hot" for old-car buyers to
handle.  AMC will finally be the "big" thing it tried to be, AMC fans will
be the envy of everyone and well-written AMC history will become as well
read as will well-made new AMC parts become well stocked by, well, every
AutoPepNapZone.  Sit back and watch it happen.  Savor the ultimate triumph
of "tiny" AMC.  The little little-car car company is happenin'.

Hot!

Not!

"AMC will blossom as a hobby then!"

"AMC fans will again fall in love!"

Not?

"AMC would have been big if Romney never left it!"

"AMC was bankrupted by the Pacer and Matador coupe!"

"AMC should never have built anything but small cars!"

Not! 

AMC failed to survive as an automaker because it stayed too "tiny" to
compete; AMC is failing to thrive as a collector choice because it is still
too "tiny" to be widely sought outside its circle(s) of AM fans.  Sure, some
buyers are "big" on some cars built by the "tiny" giant of Kenosha, so some
prices will climb into the "gotta-have" stratosphere.

Some media sources will see sales-and-subscription shimmer in the new AMC
sunlight.  "Hot" will be the word for every AMX and Javelin with a 390;
"hotter" will be every SC/360 and Javelin AMX 401; "hottest" will be every
SC/Rambler and Rebel "Machine."  What will the other 99% (of what AMC really
was about) become?

"Hot!" or "Not!" is YOUR call now.

The AMC hobby is still too cool; the AMC world still too small; the AMC mind
still too narrow.  The "hottest" AMC museum is in Berlikum, NL, not in
Kenosha.  Their cheese comes waxed in paraffin, not worn on the head.  The
AMC collections in Detroit (or Auburn Hills and Dearborn) are about as alive
as an AMC Archiv in Stuttgart and the Willys tower over Toledo. (There may
be more AMC history in the basement of GM's Tech Center than in the
"hottest" corners of the known [or mainly unknown] AMC universe.)

If you're jiggy with it, AMC was --- and is --- just the perfect size.

If you're juggling an AM past and present with its future, AMC is not.

Saab today shows why AMC was ---- and still is --- too small.  To sell
>130,000 cars this year, it will cost GM at least two (if not closer to
three) billion dollars in annual "maintenance."  If a Saab sedan sells as a
Euro Cadillac, if a Chevy truck sells as a Saab SUV, if a spicy Subaru with
nose job sells as a speedy Swedish Spiedie (if you don't know what that is,
here's your recipe),

http://www.geography.ccsu.edu/harmonj/atlas/spiedie.htm

GM just might be able to spread the cost of keeping such a "tiny" [yes,
that's what folks in the -business- of building cars accurately call it]
auto nameplate alive.  If you know AMC history, you know how many [few?]
cars AMC sold each model year from 1954 through 1987.  If you know auto
history, you know that "tiny" was much "bigger" back when American cars were
the best-selling cars on American roads.  Even if you weren't born then, you
should know that selling 2+ million Chevrolets in the '50s or 1+ million
Oldsmobiles in the '80s was the best way for American brands to be
prosperous --- and to survive.  Look at the "big" nameplates that have done
so: Packard, Studebaker, Plymouth and, of course, Oldsmobile.  If AMC could
just double or triple its numbers, maybe it could be like them.

(Huh?  They're all gone?  I never would have imagined!  Never mind.)

When the legacy of Rambler still sold cars on the same auto rows as the
legacy of curved-dash Olds, "tiny" was what American Motors was ---- at its
peaks of sales success.  Never growing "big" enough was what doomed "tiny"
AMC to failure --- over and over again during years of struggles to stay
alive.  And even if you see Buick as a barge for the boring, you should be
able to see what could happen to an earlier chapter in the AMC book of
automotive history.  ~300k units has become "tiny" today; <300k units may be
too "tiny" tomorrow not to be another long-lost "legacy" of Charlie Nash.
(Was +/-300k units average over a 30+ year AMC lifespan?)

The greatest loss of all, though, may be that while Buick and Olds (and even
[AMC's] Hudson) are --- and will remain --- "big" as collector-car survival
successes, collectible AMC --- in the "tiny" state it still is stuck at ---
could be the "biggest" (if you know AMC, you know numbers!) "tiny" failure
among the -hundreds- of failed American motoring marques.

(Unless the "biggest" failure of all is yet another's "AMC-book" fall?) 

http://www.faz.net/s/RubB443EC63397F4BAFBD6ACED075B4B2CC/Doc~EE1AF1BF1B53345

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