[Amc-list] Details

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

http://wps.com/AMC/1963-Rambler-American/images/lm3.jpg

http://wps.com/AMC/1963-Rambler-American/images/lm12.jpg

It's one of the best-looking stampings ever done by AMC!

>>
I bet the Montreal connection is the sole reason for the French
spelling. Check your "AMC Family Album", it's in there. Oops! You have
the 69 edition, don't you? Won't be in that one!! I'll have to check
mine. I'm pretty sure it's spelled "Voyager" in there though.
<<

If that documentation is complete, you should find that both versions were used: one for the French-Canadian introduction; the other for the remainder of the tour.  Call it the American Motors Celine Dion concept car if you care to.  (Or the Mylene Farmer or the Genevieve Bujold or the Guy Lafleur if you don't...)

Whatever it's called, wouldn't it be grand[e] if there were some super-slick AMCyclopedia somewhere where every future AMC Voyage[u]r could click to see and read (English, the world's language, would be fine for most curious people) the complete story?  Then we wouldn't need to keep writing/rewriting old history.

We could tell untold AMC stories, see unseen AMC drawings, and complete a circle of detail that still seems lacking in the current hobby of AMC.

Everything anyone ever knew about AMC would be documented and displayed there and we all could ramble off to death knowing that we'd saved AMC.

When Corvette turns 100, Corolla turns 200, and Camry (which still will be numbskull name) marks some best-seller anniversary, 99% of AMC cars will have been recycled, but between the 1.0% still shown and the XX.X% of history still sitting in some super server, AMC will still live on.

If not, it really is a dumb car for dumb Americans who don't do detail.      

>>
Chevrolet Suburban - since 1935 (now at 72 years)

Chevrolet Corvette - since 1953 (now at 54 years)

Ford F250 and F350- since 1953 (F100 was 1953 to 1983; F150 didn't start
until 1973; also at 54 years)

Morgan 4-4 - since 1936 ( a bit out of the mainstream; now at 71 years in use)
<<

Thanks again; if the other 99.9% of AMC Listers (and the thousands more who are still out there somewhere still doing something with AMC cars...) would do more too, AMC wouldn't seem so much like a dead [weight] zone.

I'll add some more model names that come to my minimal mind:

Commander	1927-1935; 1938-1942; [no 1946...]; 1947-1958; 1963-1965

President	1926-1942; 1955-1958

Impala	1958-1990; 1994-1996; 2000-

Caprice	1966-1996; still sold overseas; especially Middle East

Mustang	1964.5-present; very many different cars it was indeed

Fleetwood	1947-1996; model or package option; bodies since 1900s

Roadmaster	1936-1958; 1991-1996

Ambassador	1927-1974; revival was considered for ~1977 and 1982.5

Corvette	1953-present; except for the year there was no 'Vette!

S-Klasse	Much as we may not want to admit it, it is the winner!

You can go to the horse's mouth and sweat the detail, as old M-B did!

I'll also make you make your own Tiny URLs.  Spoiled?  Lazy?  Indeed!

http://www.mercedes-benz.de/content/germany/mpc/mpc_germany_website/de/home_mpc/passenger_cars/home/passenger_cars_world/heritage/history.html

>>
[1] the american locomotive company, based in albany ny iirc; #2
    behind baldwin in steam loco manufacture
[2] ingersoll-rand; they made the engines used in the locos
<<

Baldwin died in 1956, ALCO died in 1969, and then GM sold EMD to America's second-richest man only two years ago this very month (Warren Buffet's Berkshire partnered with Greenbriar to consummate that deal on April 4, 2005); but happily, "EMD" --- one of the most evocative brand names in American transportation history ---

http://tinyurl.com/2l9b4t

still lives in new American ownership 

http://www.emdiesels.com/lms/en/home/

and still inspires American transport

http://media.ford.com/newsroom/release_display.cfm?release=22295

and still inspires the world to seek

http://www.hyundaiusa.com/vehicle/santafe/santafe.aspx

success in transportation in America.

What's not so happy, whether it's cars, trains, planes, ships, cameras, computers, coffee makers, call centers, accounting, or radiology, is that America -still- is losing in a battle to succeed.  Americans, like AMC Listers, do not sweat detail: grill or grille is "good enough" here, 39% or 53% graduation rates are not deemed "disasters" by American politicians or taxpayers, and 12-mpg @ $3/g. is "livable."

That America cannot compete.  Cannot prosper.  Cannot continue.  Cannot -survive-.

Americans cannot buy cars, clothes, or any other consumables the American-inspired world creates for America if Americans cannot think, read, write, figure, or spell.

Yesterday I received a fancy flier from one regional company.  Six or eight pages.  Hundreds of thousands of copies of it were probably printed.  "HURD ORCHARDS 2007 CALENDER [sic] OF EVENTS" it read.  Good grief, America.  No value in proofreading?  Why not "callander" or "colender" or "qwertyuiop" or "colander" instead?

http://tinyurl.com/2dm9wu

In the 4/4/07 New York Times, in the full page "dual interview" with the President & CEO and the VP of Hyundai Motor America, reporter Rich Taylor wrote: "I believe that for many years Georgetto [sic] Giugiaro's Italdesign styled Hyundai products.  Was this new model [the Genesis concept] designed in Korea, your California Design Center, in Italy, or a combination of the above?"  Good grief, America.  Too cool to comma, too stupid to spell-check, and too lazy to do research?  No wonder your cars became crappy, Ameica; no wonder your wonderful Packard, Studebaker, Checker, AMC, Plymouth, and Oldsmobile are all dead too.

Hyundai sold 455,000 2006 vehicles in America; its 2007 target is 500,000; its 2010 goal is 1,000,000.  It sweats detail.  Americans don't even want to -sweat- anymore.  Unless they're playing or partying or drinking or dancing under (or with) the stars.

The answer to Taylor's question says it all.  Genesis is "completely homegrown" with only N-V-H and R-H-S tuning done in California and Michigan.  Hyundai's orchard isn't Hurd's nor is it grown by Americans.  Will America be the peach or the pits tomorrow?

Most Americans don't care.  Too much reading.  Too much detail.  Too much hard work.

Americans just want to have fun.  So we do it.  Have fun while we can.  Tick.  Tock.

Toyota now has over 25% share in parts of the West --- particularly in California --- but less than 5% in parts of the Midwest and Northeast.  From 9.7% in Corpus Christi, birthplace of Planet AMC-in-Houston, to 4.2% in Youngstown, deathplace of Avanti III, to 2.5% in Detroit, deathplace of the Blue-Collar American Aristocracy and the $27/hour dream.  Toyota has lots or room for growth in America.  American motor companies have lots of coffins to build.

AMC has a 100% share in AMO, AMCRC, and NAMDRA (where is Mitchell's AMC crown of gold [or of thorns?] buried?), yet maybe only .05% in the rest of the old-car hobby world.  AMC has lots of room for growth in America.  But is it even replacing its one-off deaths today?

Bob Lutz, who has worked for BMW and GM and Ford and Chrysler and GM again, who is as worth listening to as are --- in way different ways --- Chuck Jordan and Lee Iacocca, has a personal motto that describes both the good and the bad of being American: "Often wrong but never in doubt" he says.  But a smarter, smoother, stronger, and sweatier America can be what Toyota and Hyundai have become.  If it can't (or won't), America can't go where its jobs will all have gone.  And then Embraer, Infosys, Haier, and Pearl River Piano    

http://www.pearlriverusa.com/

will not have many Americans to sell their American-inspired consumer confections to.

That America will be as dead as the Super Chief, Broadway, and 20th-Century Limiteds; as much memory as was Ambassador.  As Roadmaster.  As Country Squire.  As New Yorker.  As Duesenberg.  Yes, that America.  The America that all the world once wanted to be.

Whether in the People's Republic of Santa Monica or the Valley of Wall Street, it is detail that will make or break America.  A Cobalt can be a Lacetti; an Aveo can be a Kalos; a grill can be a grille --- at the touch of a computer key.  If it's not on a computer in America, it will be on a computer in Korea or China or Pakistan or India.

Will America be a Car of Tomorrow [what do we think of that?] or Yesterday's Junker?

Will it be a 1957 Eldorado Brougham or 1987 Cimarron?  Does America even care which?

Sweat the detail.

Don't forget AMC.
      
Don't listen to me.  Read what other makes are doing.  And sweat more on AMC detail.

http://tinyurl.com/2j96au   
_______________________________________________
Amc-list mailing list
Amc-list@xxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.amc-list.com/mailman/listinfo/amc-list