Talking turkey

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

When wordy fails, show photos; when that doesn't work, do it over again.

When I clicked, no DTS eye was open for comparison with 880/990/SST/DPL.

If it blinked at you, too, try now.

Here's lookin' atcha, kid.

http://tinyurl.com/cfvsf

If it fails again, just eyeball the whole stacked-up fancy-dancy family.

http://tinyurl.com/bvgzp

Here's lookin' at AM, too.

http://tinyurl.com/c7684

And if there's a better [artistic/high-res/close-up] view of those, make it available so AMC can be all it can be.

No wonder so few outsdanding books, articles, and websites on American Motors flourish --- its resources are nearly impossible to access. 

And as we back up into wordiness, we can see [part of] what's wrong...)

http://tinyurl.com/e2joa

http://tinyurl.com/8j4rb


So what company did AMC "beat out" getting onto Renault's dance card?

BL

What company then "beat" that company (into oblivion, some might say)?

Honda

What year was the Chrysler buyout of American Motors/Jeep planned for?  

1986

Someday, you might be able to read what Lee (and many others) told me about it.  Until then, you can see words and pictures that will clue you in to another sort of AMC-Renault/Jeep-Chrysler story most Americans likely don't know.

"Hey, we're high, mighty, and invincible: we're like GM and an OHV V-8!"

Yeah, sure.

http://www.austin-rover.co.uk/index.htm?lc9storyf.htm


>>one of the plants they want to close - georgia - makes minivans.  back
>>in the '90s they decided to invest in suv development, not minivans,
>>and now toyota and mopar are eating their lunch in this segment.  gm's
>>reaction?

>>
Sometimes it's better to get out of one segment and concentrate on others where you do better. AMC should have stayed in the value/economy car segment with a few more upscale offerings based on the value/economy offerings (ala 63-64 Classic Ambassador) than try to compete with GM/Ford/Chryco with head to head offerings. They'd have been healthier through the 70s and there's a possibility  they might still be with us, though it's doubtful they would have remained truly independant -- Renault would probably still be in there (I hate to say).  At least they would have lasted longer. But all that's good ole hind sight!
<<

Frank states one-half that equation: but carmakers can only survive selling value and economy if they have low-cost production and enormous volumes.  AMC had neither.  Furthermore, throughout auto history --- from Ford to Hyundai --- every carmaker that thrived by selling small cars for cheap -survived- by selling as many lower-quantity/higher-profit vehicles as quickly as it could as well.  Ford didn't build himself another K-car, but he bought a Lincoln, birthed a Mercury (and Ford II buried an Edsel) to bolster a profitability that could not be sustained forever by flirting with his favorite Flivvers over hot tea.  When Floozies and Flappers and worlds wanted less T and more A, he may not have poured in cold gin, but even poor old narrow-minded Henry had to change his tune to "Le Jazz Hot."  
    
http://tinyurl.com/d36c3

http://tinyurl.com/dh4dm

(unfold the AMC tent and ask, "Why aren't AM fans as cool as these...?"

http://tickintsofcentralohio.org/historical%20archive.htm

Gosh, gee: maybe they're just broken down somewhere in some dumb rut!

http://tinyurl.com/9om4a

Then after you click this free-ride photo

http://tinyurl.com/acl6k

ask yourself to show -us- which '31 Ford turned up as a '50 Rambler.  Betcha can't even find 4 --- let alone 400 --- photos of that sweet T-bird.  [Which, of course is a clue served up on a hot tin plate...])


VW didn't stay big building bitty Bugs and Honda didn't stop at selling CVCC Civics: AMC could not --- in the '50s, the '60s, the '70s, or, had Besse lived for Gohsn to lead AMC-Renault to Nissan-style successes, in '05 --- survive by selling only value and economy, even if Kenosha cars were assembled by unemployed chicken farmers in Chaozhou and retailed by Wal-Mart beside cheddar cheese and Coca-Cola.  No romantic dreams of AMC historians will alter two true tenets of auto manufacturing: only those high-volume, all-price, full-line, mass-market, notably nimble --OR-- low-volume, high-price, boutique-model, status symbol, notably prescient car makers will survive.  And even the bigger among survivors will stumble --- as Pierce-Arrow and Packard and Pontiac (and [VW] Phaeton...) have proved so well.  

GM lost $4 billion by building motor vehicles in North America over the first nine months of this year alone: now GM hopes that by selling [5] "new" SUVs and pickups, [2] two-seat roadsters, [1] Euro-American sedan, and some late-to-the-party crossovers --- one of them a hybrid --- it might turn that gigantic loss into a small profit.  It hopes that by reducing its potential for production, it can increase its potential for profits and better balance the old scale between value/economy and status/overspent.  America will be watching.  So will the world that lends us cash.     

GM --- still the world's biggest motor vehicle manufacturer and still a big source of what has made life in America envied throughout the world --- cannot recover from its stumbling like it once could.  Once, AMC never could really afford to make any mistakes at all: $40 million on a Matador: from Cordoba front to NASCAR rear --- another stumble deep into the red.  When Honda spent $40 million to raise Accord's hood for the V-6; from Cologne to California, it could sell enough new premium-price top-end leather-lined models to make its gamble pay off well.  AMC had as much success by throwing bricks as it did by streaming aerodynamics and when it built a better Chrysler (and built a far better value than Chevy), it had even less success.  To all but the AMC faithful, it was, or it still is, but a bad auto joke.   

http://tinyurl.com/9tasp

http://tinyurl.com/7ll7d

But we're grateful we can like it --- despite its failures at success.

http://tinyurl.com/7l65u

http://tinyurl.com/9o8gc

http://tinyurl.com/9fr5d

It is, certainly from some angles of approach, the best of those cars!


Auto failures and jokes were noted by someone here who recently wrote:

>>
front drive 6 cylinder Impala, the Monero GTO (more poorly thought out
marketing plan I have yet to see), the Firebird and Camaro price/target
fiasco. The parts bin Hummers. All concepts that were executed either at
the wrong time, to the wrong demographic (most common) or completely
ineptly. The list is almost endless.
<<

Backtracking, the H3 could be a quick winner, if selling status to the cheap is winning.  Or if, by doing that, it also cheapens Hummer's image (which may pose a problem to both sides of its demographic), it could be just another Aztek of history.  It could also become a very popular game piece on the board road to rationality in this shorter, taller, narrower world with which GM must now compete.  Earl, Mitchell and all the "greats" may not be smiling down from GM Warren design courtyard heaven, but time, tastes, and techniques change.  Automotive styling moves along.

The failure to foresee how much numbskulls "needed" nostalgia (viz, how many Mustangs they would want to buy), on top of the failure to make F-bodies more than Guido-or-Guts propositions (not only did John Cafaro's car stay too long at the fair, but it was too much in the Matador coupe mode at conception; something old GM could pull off but new GM couldn't), and the failure to protect valuable properties (Car names?  Priceless!) from death-via-decay were inexcusable.  There is valid reason, though: giant GM was fast becoming too small.  Just like the AMC that couldn't do more with its Javelin name and couldn't successfully revive its AMX legacy, GM couldn't design SUVs (the recent version of what AMC couldn't design without an Alliance [or Encore] when its value/economy profile was almost -15- years old), because it could no longer sell enough high-volume/low-buck Cavaliers to anyone but the poor-of-wallet and fleets and its old soft-sprung B-O-C cruiser sales cushion was being shredded by everyone from Acura and Lexus to Kia, Subaru, and VW.  Yesterday's Cutlass Supreme LS drivers were buying new Optimas, not Old[s] Aleros.  Gone.

AFA the purported failure to successfully revive and to market this GTO as Pontiac's version of that Mustang retro blowout, blame GM less than our attitude at American motoring: maybe we aren't quite the sophisticated car nuts we would like to believe.  (Or maybe, if we read more "universally" [with open minds and closed mouths], we may be so intimidated by our own stupidity that we DO hope to go back to the AMC era.)  So it looks like a 1995 Cavalier (as did an executive-class car Cadillac once had): that doesn't mean it isn't (and wasn't, when it sold for peanuts...) very much a qualified candidate to carry on the DeLorean (one of the US auto mags actually wrote it correctly this month!) concept of 1960's bronze (or iron block?) age to now.  It's a bit puffy, but it's not tasteless --- as are many models the US public (and the car dopes, uh, dupes, of the car companies who tell "us" what to think in their dumb magazines or on their even dumber [and now ever-more-numerous] TV shows; have flacks like John Davis ever said anything insightful {let alone bad} about anything MotorWeek ever drove?] adore.  Sometimes, what is deemed as "too conservative" to be cool is, in fact, the better design.

So don't look at new cars without first looking at car history.  And don't type names without first checking how they're spelled.  Tomato/tomatoe, Monera/Monaro?  It's not good enough to do things the good old American way today.  

http://tinyurl.com/an23j


When sheetmetal needs updating, do it better.  If America can't do it as it used to, bring it over from wherever it IS being done best.  It's obvious who has the engineers, the tech, the touch now.  It's "them" not "us."  It's sad.

http://tinyurl.com/bo7ah

http://tinyurl.com/b2tvs

http://tinyurl.com/8htuh

http://tinyurl.com/9e6zm    

See more if you care to.

http://www.opel.de/

If we (you, me, GM, the US) ever hope to catch up, we will need to run -twice- as fast as the world does, because the targets are already running faster than we ever have; we're training them to beat us at what we once did best.
We're rappin' while they roll; we're relaxin' while they work; we're spendin' their cash and payin' them interest.

It's not about cars, it's about people.  The American people --- good and bad --- who lost their drive to succeed.

No, it's not about turning wrenches and breaking backs.  Now it's about reading and writing and arithmetic.  Lost.

http://tinyurl.com/d3j9p

http://tinyurl.com/9jpsk

They still are coming...

http://tinyurl.com/awjtb

or coming back for more.

http://tinyurl.com/8fzry

http://tinyurl.com/cfpsl


Don't stop fun looking backwards --- just do it AFTER the hard work of today (and the prep for tomorrow) are done. 

http://tinyurl.com/7zdvw

As for one of the [funnier] designs Detroit has done in recent memory, 

>>
My cousin had the pleasure of seeing the original Aztec drawings, it was
beautiful and looked mean as hell, after it went through the 7 wussies
out of 10 people committees it was, well, something else entirely (if
<<

it was less a Gremlin, Pacer or Matador, than a failure to face fact and forestall fiasco.  It was a great idea, a valiant voyage (and very tough job for both the stylists and engineers: turning a minivan into a sport utility as fraught with challenges [making sliding doors swing open was nearly impossible] and it has many fans), yet the most important aspect of all visual communication was totally neglected.  The expression on the -face- was wrong, and even extreme surgery on pretty models can't make it look quite right.  It has, in the end, good character or, uh, personality that make it as unique as any Gremlin, Pacer, or Matador.  If it joins Oldsmobile in the orphan make section of tomorrow's car shows, AM fans, if they're not American idiots, should welcome any Azteks with a smile.  Whether or not they really appreciate its, ah, Allure.    

http://tinyurl.com/8r6fd

And it's not the first (or the last) US car to ask, "Which way is up?" 

http://tinyurl.com/dzx33


I truly don't know why I still do this.  A bad habit, in a dumb rut?

'Cuz, even putting words in mouths unopened, this is @#$% good stuff.

So enjoy your long holiday weekend and your festival of wordlessness.

As an ecology-minded Hummer driver [!] once threatened, I'll be back.