Re: [AMC-list] chinese amc emblems, jeeps, muscle cars oh my

[Marc Montoni <Freedom@xxxxxxxx>]

"Eddie Stakes" <eddiestakes@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> said:

>It's one thing to see Chinese 'AMC NOS emblems' on ebay, another however to see BAW 
>thinking about buying of a number of automakers, check out the Jeep, Chrysler and Volvo 
>comments. Check out the BAW B40 from the March 10th release. I was commenting a few days 
>ago about Chinese brake components for our American made cars....the stuff sold over 
>counter at O'Reillys and Auto Zone, my guess is that is all that is out there now, even at 
>NAPA and other places, don't honestly know.
>
>Note the "three door Jeep" thread also. A lot of people, AMCers alike, don't realize AMC 
>had a plant in Beijing in 1970s for Jeep. It mentions 1984, but according to some of the 
>stock holder reports, the relationship goes back a few years earlier than that.


I have annual stockholder reports going back to the sixties and I don't remember seeing anything about such a deal until 1983-1984.  U.S. companies were prohibited from establishing units in China prior to the normalization of relations (really just a giant middle finger salute to the Republic of China on Taiwan) on January 1, 1979; and even then it was only on paper.  It wasn't until a year or two later that any companies really began trying to negotiate the Byzantine bureaucracy.

The book "Beijing Jeep" describes the deal in detail.  Among other things, it gives the reader a great taste of just how defrauded American Motors was by the Chinese bureaucracy.  That white elephant probably played no small part in the ultimate disintegration of AMC.  After AMC dumped precious time, talent, and energy into the project, finally some bureaucratic hurdles were resolved by the time of the Chrysler buyout -- just in time for *Chrysler* to make some money on the Beijing plant.

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1989/11/06/72702/index.htm

AMC did have either assembly plants or formalized import operations in Iran, Australia, India, and (I think) Pakistan.

-- Marc


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