American Motors cars for sale

Overview

American Motors Corporation was the fourth American carmaker — the scrappy independent that spent 33 years finding gaps the Big Three had left open. Its instinct for smaller, more efficient cars was right two decades before Detroit agreed, and its purchase of Jeep in 1970 turned out to be the most valuable thing it ever did.

History

AMC was formed on 1 May 1954 by merging Nash-Kelvinator with the Hudson Motor Car Company — George Mason’s bet that the surviving independents had to combine or die. Under George Romney the company pursued what it called a "dinosaur-fighter" strategy, concentrating on compact, economical cars while Detroit built ever larger ones. The Rambler carried it to third place in US sales in 1960 and 1961.

Designer Dick Teague, hired in 1959, gave the company the Javelin and AMX muscle cars. Roy D. Chapin Jr. bought Kaiser Jeep for $70 million in February 1970, handing AMC a light-truck business its rivals lacked. A financial crisis brought Renault in as an investor in October 1979 — eventually taking a 49 per cent stake — before Chrysler acquired the whole company in 1987, principally for Jeep.