page_title: American Motors Corporation
section_title: Innovation
hierarchical_section_title: American Motors Corporation / Changing focus in the 1960s / Innovation
caption_attribution_description: 1965 Rambler Marlin by American Motors Corporation (AMC) A sporty "personal-luxury" two-door hardtop fastback.
context_page_description: American Motors Corporation was an American automobile manufacturing company formed by the merger of Nash-Kelvinator Corporation and Hudson Motor Car Company on May 1, 1954. At the time, it was the largest corporate merger in U.S. history.
  AMC's most-similar competitors were those automakers who held similar annual sales such as Studebaker, Packard, Kaiser and Willys-Overland. AMC's largest competitors were the Big Three—Ford, General Motors and Chrysler. AMC's production line included small cars: the Rambler American which began as the Nash Rambler in 1950, Hornet, Gremlin and Pacer; intermediate and full-size cars, including the Ambassador, Rebel, and Matador; muscle cars including the Marlin, AMX and Javelin; and early four-wheel-drive variants of the Eagle, the first true crossover in the U.S. market.
  Regarded as "a small company deft enough to exploit special market segments left untended by the giants", AMC was widely known for the design work of chief stylist Dick Teague, who "had to make do with a much tighter budget than his counterparts at Detroit's Big Three" but "had a knack for making the most of his employer's investment".
context_section_description: In an effort to stay competitive, American Motors produced a wide range of products during the 1960s and added innovations long before the "Big Three" introduced them.
  For example, the Rambler Classic was equipped with a standard tandem master cylinder in 1962 that provided stopping ability even if there was a failure in the brake system. Only Cadillac also included this safety feature six years before U.S. safety regulations required it on all cars.
  Rambler also was an early pioneer in offering an automatic shift indicator sequence (P R N D2 D1 L, where if one selected "D2", the car started in second gear, while "1" started in first gear) on its "Flash-O-Matic" transmission which is similar to today's "PRNDSL" shift pattern, made mandatory for the 1968 model year cars, which required a neutral position between reverse and drive, while General Motors still offered a shift selector that had reverse immediately next to low gear (PNDSLR) well into the 1960s.
  Unique in the domestic automotive industry, AMC offered adjustable front seat backrests from their Nash-origin, and in 1964, the Classic and Ambassador were equipped with standard dual reclining front seats nearly a decade before the Big Three offered them as options. Bendix disc brakes were made standard on the Marlin and optional on other models in 1965. This made the Marlin one the first modern American cars with standard disc brakes, while the Big Three did not offer them until the early 1970s on most of their models to meet Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards.
  In the early part of the decade, sales were strong, thanks in no small part to the company's history of building small cars, which came into vogue in 1961. In both 1960 and 1961, Ramblers ranked in third place among domestic automobile sales, up from third on the strength of small-car sales, even in the face of a lot of new competition. Romney's strategic focus was very successful as reflected in the firm's healthy profits year after year. The company became completely debt-free. The financial success allowed the company to reach an agreement on August 26, 1961, with the United Auto Workers for a profit sharing plan that was new in the automobile industry. Its new three-year labor contract also included generous annual improvement pay increases, as well as automatic cost-of-living raises. However, in 1962, Romney resigned to run for Governor of Michigan. His replacement was Roy Abernethy, AMC's successful sales executive.
  By 1964, Studebaker production in the United States had ended, and its Canadian operations ceased in 1966. The "Big Three", plus the smaller AMC, Kaiser Jeep, International Harvester, Avanti, and Checker companies were the remaining North American auto manufacturers.
  Abernethy believed that AMC's reputation of building reliable economical cars could be translated into a new strategy that could follow AMC buyers as they traded up into larger, more expensive vehicles. AMC, in reality, had produced large cars throughout most of its history, The Rambler Ambassadors were every bit as large as a full-sized Ford or Chevy. There was only an absence of largest sized cars from the AMC lineup in 1963 and 1964 The first cars bearing his signature were the 1965 models. These were a longer Ambassador series and new convertibles for the larger models. During mid-year a fastback, called the Marlin, was added. It competed directly with cars like the Dodge Charger, AMC's "family-sized" car emphasized personal-luxury. Abernethy also called for the de-emphasis of the Rambler brand, because he believed the public associated it too strongly with economy cars, and that it was hindering the sale of AMC's other models at a time when mid and luxury car sales were very strong. As a result, he ordered that for 1966, the Ambassador and Marlin were to be badged purely as a product of American Motors Corporation. This was followed by the 1968 Rebel. The new models shared fewer parts among each other and were more expensive to build.
caption: 1965 Rambler Marlin
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