What Were They Thinking?: 1961 Ambassador

American Motors Corporation was doing well in terms of sales around 1960.  Nevertheless, it lacked the financial resources of the Big Three car makers of Detroit.  For that reason, it usually had to make use of basic body tooling for more model years than their richer competitors.

This was true for its senior Ambassador line.  The Ambassador name was used by Nash for its top line, and after AMC dropped the Nash brand it applied the name to a stretched (in front of the cowling) body that originally entered production as the 1956 Rambler.

AMC stylists kept fiddling with Ambassador grilles, tail fins, and other details in an effort to keep the aging basic body fresh looking long after a redesign would have been called for (if the Ambassador had been, for instance, a General Motors car).

For 1961, an odd front end facelift design was selected.  I find it hard to understand how this happened, because AMC had a talented styling staff that included Dick Teague who was hired by AMC in 1959 when the '61s were still in the development stage.   Ed Anderson was in charge of AMC styling, and I regard him as less skilled than Teague, so perhaps he okayed the design for production.  Or possibly it was someone in upper management who bears responsibility -- though a manager would have to have selected a design option originating in the styling section.

The facelifted '61 Ambassadors were asserted to have a European flair.  Maybe so, if some of the strangest French designs served as inspiration.  As for me, I see fail to see a genuine European character to Ambassador front ends, and think the European angle was public relations hogwash.

And as it happened, sales for 1961 Ambassadors dropped from 1960 levels and 1962 Ambassadors received a facelift that eradicated the '61 design.

Gallery

This is a 1956 Rambler, the first year for this basic body.

The 1961 Ambassador.  Exterior body panels differ from the '56 Rambler's, but the underlying unitized structure is largely the same below the belt line.

An AMC publicity photo featuring the front.

This is what the rear looked like.  Tail fins were rapidly falling out of vogue in America, but Ambassadors retained a fairly modest version for '61.  This and the following photo are of a restored Ambassador via Hemmings.

Closeup view of the front design.  The fender extensions are probably the worst element, and the "eyebrow" over the grille and headlights is a close second: they certainly don't work well together.  The slope between the bumper and the eyebrow in itself is not bad, but it results in fussy headlight housings required for dealing with it.  And those headlights, being of the nasty quad variety, are squeezed between the edges of the grille and the fender extensions resulting in plenty of clutter.  Single headlights on each side would have helped, but wouldn't have rescued the design.

AMC Cavalier: Symmetrical Concept Car

Ultra-luxury cars aside, the automobile industry lives in a cost-control environment.  Pennies, Euro-cents and single-digit Yen are pinched on virtually all the parts that comprise a car.  A relatively drastic cost-control tactic that is used occasionally is to have body stampings perform dual duties.  Most often, this takes the form of symmetrical doors where, say, the right front and left rear doors are  the same (save, perhaps, for a cut-out for the rear wheel opening).

Today's post deals with the interesting case of a concept car intended to demonstrate even more extensive panel-sharing.  It is the 1966 American Motors Cavalier (Wikipedia entry here).  Besides the below-the-beltline parts of the doors, the front and rear side / fender panels could be used on both sides of the car.  Also the bumpers, front and rear.  The link above claims that hood and trunk panels could be interchanged, but that isn't evident to me from the photos.

The resulting design is fairly clean and attractive, though diminished by having a static feeling that was probably inevitable, given the quest for symmetry.

Gallery

The front is simple and attractive, though not particularly distinctive.

The doors are hinged at the A and C pillars.  The slopes of the A-pillar and the leading edge of the C-pillar differ in order to help relieve potential static effects (window framing apparently had separate stampings from the remainder of the doors). Note the identical cut-outs for the tail light and grille wrap at the fenders' extremities.

Compare the wheel cut-outs in this photo to what can be seen in the previous photo.  They seem to "lean" in opposite directions.  Is this an optical illusion?  A side view of the Cavalier would resolve this, but I could not find such a photo.

As for the hood and trunk lid, it's possible that the horizontal parts would use the same stamping, but as I mentioned, I can't be sure, and tend to think they differ from what I see in the various photos.