AMC!

[statenislandgwm]

AMC

I have seen several rusted thru the wall air conditioners in Brooklyn with an "AMC" emblem on the outer case, I always assumed it was American Motors Corporation. It makes sense now from the ad as it states AMC products were sold at Abraham & Strauss in Brooklyn.

 

[mikeklondon]

1st cars

I passed my test in the year ........................ in a green Triumph Herald with a manual gear box ( stick shift to all of you in the US) I changed the car the same day for a very flashy ford auto and very nearly killed myself. I think I have owned more cars than washing machines, DW, dryers and vacs put together.

 

[appliguy]

The AMC appliances we are talking about here

WERE NOT made by American Motors Corp. The AMC in the beginning of this thread stood for AIMCEE WHOLESALE CORP. The automobile conglomerate that went by that name did not become known as AMC until around 1966 when they started dropping the Rambler name and putting AMC on their cars instead. They did it first with the Ambassador in I believe 1966 then the Rebel in 67 and the Rambler named died all together with the coming of the 1970 Hornet. From the time of the Nash and Hudson Merger in 1954 until the mid 60's, the company was known simply as American Motors. Their advertising in that period used the AM logo and in the late 50's their tag for all the ads in magazines and tv was "American Motors means more for Americans. During this time American Motors DID make appliances but they were made under the Kelvinator, ABC (Kelvinator bought Altorfer Bros. circa 1952 and produced appliances under that name until 1958), Leonard, and Duracrest names. AMC sold Kelvinator to WCI in 1968 because it needed an infusion of cash to try to save it's ailing car line........PAT COFFEY

 

[tomturbomatic]

It stood for Allied Merchandising Corp. and the products were sourced among various manufacturers. Supposedly, the salesmen in the major appliance dpeartments got bigger commissions for selling the stuff, but some, well maybe a lot, of it was crap. The stoves I saw were made by SunRay, I believe, and looked horrible next to a GE or even a Norge. They were the same stoves sold at Grants under the Bradford label. In the early 70s an elderly lady was telling us about her AMC stove where the bracket supporting the broil element fell because the oven liner rusted through where the screw was. The laundry line that I saw was made by Easy and in 63 or 64 was old design, ready to be redesigned. The dryer drum was galvanized and there were sharp corners on the lint screen although the diagonal air flow looked promising.

 

[appliguy]

Thanks Tom

For setting me straight I was only going by what it said at the bottom of the ad in the first post in this thread......I guess AIMCE WHOLESALE was maybe their distribution arm then like REDISCO was for Kelvinator?????? Cna anyone confirm or deny that? PAT COFFEY

 

[goatfarmer]

When we bought our house 24 years ago, it had an avocado AMC refrigerator in the kitchen. I think it was made by Gibson, it looked similar to their offerings of the time.

 

[jamman_98]

I had a Pacer

I was in high school when this was taken.  Yes I had hair back in 1978-79 when this was taken.

 

Joe

jamman_98

 

[tomturbomatic]

Gibson also made the air conditioners for AMC. Neighbors had one. It cooled well. I have no idea how long it lasted; we moved and so did they.

Air conditioning is wonderful, but it sure changed neighborhoods. Houses were closed up in the Summer as well as the Winter. There was no more casual visiting through open doors or windows or while sitting on the porch. But oh, it feels so good to come in from the heat to that crisp, dry, chilled air. I don't care as an adult, but I remember the openness of the neighborhood when I was a child; where you could start talking to people before you went inside during warm weather without the formality of knocking on the door and being invited in. You walked up to the back door and the mother was generally in the kitchen and you asked if so-and-so could come out and play. She would check but, first, come in for something to drink. One mother mixed grape and lemon Koolaid for a delicious "mixed drink." I was happy for everyone who got air conditioning because it meant that they were as comfortable in the warm months and in the pollen seasons as we were (and it was another appliance to check out), but it profoundly and permanently altered a way of life.

 

[appnut]

My first car was a Pacer X (had the X option package)--it as a dark forrest green with metalic speckles in it and color-keyed sport wheels.  Had great visibility and a great car to learn to drive in.  Kept having major problems with the engine's black box--a common problem with them.  It left me on the side of the road wayy too many times.  One time even had to have it towed 115 miles back to the dealership in Houston.  Finally couldn't trust the car any more, so I unloaded it for a Citation.  Sould have know, my first two cars were model names of Edsels. 

 

[tomturbomatic]

Getting back to the ad and Peter's question, the box of All is early mid 50s. Look at how wide the washer is, probably 30 inches. Easys were wide automatics, as wide or wider than Whirlpools back then. I would be willing to guess that these were Easys and hope that they were better quality than the AMC laundry appliances were in the 60s before the whole AMC concept bit the dust.

At Rich's in Atlanta, the customer was always right and they would take back almost anything. The appliance salesmen soon stopped pushing AMC because they knew the appliances were not going to hold up and eventually, there would be trouble. At Rich's, customers built friendships with sales people and if a customer was not satisfied, they went back to the person who sold them the item. Sales people always tried to make it right which, with most things, meant some sort of exchange to save the sale. For a major appliance sale, it meant arranging a pick up and a delivery, a credit and a sale probably at an equal or slightly higher price, the possible loss of commission and other hassles of dealing with the returned item through the warehouse, etc.

 

[washernoob]

Excuse me Sir, would you happen to have any grey poupon?

Schwing!

Terribly good movie.

 

[jetcone]

Ohhh

always had a soft spot for the PACER in my heart! Edsel made a Pacer too!

 

[gorenje]

Well I'm not American and I don't know your washers so good like you local guys do. (especially the old ones)
I'm just guessing. Maybe it could be made by Dexter or Norge.
Ingemar

 

[bajaespuma]

That box of ALL is very nice.

 

Funny how you become attached to brands. The first of only two repair calls my Mother made to GE for our 1962 Filter-Flo was because a sock was suds-floated into the outer-tub and clogged the drain. The repairman recommended that we switch to DASH and that became our brand until there was no more DASH.

 

Similarly, I guess our GE pull-out came with a sample-box of ALL and that was our DW detergent until the end of ALL. I still remember how pretty that printed-foil covered box was.

 

[toploader55]

Tom

How true what you said before the Advent of Air Conditioning.

Yes, our neighborhood too was like that where you would see or hear your neighbors with the windows and doors open and see all those window mounted Box type fans with the reversable blades. On one side of the house the blades would be Pulling the Outside air in, and the other side of the house would be set exhausting the air. I also used to love the Big Homes that had the Enormous Attic Fans with the big louvers. Same thing here. Just walk up to the back door and ask. Mother would usually say, "Oh come in for a cold drink". Exactly.
Now a days, I suppose if you walked up to anyones back door, they would hit the Panic Alarm on the security system, the Swat Team will show up, and you'd get arrested for Tresspassing and Breaking and Entering. Sigh... I'm glad we remember those Old Days.

 

[appliguy]

Hey Washernoob......

before you make blanket statements about a car company that went out of business 6 years before you were born you might want to do a little research first.....American Motors Corporation  <span style="color: #333333;">(that is the real name of the company NOT AMC motor company) cars were not built any worse than most average cars of the </span>50's thru the 70's. Most american built cars in the 70's were not of the best quality build wise. I speak on that from experience becaue my family owned 2 1974 Chevrolets (a Caprice Classic Sedan and a Malibu Classic Sedan) a 1977 Plymouth Sport Suburban, a 1979 Pontiac Sunbird and a 1979 Buick LeSabre all in my lifetime. When I was little in the early and mid 1980's a number of my neighbors had AMC cars (as a matter of fact Mr. Cleary down on the corner worked for Tysons AMC Jeep at the time) and they had great sucess with their cars. For you to make the statement you made based on your neighbor not caring for or keeping up his car is like me putting down Chevrolet because a neighbor of ours has one sitting in his garage that has not run for 5 years.

As for the AMC Pacer that car was supposed to be equipped with a GM made Wankel engine. GM had licensed the Wankel Technoliogy and was going to start putting it in some of the cars but then an interesting discovery was made about the first generation of Wankel Engines.....they were gas hogs....then add to that the 1973-74 Fuel Crisis and GM pulled the plug on the idea of building the Wankel and bought back the tools and dies of the old Buick V6 from AMC. They enlarged it to 221 cubic inches and started offering in compact and mid sized GM cars for 1975. As for the Pacer, when GM pulled the plug on their Wankel porject that left AMC with a car and no engine. The only engine in AMC arsenel that was relatively small and that had anywhere near enough power to move the Pacer was the 232 CID straight 6. AMC shoehorned that engine into the Pacer and that is why the engine comes back into the passenger comartment like it does. All in all from what I have read a lot of people think the Pacer would have been much more sucessful than it was if it had been offered with the Wanklel as originally planned. I know my cousin Jimmy had the Station wagon version that came out in 1977 and his had a factory offered 304 V8 and it was a pretty big and comfortable car for its size and with the V8 it had decent power by late 1970's standards and to my eyes it looked better than the regular coupe......PAT COFFEY

 

[combo52]

WANKLE ENGINES

Also had terrible durability problems the first car sold with one was the German built NSU many of these didn't last 10,000 miles. Madza did get them to last closer to 50,000 miles and even longer in the sports car RX-7. I do remember reading that AMC had bought 50,000 4 cylinder engines from Audi to put in thier compact models and ended up scraping most of the new engines because there was little demand for the 4s as people though the energy problems were over in the early 1980s.

 

[swestoyz]

...GM pulled the plug on the idea of building the Wankel and bought back the tools and dies of the old Buick V6 from AMC. They enlarged it to 221 cubic inches and started offering in compact and mid sized GM cars for 1975.

Amen to that! While the first 3 production years of the 231 V6 were odd fire engines, resulting in a rough power band, the revised 1978 even-fire metric blocks were the forerunner to the high performance Turbo Buick V6, as well as the footprint for the venerable FWD 3800 from from 1984 through the Gen III blocks which were in production up until the last few years.

Really it is a shame that GM didn't offer up the 231 to AMC after they had bought back the rights and tooling, and if they had, that AMC didn't bite at the offer.

In regards to AMC - long live the Eagle!

Ben

 

[yogitunes]

Wow....now i have to dig out some pics.....that pic Ben put up is the same exact model and color of my 1986 Eagle...which I got in 1990 for 500.00 and kept for 3 years......this one had shift-on-the-fly 4 wheel drive

I had a 1983 Eagle wagon in Blue, I got that 1986.......

And of course I had my 1982 Black Eagle SX/4...which I kept for 19 years....

these last two had STOP>>PULL>>SHIFT Fourwheel selection.....

there was nothing that these cars could not handle, I took all of mine along for the Jeep Excursion back trails.....

Having a background in AMC, allowed me to have mine beefed up with lift kits, wider tires and stance, push bars and winches.....I was ready for anything....fun part was on crossroad circles.....with the SX/4, go fast enough and make the driver side tires lift off the ground....great times

 

[hydralique]

Buick V6 and V8 . . .

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<span style="font-size: medium;">It’s kind of odd that Buick designed two very long lived, important engines for the Special and then GM sold both of them to other manufacturers after only short periods of production. First was the 215 cu. in. aluminum V8 introduced with the Special in ’61, and then the iron V6 added to the lineup in ’62. Olds had their own version of the V8 for the F-85/Cutlass with Olds-unique cylinder heads. Pontiac also used the V8 in the Tempest, but bought it straight from Buick. When ’61 Special sales were a little slow initially, Buick got scared and designed the V6 in a big hurry to provide a lower priced option. The early V6s were really nasty as GM didn’t bother to spend any time developing the engine to compensate for the odd-fire design that results from a 90 degree V6 block and a three-throw crankshaft. The V8 was a gem from the start, Olds even turbocharged it for ’63 and thus shares honors with Chevy (who introduced the turbo Corvair the same year) for the world’s first turbocharged production cars.</span>

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<span style="font-size: medium;"> </span><span style="font-size: medium;">When the Special, F-85, and Tempest became larger "intermediates" for ’64, GM dumped the V8 in favor of heavier and larger iron V8s, although Buick did use some aluminum cylinder heads for awhile on their small-block V8. Rover of England bought the tooling about ’67 to provide a replacement for their old, old, F-head inline six in the big Rover P5 models and to provide an optional engine in the four-cylinder P6 models where an inline six wouldn’t fit. The V8 P5 model was officially known as the P5B, with B being for Buick! In ’70 they introduced the Range Rover with the V8 as standard and it remained the primary Range Rover engine into the ‘90s. GM could have really used this nice lightweight V8 in the ‘70s, but by then it was gone.</span>

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<span style="font-size: medium;">Buick continued to build the odd-fire V6 through ’67 as a price leader for the very few Buick buyers who wanted a six. I think Oldsmobile may have offered it on occasion too. After that they sold it to Kaiser Jeep, who wanted to augment the old F-head four cylinder in the basic Jeep. The V6 fit beautifully in the Jeep, and Jeep customers didn’t care if it was a rough running engine. They also liked the fact that there were plenty of V6 parts available through Buick and aftermarket channels so an engine problem didn’t necessarily mean having to find a Jeep dealership. However, American Motors bought Kaiser-Jeep in 1970 and immediately shoehorned their own inline six into the Jeep so they could mothball the V6 for the second time in its’ short life. This is why AMC was able to sell the tooling back to GM during the energy crises as they had no intention of making two sixes with radically different designs. To their credit GM then began to spend money on the V6 and eventually developed it into a fine engine, although it really wasn’t nice until the ‘80s when it got decent port fuel injection and computer-mapped ignition in addition to split crankpins to make it an even fire engine.</span>

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<span style="font-size: medium;">Given AMC’s limited budget, I really doubt that they would have been interested in the V6 for their own cars, as they preferred their own inline six. Having the V6 in a redesigned Pacer would have allowed somewhat better space utilization (which was quite awful due to the mostly wasted excessive width), but it would have cost them lots of money to do, and they wouldn’t have been able to fix the balance and vibration problems during the Pacer’s lifetime. What would have worked best for the Pacer would have been to put their inline six transversely with front wheel drive, like Austin did for the 2200 in England, but AMC had neither the engineering ability nor the money to do anything like this.</span>