AP Spotlight: 1981-82 AMC Eagle Kammback

The car in the spotlight this time is a rare car, indeed: the 1981-82 AMC Eagle Kammback. If you're under 30, you've probably never seen one in person.

On April Fools Day of 1970, AMC - America's (distantly) fourth largest automaker - stole a march on giants GM and Ford by being the first American manufacturer to offer an import-fighting subcompact car. The truncated AMC Gremlin was basically an AMC Hornet with its tail bobbed and the rear wheels brought forward a foot. And its love-it-or-hate-it styling and tongue-in-cheek name got people's attention quickly. The Gremlin's range of big, smooth, powerful (for the day) inline-six cylinder engines was attractive to Americans who weren't convinced that the imports' inline-4s could provide the power, smoothness, and reliability they'd expected from the bigger American cars they were used to. Six months later, the competing '71 Chevy Vega and Ford Pinto (Chrysler took the easy way out and imported Dodge-badged Mitsubishis, and Plymouth-badged Hillmans instead of making their own American subcompacts), debuted with only 4-cylinder engines, which would prove to be a bit more economical than the Gremlin's big sixes, but far less reliable and responsive. And compared to the - by then ubiquitous - VW Beetle, the Gremlin had similar fuel mileage, with more than double the horsepower, and far more interior space. Despite all of its big-car advantages, it debuted as the lowest-priced American-made car. And sales were good.

In '72, AMC ratcheted up their quality and introduced the Buyer Protection Plan, the first bumper-to-bumper warranty offered on the American car market. It came standard on the Gremlin, too, which also picked up a V8 engine option to catch muscle car buyers turned away by soaring insurance rates. AMC even included denim seats as an option on the Gremlin, as a way to reach out to the youth culture of the day. In ads, they called it "the car that wears the pants". The fun shape, practical design, trusty, powerful engines, and lighthearted advertising worked, and sales were brisk through the first 5 years of the car's run. More than 171,000 were sold in 1974 alone.

But then AMC spent a ton of money on cars that were distinctively styled like the Gremlin, but not as well thought-out - the '74 Matador Coupe and '75 Pacer, specifically. And when those cars didn't make the money AMC needed to keep the rest of its product line up-to-date, the little car company soon found itself in big trouble.

By '78, Gremlin sales were poor having to compete with minimal changes with an onslaught of new Japanese small cars. Only 22,000 Gremlins were sold that year. And so AMC took a little out of their dwindling cash reserves and facelifted it, adding a fastback coupe version to accompany its existing chopped-tail bodystyle, and called them both the Spirit for '79. What resulted was a car that looked much more modern, was well-equipped, and sold better than it had in years. For a time. But it wasn't quite enough to move the needle for the company, so AMC decided to sell a 5% stake to French carmaker Renault that same year to generate some cash.


But AMC wasn't about to give up. In 1980, the plucky company, again on a shoestring budget, took a quantum leap forward and introduced the 4x4 AMC Eagle. And as radical a concept as this, the first American 4x4 passenger car was, the car itself looked like little more than a lightly re-trimmed Concord (itself a facelifted Hornet) with 3" of suspension lift. But AMC gave the car to their Jeep division to tune the full-time four-wheel-drive system for durability, and the suspension for a compliant ride no other 4WD vehicle could match. It worked, too, and sales were great, considering the minimal investment AMC made.

Even though the Eagle was available in every Concord bodystyle (i.e., coupe, sedan, and wagon), AMC decided they could go further. So for '81, they Eagle-ized the Spirit liftback and sedan (nee Gremlin), calling them the Eagle SX/4 and - the subject of this story - the Eagle Kammback, respectively. And in so doing, they brought the Eagle within reach of subcompact buyers.

The smaller Eagles couldn't have come at a better time. Because of the second energy crisis in 1979, sales of trucks and SUVs, which had been burgeoning in the '70s, came to a halt nearly overnight. And Jeep was not immune. But because of the dovetailing success of AMC's aging passenger car lineup, they'd become increasingly financially dependent on the fat profits through high volumes they were making from Jeep. As soon as Jeep sales slowed, the company was in serious peril. So the new subcompact Eagles were charged with making up the difference.

The Kammback's basic shape may have dated back to the '70 Gremlin, but its boxy roofline made for better headroom for rear passengers and more space for cargo than its sporty SX/4 brother. Its upright profile, short, stubby wheelbase, large tires, and dent-resistant Kraton plastic flared wheelarches, made the Kammback look just as butch as the big SUVs of the day, as well. Especially with the optional roof rack and rear air deflector. Its short front and rear overhangs and wheelbase gave the car excellent approach, breakover, and departure angles, as well...making it a bit better-suited for off-roading than it larger brethren. And the Kammback also came with the exact same engines as the bigger Eagles - a standard GM-sourced 2.5L Iron Duke Inline-4, with AMC's own bulletproof 4.2L Inline-6 as an option. Either engine could be mated to a 4-speed manual transmission as standard, or a rock-solid Chrysler-sourced 3-speed automatic as an option. So the car had the power to go with the grip necessary to get it through the deep, loose, or messy stuff with aplomb. And the Eagle Kammback offered all of the above for only $5,995 to start - the lowest-priced Eagle in the line. An Escort GL 3-door hatchback cost about the same, with a smaller engine and only the front wheels driving.

There was one problem, though. As novel a small car as the Eagle Kammback was, AMC utterly failed to promote it. The Eagle wagon and SX/4 got plenty of TV airtime and a raft of print ad support, as well. But not one of those ads mentioned the Kammback at all. The company must have looked at the Kammback as merely an 11 year-old jacked-up facelifted Gremlin, and got insecure about drawing attention to it. While mechanically identical, the SX/4's body shape was much newer, having been introduced as the aforementioned Spirit in 1979. So the SX/4 got all the attention, while the Kammback was relegated to wallflower status. Sales reflected it, too. The SX/4 managed to find 17,530 customers in '81, while the Kammback snared only 5,603 buyers in its talons.

For '82, little changed, except for the addition of an optional 5-speed manual transmission and low-drag front disc brakes, which worked together to push the Kammback's fuel economy figures to an impressive 19 city/30 highway. But it wasn't enough, and sales trickled to only 520 units (as opposed to 10,445 '82 SX/4s) sold for the car's second year.

AMC was bleeding money fast by this point. The economy was worsening, fuel prices were rising, as were interest rates, and Jeep sales were not bouncing back. So the company slashed costs further, and the Eagle Kammback went quietly into the night after only 2 years on the market. Its rear-wheel-drive Spirit sedan companion was also dropped, along with the poor-selling Concord and Eagle coupes. By '83, the big news at AMC was the introduction of the Renault-engineered line of Alliance and Encore compacts. And the  remaining Spirit Liftback, Eagle SX/4, Concord and Eagle sedans and wagons played a very distant second fiddle. By '84, the Spirit, Concords, and SX/4 were canceled. The Eagle sedan managed to make it to '87 before it was euthenized. And the Eagle wagon carried into 1988 before Chrysler, which had bought AMC from Renault (themselves owning a controlling 46.4% stake in AMC by 1982) in August 1987, finally pulled the plug on the 4x4 Eagle. It would be the last-ever AMC-engineered passenger car, and it died just as the sport-utility craze was heating to a rolling boil.

AMC's failure to see the merits of the Eagle Kammback resulted in lost opportunities and lost sales. Had their marketing department been able to see what the small, wagonesque Kammback had to offer and cleverly pitch it to people who had been scared out of their Broncos, Blazers, and Cherokees due to high fuel prices, more buyers would have queued up and AMC's financial position would have improved accordingly. But AMC's pluckiness turned to insecurity, and as a result, things didn't work out.

So the 1981-82 AMC Eagle Kammback remains something of an unsung hero today. It's a tough, reliable, capable, practical small car with relatively good power and fuel economy. Its stubby, brawny looks are oddly lovable. It's a gutsy, scrappy little car from a gutsy, scrappy little company that hung in there, advancing the game wherever they could for as long as they could. Yet for all the Eagle Kammback's merits, it has fallen undeservedly into obscurity, made by a manufacturer that eventually fell into obscurity, itself. So to make up for that, it has therefore earned its place here, in the Automotive Playbook Spotlight.