American Motors: The Rambler, the Pacer and the First Crossover SUV

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American Motors Corporation was born in 1954 when Nash-Kelvinator and Hudson merged, then the largest corporate merger in U.S. history, to survive a price war between Ford and GM. CEO George W. Romney refused to fight Detroit on its terms and bet on the compact Rambler, traveling some 70,000 miles in a year to call the Big Three's cars gas guzzling dinosaurs. Shared parts and no annual restyling made AMC profitable by 1958, when the Rambler was the third best selling car in America. AMC also adopted the P R N D S L shift pattern, made tandem brake master cylinders standard in 1962, and fitted reclining front seats.

After Romney left to run for governor of Michigan, Roy Abernethy pushed into bigger cars like the Ambassador and Marlin and drained the company. Roy D. Chapin Jr. made air conditioning standard on the 1968 Ambassador and paid $70 million for Kaiser Jeep in 1970. The Pacer was designed around a GM rotary engine that GM canceled, forcing AMC to cram in its heavy inline six. Facing Japanese imports and an aging Kenosha plant, AMC took money from Renault, which gained a 49 percent stake, and built the 4x4 Eagle, often called the first crossover. Chrysler bought AMC for $1.5 billion in 1987.

• Romney's "dinosaur fighter" pitch for fuel economy came about 20 years before the oil crises of the 1970s.
• The Gremlin, the first North American built subcompact, was made by chopping the back off an existing sedan.
• The Hornet offered a Levi's interior in blue denim with orange stitching and copper rivets.
• Unfinished bodies at Kenosha had to be trucked across city streets between buildings.
• AMC engineers, nicknamed the Wake Island Marines, brought the platform team approach to Chrysler under François Castaing.