Is there an Autopian alive that doesn’t miss American Motors at least a little bit? Their often innovative and always different cars were products that could probably only have been created by the The Last Independent American Automaker. I’ve always wondered how different choices or circumstances might have changed their fate or the fate of their cars.
AMC What If? is a semi-regular series to explore some of the alternate realities that might have resulted from AMC making a few changes back in the day. Here’s one that’s been bothering me for far too long.
There’s probably only one thing that I dislike more than those trite ‘Worst Cars Ever’ lists where the Yugo places at the top; it’s those ‘Ugliest Cars in History’ compilations. Not only are they usually written by people that know nothing about cars and are presented in advertising-filled slide shows, these hackneyed lists invariably have the AMC Pacer sitting at the number one spot.
While the Pacer is indeed a Haggis-like acquired taste, I’ve always found this rounded car more charming than ugly in the same vein as a Citroen 2CV or VW Beetle. Like those two cars, the Pacer came about its looks by virtue of function. The idea of wide small car with huge glass area was a perfect example of a car designed from the inside out. I could spend an hour listing off cars that fit the description of ‘ugly’ far better than the Pacer, including some of the overdone styled-with-a-machete shit sitting on showroom floors today. I’ve always been pretty fond of the looks of this silly car.
The overall shape of the Pacer really isn’t what is making it ‘ugly’ in people’s eyes; if that were the case then it wouldn’t have been cited by designer Tony Lapine as one of the inspirations for his design of the iconic Porsche 928.
I believe the issue is that the proportions and certain details fall far afield of the public’s perception of ‘normal’ and ‘correct’ in the design of a car. Some brave customizers have noticed this and made attempts to correct these issues. While their efforts are…uh…well intentioned, the end results typically don’t get the desired effect. To say the least.
source: Reddit
It seems pretty obvious that with some relatively minor tweaks at the early stages of the design (but well beyond the capabilities of any customizer today) the Pacer could have been far better received by the public. Improved? I definitely wouldn’t say that, but certainly made to be less controversial. Surprisingly, I’ve never sat down and Photosloppyed out some rough idea of what this might have looked like, until now.
source: Wikipedia and The Bishop
Oddly enough, the Pacer is NOT a lot taller than cars of similar vintage; it’s only about an inch and a half taller than the AMC Hornet/Gremlin/Concord of the same era. However, to try to ‘normalize’ the looks I’ve chopped a good two inches or so off of the height (and lower the seats if needed).
So if it isn’t any taller than the average car, why does it look so odd to people? It’s really the glass area itself that is so exaggerated. At the top, the ‘aircraft’ style doors that wrap into the roof allow for the side glass to go so high, and the beltline on the side (lower line of the glass) is quite low. In fact, you might notice that door glass is too tall to roll all the way down! AMC even had to design in little ‘fins’ into the door panels so you could rest your arm there instead of on the sharp edge of the glass sticking up. To me, it’s cool as hell, but Average Buyer says ‘fishbowl’.
source: CarScoops and Barn Finds
To make John Doe be less afraid to write a check, I’ve raised the beltline and brought to the door tops down to give it more ‘normal’ appearance.
At the front, the distinctive ‘bug eyes’ are a real love-it-or-hate-it part of the styling that work with the Cozy Coupe roof to add to the odd appearance that I love but apparently many do not. Here I’ve cut them down and replaced them with quad rectangular units that do not break the horizontal line of the hood and won’t offend anyone.
With the revised car, there are now new questions. To my eye and other fans-of-freaks like Jason, it ruins the car. [Editor’s Note: This is true. I like the Pacer as AMCgod made her. – JT] Still, if they had made these changes to the production car, would it still be an object of ridicule by the masses? Maybe it wouldn’t be, but would it still be ‘Pacer’ enough? I mean, is what I did to the car akin to that man or woman with an interestingly shaped nose that gets rhinoplasty and now looks ‘better’ in the conventional sense yet now lacks any kind of distinction in their appearance? They’re just a grey RAV4 in a Costco parking lot now?
Either way, we’re like fifty years too late to find out. But what do you think?
My dad had a Pacer and I convinced him to buy it because it was the cleanest car on the used car lot. It wasn’t a bad car either. And I still like the way it looks. Don’t mess with perfection!
I like John Denver and George Burns. I will just leave this. https://www.motortrend.com/features/hrdp-1010-steve-bashfords-1978-amc-pacer-wagon/ I saw this on tv with a woman driver, not his wife. Pinks maybe? Either way this car was well done and super cool. I wonder what a Pacer would look like with round headlights and t-bird round taillights
Lean into the ugly. The only thing that makes us remember the Pacer is how different it looked. Making it look more like other cars and we wouldn’t have remembered it.
I found the pursuit of this interesting, but the buickification of this car which is a weird, wide bubble Gremlin anyway doesn’t work. What was wrong remains wrong, it was the promise of the future riding on a butchered Rambler American base like so many other AMC “not quite right” products it was doomed to failure not from the styling, but from the same old crap recycled underneath.
Agreed. The problem with the Pacer was not its looks. It was cool and different and modern in its time. The problem was the underlying vehicle. The engine (which was supposed to have been a GM built Wankel) was a heavy old slug straight-6 which was just stuffed in, and changing the rear spark plugs was …impossible as they were up under the windshield. The rear passenger seat was jammed between the fender wells making it exceptionally narrow. The plastics used in the car first sun-faded, and then cracked very quickly. Then, they were so popular in their first year that construction was rushed and shoddy. Sales fell off as the word got out, which took longer pre-internet.
One problem that was design related, and which I don’t think the redesign fixes, was that all that glass made the car impossible to air-condition which is a huge problem in the southern half of the U.S. So while the redesign looks better, it won’t make the Pacer into a good car.
I was in high school when these came out. A true point & laugh at car. We were brutal to their owners. But today I wonder if a roadster, complete with cut down windshield could “improve” it. Turn the roof metal into a trunk lid, making it a 2 seater. Bigger, wider wheels & frenched fog lamps of course. Might have already been done!
I kind of like the chopped Pacer in the article – that would make a sweet convertible too.
Nice. Raising the belt line and lowering the roof did wonders. I would keep the torpedo tube headlights though. I think they add balance. Nothing wrong with a car being silly. Isettas and Beetles are silly. I wonder if the car would have done better with the rotary engine GM was going to sell them? That would have been an engineering selling point. It didn’t pan out for Mazda in the long run but it gave them an identity.
I know I’m late to the party, but what would a four-door Pacer look like? (Referencing the Bishop’s missive here: https://www.theautopian.com/a-daydreaming-designer-four-door-ifys-some-of-americas-automotive-gems/)
The proportions would probably be off, but then again maybe the Pacer would look less like a fishbowl if it was longer. Was there a technical or assembly line reason in Kenosha why the Pacer was so short?
A shame AMC didn’t have the funding to produce AM Van Concept, which might have had legs, unlike the Pacer.
I think the 938 S would have made it much more palatable for sales literature and the like, but it would have bene a visibility nightmare like the Javelin and 71-73 mustang fast backs. lowering the bubble or maybe just changing the rear bubble glass size to something more akin to van round window would have probably made it more popular back in the day.
I never saw this car IRL, so I have to ask: did the ugly greenhouse really had any practical effect in terms of visibility? Was the car any better for the visual “compromises”, so to speak?
Visibility – excellent. Impossible to spend any time in the car on a sunny day. A/C can’t cut it. “Greenhouse” is not just a semi-descriptive nomenclature here – greenhouse is what it is.
I am glad the Pacer exists as is. However I think it was a terrible design aesthetically and ergonomically. They made it wider but that did not make it better.
They basically took the front seat area of a full-size sedan and traced the smallest possible box around it that would allow a functional car. Idea was the front seats, including the legroom, headroom, hip room, shoulder room, etc would be the same as the full size AMC Ambassador, but with subcompact external dimensions.
Wasn’t so much that they made a small car wider, it was more about making a full-size car drastically shorter. The perfect car for a dystopian future where the 1970s never ended, which was basically the gist of all dystopian fiction from the ’70s
Also, there was a big phobia about small cars in crosswinds in the 70s – Ford advertised the Pinto’s wide track quite heavily, reassuring customers that it wouldn’t be pushed around on the road, and I remember watching a film in drivers ed that was from around 1973 on the subject of smaller cars being a new phenomenon that was likely here to stay and dealt with how to handle them when mixed in traffic with bigger cars and trucks or when driving over bridges. Not a surprise that AMC expected the wideness to be a reassuring feature for their prospective buyers.
I do have a soft spot for the original mirthmobile, but I do agree this photochop does a good job of making it more blandly acceptable.
If only AMC could have built the AMVan, they might have had something distinctive that would have caught the public’s imagination.
I like the Pacer as built-except not a fan of the late egg-crate grill. Rather wish I was your boss so I could get you to do a shooting brake version of this.
Your smaller greenhouse makes it considerably sleeker: I’d like to see it lowered on Halibrands
They did do a “wagon” version that I think looked better: https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2019/09/rare-rides-a-pristine-amc-pacer-wagon-from-1978/ See second picture down.
And there’s that grill: I just can’t get past it.
Yeah, I was thinking reading this that with the revised grille, it’s not that far off some of the overdone monstrosities Ford was putting out at the same time until you get to the glassbowl rear, but it works for me in original form.
Even though you’ve changes the headlights and the windows, it still has that strange egg-shape, where its wide right where your elbows are in the car. Almost all other cars has more flat vertical doorskins. Also the rounded rear end is still there and is quite unique and like no other car on the market.
The very simple Kalamazoo style bumpers went well with the simple lines of the less is more design on the original Pacer, but now that you’ve normalized it, they kind of stick out, and you have to dolly them up a bit also.
I do like the DeLorean headlight style, but just the original one for me, thank you.
I agree with your take on the redesign. The original is quirky but beautiful in its own way. I never drove one, so I can’t speak to the platform’s comfort or drivability, but as far as looks go, I think it’s only gotten better looking with time and perspective.
The quad headlamp front end looks very generic. Almost like an AMC / Renault Alliance style.
Not sure on the lower roof. Might look better on the wagon version.
That narrow-slit front end reminds me of an 80s Celica
I was thinking Mitsu-sourced Dodge Challenger/Plymouth Sapporo myself.
I liked the appearance of the Pacer (except the ones where they put things like vinyl roofs on them.
The problem wasn’t that the Pacer looked like the future, it was that it was built on a chassis and drive train that should have been retired way in the past. They just drove like shit.
American Motors needed a front drive platform badly, but the Fiesta and K-car cost Ford and Chrysler $1 billion each, respectively, in 1970s money, and the X-car cost GM $2.5 billion. Granted, Chrysler probably spent a lot less on their L-cars, but they were a reworking of the 1960s vintage Simca 1100, so a lot of the R&D had already been paid for.
The Pacer and Matador Coupe cost American Motors $106 million combined, likely a fraction of what they needed to do a proper new small car platform. Without a deep pocketed partner (which they eventually sort of got with Renault), they just didn’t have the money for radical new engineering.
Ranwhenparked-remember that AMC did get a FWD mainstream car, the Alliance/Encore, which was an Americanized Renault 9 and 11. This car also gets criticized today for whatever reason but was indeed a strong seller when new and profitable for AMC. However, debuting in 1983 it was a little too late and they also didn’t have the competitive product to fill the other areas of the lineup.
I actually delved into what a partially Renault-based full lineup might have looked like a little while ago:
https://www.theautopian.com/a-trained-designer-imagines-what-american-motors-corporation-would-have-been-like-if-it-had-survived/
Sort of, but it marked the beginning of the end of AMC’s own identity. Renault had them do focus groups across the US and Canada during 1979 to see whether new cars should carry AMC or Renault branding, the results were almost a 50-50 split, with a possible very slight consumer preference for Renault. Renault executives were already pushing for everything to be under their name anyway, so the research confirmed what they wanted, and they went with it, although the results were really inconclusive.
The Alliance launched under the joint Renault/AMC brand for the first year, then became just a Renault, while the Encore was launched as a Renault from the start, and their introduction coincided with the end of the Spirit and Concord and the paring back of the Eagle to just the wagon and sedan (for another year, then further dropped to just the wagon).
I like the before and after. I think the original was just ahead of its time. But i doubt all ghe glass in the original could pass safety standards.
It was designed for the foreseeable “worst case scenario” future crash safety regulations for the 1980s, as imagined in the mid 1970s – 50mph front impact, 40mph side impact. But the planned airbags and the extra beam in the roof for the 13,000lb roof crush standard were deleted from the final design for cost savings, with the idea that they could be put back later if required.
The Pacer and the Porsche 928 look pretty much the same except proportioned differently. I think the redesign pretty much spoils the whole thing. I love the low belt line on the original. In fact, other than decluttering the trim and maybe doing something about the bumpers the only thing it change is the squared headlights. The headlights are round sealed beams, the Pacer is overall of rounded shape, why the ugly headlight surrounds? The hideous nose job on the later cars is pretty unspeakable as well.
The interiors sucked, just like almost all American cars of the time, but the outside looked fine where AMC was not tacking on brand identity crap.
The lowered roof reminds me of the shift from the original A4 based New Beetle to the chopped and channeled A5 based model. Personally I think the Pacer, the modern Fiat Multipla, and the Citroën Cactus work best with their original take it or leave it looks. The Pacer has more character with round headlights and bumps, the restyled Multipla was uglier and Citroën is supposed to be weird.
“At the top, the ‘aircraft’ style doors that wrap into the roof allow for the side glass to go so high,”
So we’re not talking about the thumb sized panel gap between the door and the frame?
Black Peter- the door lock button is down in front of the door handle- I left my keys in it so I had to pry open the front to get the coat hanger in to unlock it. I promise I’ll bend it back.
No way Garth! These were a rolling suppositories since new. Unless they are filled with Thai Stick or Luges, I don’t want one ever.
Can you do the shorter roof, but keep the eye-lights? Quad headlights kills the changed design for me
Just started the article, but I got to this line: “Not only are they usually written by people that know nothing about cars and are presented in advertising-filled slide shows” and just had to jump down here to say “Shots fired!” 😀
As far as the actual article content goes, I’d say that far too often people conflate weird and ugly. There are certainly cars that are both, but there are also plenty of weird cars that are not ugly. This is one of them.
I hear you, a Citroën DS is weird, a Citroën Ami 6 is ugly.
Awe, the ami 6’s front has a look like the car just heard you say that 🙁
Like the Coneheads; We are from France.
Everyone goes ahhh and just nods.
nemebean- just saw a new list that had the Eagle, Gremlin, Cimmaron, Pinto and 1986 Sable on it; so now we’re just adding random cars to these Ugly Car things?
I think making a Pacer too normal turns it into a Chevy Citation.
Rollin- ..or into countless other seventies fastbacks that never appeared on ‘ugly car’ lists and sold relatively well but that you couldn’t remember now if your life depended on it.
Well, they called it “the malaise era” for a reason.
But it just hit me as I type this: you’ve turned it into the Hyundai Ioniq 5!
I think turning it into a Citiation was the goal of the exercise. An attempt to make the car appeal to the types of people who bought ‘normal’ compact cars.
To my eye, AMC’s distinctive look has aged better than the standard-looking (boring) cars from Ford/Chevy/etc. So I don’t personally like the changes. But that’s with the benefit of 50 years of hindsight. At that time, the market disagreed with me, and Pacers were not the de facto cars found in every American parking lot (despite the company’s patriotic name).
campfire- YES! exactly. There are many, many masterpieces from the Citroen DS to the 928 that in period the buying public didn’t get (at least Americans).
Here’s a challenge- what are the slow selling new cars available today that might be highly respected in a few decades?
Trouble was, the Pacer was really a “fashion accessory” type of a car, like the PT Cruiser or FJ Cruiser when they first came out. People bought them the first year specifically because of the unusual design with over 145,000 sales for calendar year 1975 (a pretty respectable number for a company the size of American Motors – 59% of the AMC brand’s total volume that year) – but then, the numbers slid off a cliff from 1976-onward as everyone who wanted one already had one.
A more conventual appearing design might not have cracked 145k in a single year, but it would have had a better shot of maintaining more consistent volume throughout the product cycle.
Sales were only just over 11,000 for 1979, the last full year, and a measly 1,750 for 1980 in the final run-out. If the car has averaged even, say, 60,000 a year consistently throughout the run, it would have been a huge improvement.
Still hard to see how they would have ever turned a profit on the $66 million development cost, break even was 350,000 total cars (they sold 280,000), but losing less money is the next best thing
Ranwhenparked- funny you should say that. I remember some video on the Pacer where internally they were excited about initial sales and then after a year or so they realized (paraphrased) that ‘everyone that wanted one had already bought one’
If I’m honest, I prefer the original. It made no attempt to conceal its quirkiness. Also, the chopped roof doesn’t quite fit the rest of the proportions. Apologies for being negative, as I assume you would prefer the opposite. 🙂
The Pacer was a great vision and still works for me as is.
Thad- actually, I would NOT prefer the opposite. As I mention in the post, I love the Pacer as-is, and wanted to show how making it more ‘normal’ and more focus-group friendly doesn’t improve it.
Thanks for saying so. I feel better now (yes, that’s how needy I can be). Perhaps I should admit that I was so distracted by work that I might not have carefully read your post and instead just pondered the pics. Apologies for that (see, I found a way to make it about me and my tender feelings again). I’ll try harder in the future.
Also, my faith in your taste is fully restored (because your feelings are important too). 😀
Thad- just glad to see people stepping up to defend the Pacer! I’ve been designing everything from recycling bins to flight simulators to logo-shaped urinal cakes (not making that up) for thirty years so my feelings stopped mattering a long time ago.
Jason has floated the ‘no Yugos on the Worst Car Lists’ rule and I say this car deserves the same exceptions.
I too, unabashedly love the og Pacer. I have to say, I like that stretched red thing with the whale tale too.