What If The AMC Eagle Had Survived After 1988 In Argentina?

“The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated”

Mark Twain famously wrote these words when he was, in fact, still alive and merely abroad. Oddly enough, a number of cars in automotive history could have uttered the same thing over the years, living on in communist countries or in South America long after they had disappeared from the US. While people tend to focus on the rear-engined VW Beetle as a car which survived for decades being produced in Brazil (and Mexico) after Germany stopped making them, there are plenty more cars that have enjoyed a reprieve from the reaper below the equator.

Argentina is one nation with a rich history of life-supporting American cars from the Kennedy era up to and beyond when Duran Duran was popular. In 1962, Ford or Argentina started selling the then-two-year-old Falcon, virtually unchanged from the model sold in the US.

However, while Ford did extensive facelifts on the car over the decade and dropped the Falcon entirely after 1970, Ford Argentina just kept going with this durable little Ford all the way up the 1991! Mind you, they did ‘update’ the styling over time; the results were, uh, interesting:

Whoa! That looks like a restomod gone horribly wrong. You just can’t convincingly make a 1960 car look like a Taurus, and here’s your proof.

The Argentinian company Industrias Kaiser Argentina (IKA) was much more successful, at least visually, with their take on producing AMC’s Rambler American in 1966 as the IKA Torino. Dick Teague’s little compact was a nice looking car, but apparently IKA were just too cool for this and thought it needed a little something extra to look cosmopolitan cruising down the wide streets of Buenos Aires. I’ve never been, but a world-traveling friend spent a month there and declared the city to be a painfully underrated destination (honestly churrasco with chimichuri sauce is enough enticement for me).

Styling tweaks by Pininfarina made the Torino look, unsurprisingly, more European. The aggressive face-within-a-face nose bears little resemblance to the Rambler:

At the back, less chrome trim and amber signals continue the Italian/French appearance:

The interior restyle created the most dramatic change, and really added an Alfa Romeo-like look totally unrecognizable from the Wisconsin built car.

Mechanically the engine was completely different and the suspension in back with coil springs instead of the leafs in the Rambler. Overally, IKA did a great job of turning this American compact into a reasonable approximation of a GT car, one that oddly enough was raced to fourth place at the Marathon De La Route on the Nurburgring in 1969.

Manufacturing ran up to 1982, long after the Rambler American had been replaced in the US. Blessedly, IKA refused to ‘modernize’ the Torino’s styling and left relatively unchanged for the whole production run.

I find something sort of appealing about these old cars soldiering on far away, and wondered what cars I might have wanted to see get a new lease on life. Oddly enough, one that hit my mind was another AMC creation; one that never got a fair shake and hopefully could have been appreciated somewhere else.

The Rambler American on which the IKA Torino was based got replaced in 1970 by the AMC Hornet, a car that was updated as the Concord and Spirit hatchback almost a decade later.

A solid if unspectacular compact, it wasn’t exactly a car you’d want to take to the Nurburgring like they did with the Torino. Wait… they did race an AMC Spirit there? With Josh Brolin’s dad/Mr. Barbra Streisand driving? And they WON their class??

I mean, I don’t know what the ‘class’ was, but even if it was “Best Black Car With Orange Stripes” the fact that this cheap, dated compact took the abuse of the Green Hell around the clock and finished at all is flat out amazing.

What’s more impressive is how AMC took this now-ten-year-old little car and effectively started a market segment, albeit a few decades too early. Using their in-house Jeep expertise, they dropped an innovative full-time four wheel drive system into the Concord to create the 1980 American Motors Eagle.

Arguably the first ‘crossover’, it sold well at first but AMC’s cash situation meant that it got few updates and sold less and less until Chrysler dropped it in 1988 after taking control of America’s last independent auto maker (funny note: Chrysler grouped the remaining AMC cars it kept building under a new “Eagle” brand, meaning that the last of these all-wheel-drive groundbreakers were essentially Eagle Eagles). Once again, as always, American Motors offered brilliant design ideas to the world and was rewarded with a swift kick in the ‘nads.

The Eagle deserved a second life. Last year I envisioned what AMC would look like if Chrysler had NOT been bailed out by the Government in 1979; a new Eagle was a prominent model in the lineup:

However, what if American Motors did indeed disappear, but the remnants of IKA in Argentina (at this point Renault) respected the groundbreaking crossover and made a continuation model in the same vein as the Torino did decades before? The poor Hornet had been nipped and tucked a lot at this point, but it could stand a bit more inside for a final run as a unique ‘large’ car to complement Renault Argentina’s smaller offerings and possibly better suited to local roads (or lack thereof) than what the French offered. Let’s say that with the demise of AMC in 1987, previous-American-Motors-owner Renault ships a new Eagle down south to let the team in Buenos Aires see what magic they can do to update it into a late eighties car.

First, the Renault Argentina guys would put all of Eagle’s chrome trim leftover from the 1970 Hornet base car into the basura (garbage). More modern side mirrors would be complemented by black or dark grey trim to unify the mess that is the three side windows. Next, they’d determine how low they could bring the nose down without major mods to the front structure and add a fascia panel similar to what I suggested for an all-new Eagle. Composite lights, a built-in ‘brush bar’ surrounding a Jeep-inspired grille and lower fog lights replace the big seventies 5 MPH bumpers. The lower trim could be replaced by the ever-popular-in-1988 grey plastic or just grey paint (on an off roadable car it’s actually a good idea).

In back, the Argentinian designers would replace the whole tailgate or cover it in some kind of fiberglass cladding to take away the seventies hatch look and add a touch of the flattened abbreviated trunk lid used on most late eighties liftbacks (look at the exposed external hinges on the original car!). Full width lights would change the dated cut-inwards shape of the original Eagle; the extra length this would add to the back would really not be much more (if any) than the extension those giant bumpers add to the US car. Bumpers here are relatively flush, with a mock ‘push bar’ surrounding a large backup light; a better integrated exhaust pipe and a mandated rear fog lamp flank the stylized bar.

Inside, the Eagle dashboard needs help; pretty dated even when the Eagle debuted in 1980:

I can’t think of a later car that actually used AutoZone-style toggle switches! This was a 1988 car!

Bringing the dash into 1989 might not need replacement of the entire thing. I do wonder if new cover up ‘pods’ could be added to the existing structure. A large gauge/control pod with an extended switch surface (similar to concurrent Renaults) would fit over the driver’s side of the dash, while the center area would be covered in something to hold the more modern radio and a crude ‘trip computer’ with things like MPG, elapsed time and such. The lighter is relocated to the lower console where AMC put unreadable-down-there aftermarket-looking gauges; Renault window switches would reside there, too, replacing the chromed toggles on the doors of the original car.

Under the hood, I am told that a V8 will not fit with the design of the Eagle’s four wheel drive system, but I can see Renault fitting a turbo diesel straight six to the old Hornet at least as an option.

The ‘new’ 1989 Eagle would not pass safety or smog regulations in American, and it was hopelessly dated at this point; there’s no chance of it ever returning to US streets. Still, to gain respect and appreciation by buyers somewhere would do my heart good for this under-appreciated car, even it was on the opposite side of the globe.

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