What It Might Look Like If Tesla ‘Gremlinized’ The Model 3 To Make A Tesla Model 2

Does an AMC Gremlin make you want to vomit? This truncated compact often appears with its Pacer brother on those Worst Cars Of All Time lists, the sort of tiresome click-bait posts typically written by people that aren’t qualified to talk about cars. No, the Gremlin was not a spectacular car, but an outstanding example of cost-effective development that was really no worse than its competitors at the time. It certainly doesn’t cause me to have an urge to toss my lunch, but in a rather ironic twist it seems that ‘vomit’ is indeed part of this little car’s lineage.

American Motor’s compact cars were usually competitive against the Big Three, but in the late sixties they wanted to hit the Volkswagen Beetle subcompact market.

If you know anything about AMC, you’ll be well aware that America’s last independent automaker was always short on cash, and to make develop this new little import fighter they had the kind of development dollars that GM or Ford might spend on a taillight refresh. Ah, but American Motors had an ace in the hole with design leader Richard ‘Dick’ Teague, a man who could do more with next-to-nothing than the Big Guys could do with the GNP of Tunisia.

Apparently, Teague was flying back home to Wisconsin on a Northwest Orient flight and thinking about this seemingly impossible challenge when an idea hit him. For whatever reason, Dick didn’t have any paper handy, so he grabbed the next best thing he could- the air sickness bag from the seatback in front of him and scribbled out his rough concept:

Earlier, Teague had taken the Javelin pony car and chopped out a foot from the wheelbase to turn it into the AMX ‘sports car’, so it made sense in his mind to do a slicing with a cleaver on the 1970 Hornet compact (a car that would stay ultimately stay in production in different forms, like the later Concord and all-wheel-drive equipped Eagle, for nearly two decades). The design team took a Hornet coupe and removed ten inches from the wheelbase and ten inches out of the overall length to make a car an inch shorter than the Beetle. Still, the entire front section of the Hornet and the whole drivetrain was retained, so the tooling and time investment was remarkably minimal for such a different car. AMC knew that it was a rather odd-looking creation, but so was the Beetle. That was part of the appeal. “Nobody would have paid attention if it had looked like one of the Big Three” said Teague. In fact, the company doubled down on this weirdness by making a goofy ‘Gremlin’ character on the badge and even releasing the car on April Fool’s Day.

Surprisingly, the Gremlin did sell relatively well, with 670,000 examples leaving AMC dealerships during its 1970-1978 run. Remember, the primary domestic competition for this car was the Ford Pinto and the Chevrolet Vega, so there’s no way on earth that you can call it completely subpar. Other manufacturers actually tried this cut-off-the-back trick later on, like this Peugeot 104ZL. The French car maker took their popular four door hatchback and reduced the length by a foot to make it into a super mini:

Oddly enough, other manufacturers seemed to be inspired by this idea to do the opposite. Volkswagen famously added a trunk to their iconic Golf hatchback to create the very successful Jetta sedan; a smart move considering that in the early eighties hatchbacks started to fall out of favor with the buying public.

Such chopping-of-the-sausage car design really doesn’t make sense in today’s more sophisticated automotive world. That isn’t going to stop us from trying it out, of course.

Just for shits and grins, let’s look at Tesla. Tesla didn’t really chop the sausage as much as it pushed, pulled, and decontented the Model S sausage until it got to the price point they need to be at with their progressively cheaper cars. Unlike AMC, Tesla does not appear to lack for money, but it has to be said that their development capabilities of new models appear to not be their strong suit. That Model S is over a decade old, and the upcoming Cybertruck and Roadster have been upcoming for seemingly forever. None of this means that a Gremlin chop on their least expensive car- the Model 3- is the answer to a low cost vehicle, but it’s probably as good as any, and certainly worth a laugh.

So here’s the proposal: the Tesla Model 2. Like the Gremlin, the Model 2 would essentially be just a Model 3 with the wheelbase and length cut down drastically; everything from the windshield forward would be unchanged, as would be the front seats and chassis [Ed Note: Given the battery is essentially in the floorpan, this seems like it would cut range, but an even cheaper 200-mile Tesla Model 2 could be dope. Also, I’m applying logic to a very illlogical conversation – MH.

The bob-tailed rear would indeed be strange, but hopefully sort of in a ‘shooting brake’ way; a kind of distorted Ferrari GTC4 Lusso. I’m thinking that the rear could open in a ‘clamshell’ way with a flip up rear window and fold down tailgate similar to the much-loved fifth generation Honda Civic hatch.

Rear seat comfort would be non-existent, but at least it would be a place for kids or very short rides for adults. In fact, the bottom cushion would be so much shorter than the backrest that you couldn’t fold the seatback down all the way without it hitting the front seatbacks. The solution would be taken partially from the French, so you KNOW it’s gonna be weird. The Renault 16 was one of the first hatchback sedans ever sold, and instead of a fold down seatback, the backrest actually folded up and strapped to the ceiling grab handles to increase cargo space:

The Model 2 would have a split rear seatback, but it would be split horizontally down the center.

The bottom section would fold down in the traditional way, while the top section would fold up into the headliner. This might block rear vision slightly but considering that they’re releasing cars today with no back windows at all that might not be an issue, especially with all-cameras-and-self-driving Elon Musk.

As a lower model, this Tesla compact would be decontented even more than the 3 with fewer features; additionally, there would be fewer power options since with the smaller size and weight this thing could easily outperform the more expensive car. Of course, they could certainly make a ‘hot hatch’ variation to take advantage of this off situation.

Overall, a Tesla Gremlin is an answer to question that would be asked by someone that needs to have their head examined. Still, that doesn’t take away the brilliance of Dick Teague’s idea from half a century ago. Indeed, whether good or bad, the Gremlin is still remembered by people that couldn’t tell you what the Big Three’s concurrent competitors were. The strange, quirky appeal of AMC’s abbreviated compact is present in the Model 2 concept; it’s too bad that the only potential buyers would be people looking at EV replacements for the BMW ‘Clown Shoe’ coupes in their garages.

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