Growing up in a frugal family, we had a yearly tradition of re-watching the same half-dozen Christmas specials. My mom first taped them when they ran on TV back in the early ’90s. As the tapes and I both grew older, I found myself increasingly drawn to the commercial breaks in between How the Grinch Stole Christmas and ‘Twas The Night Before Bumpy. Such early exposure to those commercials, perhaps, later sparked my enthusiasm for vintage automobile advertising.
When my friends and I set out to produce The Last Independent Automaker, a documentary series on American Motors, we knew vintage advertising would be a major part of the story. We spent considerable time and resources tracking down both TV and print ads, and it was fascinating to see how car advertising changed during AMC’s 33 years in business. Looking back at those ads, I wanted to share some of my favorite highlights and how we worked them into the series.
If you haven’t watched The Last Independent Automaker yet, it’s now available on YouTube, on the free PBS app, and on Public Television stations around the country.
American Motors Corporation was created by the merger of the Hudson Motor Car Company and the Nash-Kelvinator Corporation in 1954. As the financially stronger partner, Nash was definitely the “boss” of the marriage, and Hudson was mostly forced to integrate into Nash’s existing operations, including advertising.
Geyer Advertising had worked with Nash since at least WWII, and for 1954, it developed a Disney-esque animated character named Herman to sing the praises of Nash cars. (Skip to 17:45 in Episode 1 to see the commercial.)
Then, starting in 1955, Herman was replaced by actual Disney characters in both Nash & Hudson commercials. The impetus for this change was that American Motors became a sponsor of the new Disneyland theme park in California and the identically named TV show (later known as The Wonderful World of Disney).
The partnership was wide-reaching, including print, television, and even an exhibit at Disneyland called “Circarama,” at which 11 projectors aimed around a circular screen showed road trip footage of the American West.
AMC’s president, George Romney, was an enthusiastic supporter of the deal. As his son (and former U.S. Senator) Mitt Romney told us during an interview for the documentary, he had fond memories of visiting the park with his dad and even meeting Mr. Walt Disney himself. AMC and Disney, along with Geyer Advertising and the American Broadcasting Company, would all win awards for their “outstanding achievements in television techniques,” and the partnership would last until at least 1958.
Around the same time, George Romney gave a public speech titled “The Dinosaur in our Driveway,” which attacked the wastefulness of Detroit’s increasingly larger, heavier, and pricier cars. Written by AMC’s PR director Howard Hallas, the message struck a chord with Romney, but he took a few years to latch on to the metaphor. By 1957, however, AMC was winding down its large car production to focus entirely on the compact Rambler, and “gas-guzzling dinosaurs” became Romney’s favorite target.
Print ads designed as comic strips received funny titles, like “The Story of the Man Who Bought a Dinosaur,” and highlighted the pains of driving an oversized car versus the ease of owning a Rambler. Romney toured the country for speaking engagements, constantly lambasting the wastefulness of the Big Three’s cars and presenting the economical Rambler as “the answer to everyone’s problems,” as his son Mitt told us. Fuel economy, maneuverability, value, and quality became major highlights of Rambler advertising.
A 1959 profile in Time Magazine called “The Dinosaur Hunter” made the term even more popular, although it began to peter out by the early ’60s. By then, Romney had turned his sights to politics and would leave American Motors behind in 1962 when he was elected governor of Michigan.
AMC’s then-new president, Roy Abernethy, did not share his predecessor’s enthusiasm for compact cars. He told a subordinate early on to, “Help me get rid of this ‘Romney image.’” With the Big Three now invading the economy car segment, Abernethy wanted to move AMC upmarket, back to where Nash and Hudson had been in what used to be called “the mid-price field,” with Oldsmobile, Buick, and Mercury.
But as AMC took several years to develop larger, more luxurious Ramblers, Abernethy misread the moment by attacking the growing popularity of performance cars and high-powered engines with an advertisement that boldly declared, “The Only Race Rambler Cares About is the Human Race.”
That quote is often misattributed to Romney, but he’d been gone from AMC for two years by then. In addition, company press releases from the time mention Abernethy giving public speeches attacking “the glamorization of speed” and the dangers of performance cars. Clearly he was onboard with the campaign.
Although the message may have resonated with conservative Rambler owners (including Romney), it also attracted plenty of ridicule. While traffic fatalities were growing in the U.S., that wasn’t stopping buyers, especially young ones, from seeking out more power, speed, and yes, danger. The rise of pony cars and muscle cars seemed unstoppable, and AMC’s anti-performance advertising didn’t last.
1965 brought the larger, fancier models Abernethy had wanted, including new convertibles. Print advertising straddled the line between Rambler’s old economy image and its new luxury ambitions by calling the cars “the Sensible Spectaculars.” Excluded from that group, however, was the sporty new Rambler Marlin fastback, which had its own advertising. In keeping with Abernethy’s plans, the Marlin was larger than most pony cars, and its marketing focused primarily on room and luxury, not speed. Unfortunately, the buyers didn’t bite, and Rambler sales began sliding.
This may have been one reason why, also in 1965, after more than two decades, AMC parted ways with Geyer advertising (then known as Geyer, Morey, Ballard, Inc.). In its place, Benton & Bowles took over car advertising.
Although total sales were down, sales of the top-of-the-line Ambassador were up, and 1966 advertising leaned heavily on that shift. Dropping the “Rambler” name, the American Motors Ambassador was advertised as a luxury car for ambitious corporate ladder-climbers. Commercials featured young men pulling up to the office after a big promotion, saying to themselves how they “weren’t ready for a Cadillac,” but the Ambassador had all the luxury they wanted. Presenting AMC as second-best to Cadillac seemed like an odd choice, but apparently Benton & Bowles thought just mentioning the luxury brand would cause its prestige to rub off on the AMC.
Other commercials leaned into AMC’s underdog image, encouraging buyers to visit the “friendly giant killers” at their local American Motors / Rambler dealer. But as sales continued to slide, it was apparent that AMC was getting clobbered by the Big Three (and Volkswagen, too).
For 1967, Benton & Bowles launched a campaign called THE NOW CARS, featuring bold lettering, aggressive ad copy, loud music, and a deep-voiced narrator. American Motors finally seemed to be targeting muscle car buyers, as the ads highlighted new V-8 engines and four-speed transmissions (even in the Ambassador!), but the whole campaign smelled of desperation. With the Javelin and AMX still in development, AMC didn’t have a genuine performance car yet, and no amount of advertising could fix that. But that would change in 1968.
Fed up with Abernethy’s lack of results, AMC’s board forced the chief executive into “early retirement” in 1967, replacing him with Roy Chapin Jr. and Bill Luneburg. Shortly after, the pair fired Benton & Bowles for a new ad firm, Wells Rich Greene.
Co-founded by Mary Wells, the hip, young firm was barely a year old and was also the first major firm led by a woman. Given the auto industry’s notoriously conservative leadership at the time, AMC’s move came as a surprise. However, it turned out to be a masterstroke.
Wells immediately realized that AMC had a recognition problem. It wasn’t that people didn’t like American Motors’ cars; it’s that people didn’t know they existed. The last five years of redesigns and rebranding meant that nobody knew what a “Rebel,” “Rogue,” or “Ambassador” was.
Her proposed solution: a series of ads comparing each AMC model to its best-known competitor from the Big Three (or in the case of the tiny Rambler American, the VW Beetle). From there, the ads pointed out why the American Motors product was superior. Titled “An Unfair Comparison,” the ads allowed AMC to piggyback on the fame of better-known rivals, especially for the new Javelin, which had zero name recognition.
As Mary Wells later said in her autobiography, “Comparing the Javelin to the Mustang would tell you instantly what sort of car the Javelin was, and if we played our cards right, we would persuade you that the Javelin was the better high-performance car of the two.”
AMC management, however, was aghast at directly attacking its rivals, which violated an unwritten rule between Detroit’s automakers against comparison advertising. Chapin put up the biggest fight, but Wells convinced him American Motors was too desperate to play nice, and he reluctantly agreed.
On the TV side, gone were the garish “NOW CARS” commercials, replaced by humorous stories and vignettes. To highlight its durability, a Rebel raced through the Baja desert. To show off its new standard air conditioning, an Ambassador was loaded with an Arctic dogsled team. And to once again poke fun at Ford, a poorly-disguised Mustang was blown up and replaced with the new Javelin. The spots were funny—but most importantly—memorable.
Although they had been friends for years, Henry Ford II was so upset by AMC’s new advertising that he stopped talking to Roy Chapin Jr. for weeks. But the ads worked. Orders for the new Javelin flooded in, and people under 50 began showing up at AMC dealers again.
Wells Rich Greene worked with AMC for another five years, through the launch of the Hornet, Gremlin, Matador, Sportabout, and other models. Direct attacks on specific rival models were toned down, but the humorous, irreverent tone remained. Wells Rich Greene also helped AMC launch the Buyer Protection Plan, the best new car warranty in the industry at the time, which helped counter growing complaints about the poor build quality and customer service of the American automakers compared to rising import competition.
When people talk about AMC’s “glory days,” they tend to focus on these years from the late ’60s and early ’70s. Although the company wasn’t always profitable during that time, some of its most iconic cars and advertising came out of that period. Personally, I think Wells Rich Greene did a lot to help establish AMC’s image as the plucky underdog that had the gumption to take on the Big Three, an image that persists to this day.
This marketing success made it all the more surprising when Roy Chapin Jr. and Bill Luneburg personally fired Mary Wells and her team in 1972, claiming that AMC had grown so much that it needed a larger, more traditional ad firm to handle its many problems. Wells, however, suspected that size wasn’t the only issue, as not everyone at American Motors liked her transgressive, freewheeling attitude. Regardless of the reason, it marked the end of a golden era in AMC advertising.
American Motors soon announced that Cunningham & Walsh would take over its car advertising. The recently acquired Jeep division would continue to use Compton Advertising, which had been with the brand since before Kaiser Industries had sold it to AMC.
The car ads became more conservative, although Cunningham & Walsh did have fun selling the new Levi’s Gremlin. When the oil crisis came in 1973, gas mileage became a focal point of ads, although the Gremlin and Hornet basically sold themselves by then.
Perhaps less successful were its “Whatsamatador?” ads for AMC’s mid-size line. Even with a stylish facelift in 1974, poking fun that people didn’t recognize the car didn’t turn out to be strong strategy for increasing sales.
But Cunningham & Walsh had a field day with the new 1975 AMC Pacer, producing multiple commercials that were funny enough to rival Wells Rich Greene. In particular, the “Sandwich King” ad, which highlighted the Pacer’s wide interior room with a harried chef building a giant submarine sandwich, was a favorite, and I was excited to include it in Episode 4 of our documentary. Underscoring the ad’s staying power, multiple friends and family members I talked to remembered the commercial, despite not having seen it for 40-plus years!
Most Pacer advertising focused on its room and comfort, calling it “The First Wide Small Car.” However, as multiple people we interviewed pointed out, this slogan may have ultimately backfired, as the Pacer’s extra width added room, yes, but also weight. When buyers saw it marketed as a “small car,” they expected it to have small-car efficiency; they were disappointed when the wider, heavier Pacer proved thirstier than expected.
One clever ad did take the opposite approach, marketing the Pacer as a mid-size car without all the wasted sheetmetal, but for some reason, this commercial was overshadowed by the others. (Probably because it wasn’t as funny.)
The Pacer started out strong, but sales began collapsing in 1977, along with the rest of AMC’s aging lineup. After Chapin and Luenburg retired that year, Gerald Meyers took over. In the spring of ‘78, management dumped Cunningham & Walsh for Grey Advertising, which would handle AMC cars while Jeep continued with Compton.
Ironically, Mary Wells had patched things up with Henry Ford II, scoring Ford Motor Company’s corporate account in 1979. At the time, all of Detroit was reeling from the seemingly relentless growth of Japanese import sales in the U.S., fueled in part by a second oil crisis and the (somewhat deserved) reputation for building shoddy, unreliable cars. Inspired by a factory tour, Wells Rich Greene developed a series of spots to rehab Ford’s image, featuring real workers on the assembly line with the catchy jingle “Quality is Job 1.”
Soon, factory commercials were all the rage, filled with flying sparks, workers in coveralls, and lots of talk about “quality.” Chrysler CEO Lee Iacocca became a minor celebrity, filming dozens of assembly line ads throughout the ’80s.
American Motors jumped on the bandwagon in 1981 with its “Tough Americans” campaign starring TV actor Sam Groom. Marketing the AMC Spirit and Concord (the 4WD Eagle had a separate campaign), the ads tried to hide the cars’ outdated powertrains and platforms by highlighting their durability, gas mileage, and warranty coverage.
As Groom told us during an interview, he wore a blue button-down shirt to his audition with Grey Advertising, which he partially credited to getting the part. The director apparently liked the shirt so much that he specifically requested Groom wear it for the first commercial.
The first ad was filmed at AMC’s Kenosha, Wisconsin factory, with the assembly line genuinely running in the background. Shouting over the din, Groom boasts about AMC’s use of rust-resistant galvanized steel and its exclusive five-year no-rust-through guarantee. Urging the viewer to not “sell the Tough Americans short,” his authoritative voice and serious demeanor struck a chord.
“They tested that [ad],” he explained, “and it tested so highly that they rushed back and negotiated a two year deal with us to do all their commercials for two years!”
During his trip to Wisconsin, Groom also had a chance to see the Tough Americans in action, with a visit to AMC’s durability test track in Burlington. He was amazed at the abuse that cars and Jeeps endured as they were put through salt baths, cobblestone roads, dirt trails, and more. Further Tough Americans ads would see Sam Groom trekking through a desert of rusted junk and dumping an AMC Spirit into the ocean, all to prove how the Tough Americans were built to last.
Sadly, Groom’s relationship with AMC ended with the cancellation of the Spirit and Concord in 1983 (although he and his blue shirt landed another gig with Quaker State oil). However, American Motors continued working with Grey Advertising.
Starting in 1978, AMC entered a partnership with the French automaker, Renault, to sell each other’s cars in their home markets and build a new economy car together in the States. Grey handled all U.S. advertising for Renault, which struck a very different tone from the Tough Americans ads.
Credit: The Last Independent Automaker
Early Renault ads felt like AMC and Renault were trying to appeal to smug yuppies who wouldn’t be caught dead driving an American car. But with the arrival of the U.S.-built 1983 Renault Alliance, the ads became more straightforward and less pretentious, boldly proclaiming, “The Alliance of Quality and Affordability is here.”
AMC poured money into advertising the Alliance, which initially sold very well. But as gas prices dropped in the mid-’80s, so did the demand for economy cars. The subcompact market was already flooded with Japanese, German, and American competitors, making it hard for a newcomer like Renault to stand out. In response, Grey produced new commercials loaded with expensive special effects, like a man morphing into a Renault Encore. According to The New York Times, the ad cost $500,000 to make, nearly double that of an average car commercial, which contributed to the $40+ million a year that AMC and Renault were spending on advertising.
But alas, it wasn’t enough. As we explain in the sixth and final episode of our documentary, Renault sales collapsed, leaving AMC in a financially precarious position and Renault desperate to unload its American assets. Not even a celebrity endorsement from George C. Scott could turn things around. Ultimately, Lee Iacocca swept in, picking up AMC and Jeep for a song, plus an excellent all-new mid-size sedan, the Eagle [nee, Renault] Premiere.
Everybody has a different onramp to the old car hobby. Wrenching, racing, showing, driving… whatever. For me, vintage ads were that onramp. Way back before my family had high-speed internet, I remember going to a friend’s house and watching old car commercials on YouTube. To this day, I still get excited if I’m at a swap meet and find an AMC ad that I’ve never seen before. Whether it’s the pastels of the ’50s, the irreverent humor of the ’70s, or the techno-computer grids of the ’80s, I love vintage ads.
But as a documentarian, I also think vintage advertising can provide valuable context to automotive history. It helps paint a more detailed picture than just dry sales figures, horsepower numbers, and MSRPs. It reflects the mood, mores, and mindsets of an era. It’s no coincidence that good commercials get stuck in our heads, sometimes for years. That’s what they’re supposed to do! One of my favorite parts of producing this documentary has been hunting down these old ads, showing them to people again, and seeing their reactions. AMC was a unique company, and I think it’s fitting that it had a lot of unique advertising, too.
Joe Ligo is the producer/director of The Last Independent Automaker, a six-part documentary series on the history of American Motors Corporation. It is available to watch on Public Television stations around the country, the free PBS app, and on YouTube.
It’s from Mazda, not AMC, but in the vein of clever ads, I actually saved and had framed a clever Miata print ad that showed a red Miata with the text, “Beware of expensive imitations.”