The Last Independent Automaker covers the rise and fall of American Motors Corporation, a car company that employed hund | dHNfejd6U3NuU2xocFU
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00There's an old saying in the car business that the best way out of any problem is to sell more cars.
00:10Your car was a defining feature. People bought cars every other year.
00:17American Motors had to think out of the box. We did some pretty wild and crazy things there.
00:26My first car was a 69 Javelin.
00:28The Gremlin, the Hornet, and the Sportabout.
00:31Marlin.
00:31The Matador.
00:32The Metropolitan.
00:33The Eagle.
00:34Who'd ever dreamed you'd build a car like the Gremlin?
00:39They were a little bit edgier back in those days.
00:42The 1982 American Motors Spirit.
00:45The Pacer's a classic.
00:47I thought that was like a space show.
00:49Then they had a board meeting. We're gonna buy a Jeep.
00:51We wrote the book on four-wheel drive.
00:54Ramblers and Ambassadors.
00:55Rambler was the number three selling car in America.
00:59That was extraordinary.
01:02When they were building 300,000 cars a year, they were profitable.
01:07When they got down to 180,000, they were losing buckets of money.
01:12American Motors president, Gerald Myers, announced a tentative agreement between American Motors and Renault of France.
01:18The French had been pouring money into American Motors, and it was going right out the bottom in red ink.
01:26We were fighting long odds, trying to beat the big guys.
01:30I'm sure there was a lot of decisions made behind closed doors where the carpets are thick and the chairs are soft and the cigar smokes heavy that we never knew about.
01:37It was the biggest shock of my life.
01:51I don't know, we got screwed, that's all.
01:53All the years there and everything's gone.
01:56This is the end of an era.
01:59American Motors was a business, but it was also like your family.
02:03Those good industrial jobs made the American dream for them.
02:07It's the highlight of my career.
02:13American Motors is unique, unique, never to be replicated again.
02:18That's a one-timer.
02:23American Motors is unique.
02:52That's a woman.