By the center Sixties, George Romney had left the helm of American Motors to turn into governor of Michigan and company president Roy Abernethy had decided that AMC needed to compete more directly against GM, Ford and Chrysler. To ensure that the Kenosha manufacturer formed from the 1954 merger of Nash and Hudson to try this, a real full-size automobile needed to be created to steal sales from the Impala, Galaxie and Monaco. With a wheelbase stretch and a restyling by Dick Teague, the Rambler Ambassador became that automobile for the 1965 model 12 months. Here’s a once-snazzy soft-top Ambassador from that 12 months, found at a family-owned yard just south of the Denver city limits.
I’ve documented quite just a few vintage machines at Colorado Auto & Parts in this series over the past 12 months, including a 1954 Plymouth Belvedere, a 1969 Walker Power Truck, a 1974 Ford F-250, a 1960 Triumph TR3A, a 1947 Dodge Custom Club Coupe, a 1969 AMC Rambler 440, a 1951 Studebaker Champion, a 1959 Princess DM4 limousine and a few dozen first-generation Mustangs and Cougars. This Ambassador is now parked between a Chevelle and a Mustang.
The Ambassador 990 convertible wasn’t the costliest recent ’65 Rambler you would buy, because the Ambassador wagon and the sporty recent Marlin cost a bit more. Still, its $2,955 price tag ($29,907 in 2024 dollars) was on the steep side for Rambler shoppers accustomed to penny-pinching Classics and Americans.
This automobile would have cost rather more than the bottom MSRP, though, since it was built with AMC’s biggest automobile engine on the time: a 327-cubic-inch V8 rated at 250 horsepower. No, it is not related to the Chevrolet 327 small-block; parts-counter staffers spent many a long time coping with that confusing name mixup (to be fair to AMC, their 327 was first).
Kaiser-Jeep, not yet purchased by AMC, bought AMC 327s to be used in its trucks through the mid-to-late Sixties and called them 327 Vigilantes.
The bottom engine within the 1965 Ambassador was the 232-cubic-inch “Torque-Command” straight-six, the 4.0-liter descendants of which were still being bolted into recent Jeep Wranglers in 2006.
The bottom transmission within the 1965 Ambassador was a three-speed column-shift manual, but this automobile has the optional three-speed automatic with “Flash-O-Matic” shifter on the middle console. In the event you wanted a factory radio in your recent ’65 Ambassador, you would add “Duo-Coustic” or “Vibra-Tone” rear speakers.
AMC sold just below 65,000 Ambassadors for the 1965 model 12 months, including wagons. Meanwhile, Chevrolet sold higher than one million of its full-size Biscaynes, Bel Airs and Impalas that 12 months (and GM’s Pontiac, Oldsmobile and Buick sold loads of their very own versions of those cars as well). As for Ford and Chrysler, there is no have to rub it in by listing their vast sales numbers for large cars that 12 months. The Ambassador wasn’t much larger than the competition’s midsize cars on the time, which was a think about its slow sales.
American Motors had its ups and downs after 1965, but the final story arc was that the Detroit Big Three used their greater resources to proceed grinding down their Wisconsin competitor until Chrysler finally bought what was left in 1987.
The last model 12 months for the Rambler marque was 1968, after which all of AMC’s U.S.-market cars got American Motors Corporation badging. The Rambler name lived on for another 12 months, because the model name on the previous Rambler American for 1969: the AMC Rambler.
This automobile could be value decent money if restored, however the body is on the rusty side and the inside has been exposed to the weather for a few years, making such a restoration a really costly proposition.
The “Sensible Spectaculars” promoting campaign was on the puzzling side.
This Article First Appeared At www.autoblog.com
