The Triumphant Return Of AMC!
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The Wussification Of Jeep!
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Deiter Does Dinkytown.

UPDATE!

Friends,

There’s been a lot of crying lately in the automotive press about Jeep’s new not-Jeeps. The Compass and the Patriot. Both are front wheel drive, east-west engined, lilly-livered cousins of the (oy!) “not cute” Dodge Caliber. They’re economy cars in Jeep’s clothing. What the haters seem to miss is that there’s precedent for screwing with the Jeep brand from none other than the American Motors Corporation themselves.

Turn back the clock to the late 70s and remember, if you dare, how Japanese small pickups were flooding the North American market. The majors were scared of losing sales in a market that they weren’t competing in (!) so the scramble was on. Ford bought a piece of then-struggling Mazda and engineered some beautiful badges to create the Courier. GM bought a piece of Isuzu, made some equally fine badges, in addition to a marketing campaign, and gave birth to the Chevy Light Utility Vehicle (a name only a corporation could LUV). Dodge freaked, came late to the party, and badged a Mitsubishi pickup as a natural extension to the Ram name. Yeah, everybody fell for that.

AMC, the last of the independents, struggled for an answer. Having just purchased Jeep from Kaiser, they were out of cash. They weren’t out of most of their ideas though. They had just run out of good ones.

The House Of Hornet embarked on a plan, much as Chrysler is today, to cash in (or out) on the Jeep brand. The geniuses of Kenosha just knew that they could slap a Jeep badge on any old piece of crap and it would sell. It didn’t have to sell a lot, but enough to keep them in the game. To the horror of the purists, they introduced the Hornet-based, pickup car better known as the Jeep Cowboy.

Back thirty years ago though, cooler heads prevailed and understood that the concept was, well, dumb. A Jeep based on a car? That’s the dumbest thing ever! The public won’t stand for it! There will be howls of outrage!

And so, quietly, AMC’s bad idea was killed.

Chrysler’s brand new bad idea lives though under the guise of “brand extension.” But let’s review: EVEN AMC THOUGHT MAKING A JEEP OUT OF A CAR WAS A BAD IDEA!

I’m sure it’ll be fine. They have huge cash reserves to squander on this adventure, right?

Your pal,

bob

UPDATE: Apparently, I missed a key part of the “why is Compass really such a bad idea” argument. I should have thought of this earlier: the damn thing is ugly. How ugly? Maybe this comparison will help…

Any questions?