American Motors needed to do any and everything possible to bring in a cash flow during their years of production. They saved costs in production, rehashed instead of re-designed, and they exported as if their company depended on it…because it did. Pretty much every model through the beginning of the 1980s was shipped abroad in some fashion. Take the American Motors Hornet, the platform that basically was the company car in one form or another until the end in 1987: complete knock-down kits were shipped to VAM in Mexico City, Motor Assemblies and Toyota in Durban, South Africa and AMI in Port Melbourne, Australia. Between 1970-75, 1,825 Rambler Hornets were built in Austraila, only as a four-door sedan, packing either the 232ci or the 258ci straight six for power, and only with an automatic.
In America, the Hornet was a compact, and a cheap one at that. In Australia, it was considered a luxury car…it was kitted out to the nines, complete with a PBR dual braking system with a proportioning valve, four-piston front disc brakes (believed to be sourced from the Javelin Trans Am program), the V8 Hornet’s suspension package, and the usual upgrades for the Australian auto laws. They sold well early on, but sales tapered off by 1974 and by 1975, the program was wrapped up after 136 cars were moved off of the lots.
Now, you would think with such low figures in-country, that the usual cut-up, blower and paint treatment would skip the Ramblers…right? Oh, who are we kidding. This is Australia…everything is better with a blower!
