The idea of chopping the ass end off of an AMC product in order to take on the VW Beetle and Toyota Corolla had been in the works since 1966 when Dick Teague and Bob Nixon started talking about taking the two most influential imports at the time head-on. American Motors knew that both GM and Ford were working on similar plans and if American Motors could tree them on a release date, that would be ideal…especially since whatever was coming out of Kenosha was going to be sharing a lot of parts with an already-planned machine. The 1968 AMX-GT concept saw a Javelin that had the Kammback tail design appear, but for 1970 the treatment would go to the even smaller Hornet. Nothing had to be changed on the Hornet forward of the B-pillar, but from the doors rearward, it was a different story. It was barely longer than a Volkswagen, was shorter than either the Chevrolet Vega or Ford Pinto, and seemed wider than any small car of the era should have been.
Gremlins, whether you can appreciate them or make fun of them at every turn, were one of the bigger hits of the 1970s and one of AMC’s last real home runs before the financial problems became a front-and-center issue. From the basic six-cylinder economy models to the genuinely psychotic 401-XR examples that came out from Randall AMC in Mesa, Arizona, the Gremlin was a 1970s icon when the decade desperately needed one.
I wonder how much better the Gremlin would have driven with a sway bar and shocks that were not complete mush.