AMC Matador
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The AMC Matador was the intermediate car in American Motors line in the 1970s. When introduced in 1971, it essentially was 1970 Rebel (which had a boxy nose) restyled with a longer and restyled horizontally split nose. Marketed as a "midsize" car in its premier year of 1971, the Matador actually weighed over 5,000 pounds, the weight range of a modern SUV. The orignal Matador came with the buyer's choice of an automatic or manual transmission, in sedan or station wagon. According to Consumer Reports, the originals got 15 1/2 miles to the gallon, which is actually lower than most SUVs.
Advertising at the time said it wasn't just renaming an old car, but this is questionable. The Matador was pretty much identical to the AMC Ambassador from the hood back. In fact, the entire AMC line was based on three intertwining platforms: Gremlin / Hornet, Javelin, which was based on compact cars, and Matador / Ambassador.
Backstory
If Rebel was politically incorrect, Matador didn't save the nameplate from obscurity as an advertising campaign featured "What's a Matador". The boxy 4-wheel-drive was adopted by the Los Angeles police department and made later ADAM-12 TV shows.
A Penske prepared, factory backed red-white and blue 2 door was driven in NASCAR by Mark Donahue and Donny Allison, and actually won a few races, despite flying brick aerodynamics.
In the last of a series of spectacularly overstyled cars, AMC created a very un-boxy coupe with bug-eye headlights and fastback. One sporting attached wings made a James Bond movie. The Matador, which was huge even my today's standards, was unfortunately introduced shortly before the first oil crisis of the the 1970s. Sales, while initially strong dropped along with demand for the "big" intermediate cars when the downsized Caprice and LTDs were introduced. When the Matador / Ambassador was dropped, AMC was left with the Concord and Spirit, and Renault and Jeep.
Notes
Matadors are somewhat odd in a number of respects, many of which are not immeadiately noticeable. First, they came as 'six seaters', a somewhat unusual (although not-unheard of) design which seated three in the front and three in the back. The early automatic Matadors actually had a clutch, which had to be depressed in order to shift from, say, D to R in the same way that the button on the handle of a modern automatic must be pushed in in order to instigate a gear change. The door handles appear to be a hapax phenomenon in cars: they were the same 'pull sideways' latches which are frequently seen on high-end suitcases.
References
- Consumer Reports, Feb. 1971
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