PC

Thanks to #JamesFell for this hysterical tidbit.

#AprilFools
#Histodon
#AMCGremlin

“Hey, honey, I just bought you a brand-new car. Check it out!” “Haha. Very funny.” “No, really. This car is all yours.” “Yeah, right. I checked the calendar. It’s April Fool’s Day. That thing looks like a dump truck had sex with a Japanese toaster oven.” In the 1970s, in North America alone, AMC sold almost a million of the ugliest car you ever saw.

--On This Day in History Shit Went Down: April 1, 1970--

Apr 2, 2023 at 4:02pmWeb
Show threadPCApr 2, 2023

I shit you not, the design chief for AMC sketched their internal combustion catastrophe on an airline barf bag. Really. AMC was not one of the motor vehicle behemoths yet wanted to compete with the foreign compact cars flooding the American market. So, they came up with this godawful mess and released it on April 1, 1970. Considering the 70s was the decade that all sense of taste forsook, it fit right in.

Just to fuck with people, they called it the Gremlin.

Show threadPCApr 2, 2023
Five days after launch, Newsweek wrote about it saying, “Detroit fights back.” Was the intention to get one’s competitor to laugh themselves to death? The designer said people would see the car as either “cute or controversial, depending on one’s viewpoint.” I think he meant depending on how many drugs they’d taken. He referenced it being “perfect for the free-thinking early 1970s.” There is free-thinking, and then there is overdosing on LSD.
Show threadPCApr 2, 2023
Even the name was fucked. Merriam-Webster defines a gremlin as “a cause of error or equipment malfunction.” Equipment malfunction? This is a fucking car! That’s a bad thing. But young people are stupid and don’t use dictionaries, and the “cute and different” marketing strategy worked, with the under-35 crowd buying a shitload of them. I mean, people bought pet rocks and shag carpets back then too, so I suppose it makes sense.
Show threadPCApr 2, 2023
Yet it didn’t live up to its glitchy name; the car was actually pretty reliable and considered good value for the money. What’s more, in a decade where most other cars blurred together for their style esthetic, the Gremlin stood out for its hideousness and I guess in this case there really was no such thing as bad publicity.
Show threadPCApr 2, 2023

The car was discontinued in 1978, and in 2007 TIME Magazine put the Gremlin on their list of “The 50 Worst Cars of All Time,” describing that the back end looked like “the tail snapped off a salamander.” But the fucker still sold. Hell, both Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush drove Gremlins.

- James Fell

Show threadColes Street PotholeSep 20, 2023
@PChoate My HS friend had a 1970 Gremlin, and let me tell you, that was one badass car. The one he drove had a 3.8L I6 engine, which meant he could do standing burnouts in it. It had a HATCHBACK, which means you could move furniture with it. It was FUN.
Show threadLot⁴⁹Sep 21, 2023
@PChoate Ha! My ex-wife's first husband bought one of those.