Needed to do something with their limited resources
1967 was a scary time in and around Kenosha, Wisconsin, home of American Motors Corporation. The company was not doing well, sales were down and the finances were in dire straights, they were running out of cash. AMC was dead last in the domestic auto manufacturing business, positioned in a distant fourth place, and always struggling to stay alive. For the company it was a huge risk to try anything new, however, at this time, they needed to do something even with their limited resources.
A wild new shape
The answer turned out to be a new car called Javelin. How the Javelin came into the picture goes back to early 1964 when a wild new shape was penned in the AMC Advanced Styling Studio 1965 when American Motors built an experimental car, a concept called "AMX" which was a styling exercise.
JAVELIN introduced
It was August 31, 1967, when the car was first introduced to the AMC dealers. This was a game-changer, a vehicle to put the company on the road to recovery. Those dealers needed to be trained on how to sell the Javelin, which was aimed at a younger market than what they were normally used to selling Ramblers.
This "youth market" was a different scene altogether and the advertising agency came up with some creative magazine ads and television commercials that helped get out the message that AMC had begun to reverse its staid image.
What this new Javelin did immediately was to show the buying public that AMC was creating a great-looking contemporary vehicle, a pony car, and one that looked cool.
For the line of 1970 production Javelins, there were 100 street replicas built in the AMC racing three-segment paint.
"People should feel like they're sitting in a living room instead of sitting in a machine" was how the advertising introduced the "Pierre Cardin" 1972 Javelin, an elegant upholstery option for SST models.
