December 3, 1979 – The last AMC Pacer

Introduced in February 1975, the AMC Pacer was promoted as “the first wide small car” and had a surface area that was 37 percent glass. The last of the iconic 1970s “Flying Fishbowls” rolled out off the Kenosha, Wisconsin assembly line on this day in 1979.  In its first year of production 145,528 were sold but sales soon slowed and only a total of 280,000 cars were built in total for model years 1975 through 1980. At a time when Detroit was still pushing gas guzzling land yachts, the Pacer was a novel idea, but it failed to take off due to several consumer concerns. A lack of power and fuel economy that was less than that of competing Asian and German imports, along with minimal storage space all led to the demise of the Pacer. Pic – 1979 AMC Pacer – Public Domain