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
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3 Responses
The last Pacer made had “Last Pacer made” and the date welded into the hump for the rear axel, on the drivers side.
That car was ugly then and it’s still ugly today! Actually most AMC junk was pretty ugly if you ask me, that’s why they went out of business!
I owned an auto repair shop from to 1981 to 2006 & work on lots of those. The firewall had an indent because the car was designed for a 4 cyl or a V6, the straight 6 they installed was too long. Removing the valve cover required taking the wiper linkage apart! I was at a parts house one day complaining about just that & the counter guy pointed out that they also came with a V8, & he and his buddies rally raced one. I checked & it shows a 304 (5.0 l) V8 available in 1978 & 1979.