Derided or admired, the American Motors Gremlin was just one of many clever moves made in the 1970s by AMC’s soul, designer Dick Teague. The man hampered with a shoestring budget could throw out some of the most clever concepts possible, and the Gremlin was one of them. Inspired by the 1968 AMC AMX-GT show car (think a Gremlin, but based off of the 1968 AMX), the Gremlin was sketched out on a Northwest Orient Airlines barf bag, was released on April 1st, 1970, and was named after what pilots believed was causing malfunctions in their planes. At least the car itself was solid: take the newly-minted Hornet, lop off the ass-end, and turn it into a truncated station wagon that didn’t look like anything else on the roads. The bones of the car were good, the six-cylinder was an anvil (and with the 304, a screamer) and the size was exactly what was being demanded from consumers at the time, something close to the nearly omnipresent VW Beetle. And it was cheap. They were a score and a half for a company that badly needed one. Teague himself knew the looks would be controversial, but the name left more people askew than the looks did. Made through 1978 before morphing into the Spirit, the Gremlin is now a fully established form of 1970s kink, a funky little car from a funky time few remember without a bit of haze.

Now, haze or not, the marketing team behind this commercial certainly were not seeing things correctly. The Germans had the Beetle, which had been the standard for small cars when the Gremlin came out. Small, compact, frugal and capable, the Beetle needs no introduction or explanation regarding it’s popularity. All you have to do is mention the complete production timeline: 1938-2003. British automotive manufacturing had found their “Titanic, meet iceberg” moment in 1968 when British Leyland was formed. By the time the Gremlin rolled out, British Leyland was quickly falling into turmoil, with brands within the conglomerate competing with each other in markets. If anything, the Japanese had a better reason to be there. After years of slow encroachment and product testing that had left consumers cracking jokes, the Japanese had gotten serious about improvements and by the early 1970s were making solid inroads into the market.

Then, there’s the wedge of cheese from Kenosha.

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