On December 3, 1979, the last Pacer rolled off the assembly
line at the American Motors Corporation (AMC) factory in
Kenosha, Wisconsin.
When the car first came on the market in 1975, it was a
sensation, hailed as the car of the future. “When you buy
any other car,” ads said, “all you end up with is today’s
car. When you get a Pacer, you get a piece of tomorrow.”
By 1979, however, sales had faded considerably. Today,
polls and experts agree: The Pacer was one of the worst
cars of all time.
By the end of the 1960s, AMC was the only surviving
independent automaker in the United States.
Despite (or perhaps because of) its bad reputation, the
Pacer has also earned a spot in pop-culture history.
In January 1954, Nash-Kelvinator Corporation began the
acquisition of the Hudson Motor Car Company (in what
was called a merger).
The new corporation would be called the American Motors
Corporation. An earlier corporation with the same name, co-
founded by Louis Chevrolet, had existed in Plainfield, New
Jersey, from 1916 through 1922 before merging into the
Bessemer–American Motors Corporation.
