In the mid-1960s, George Romney left the leadership of American Motors to become Governor of Michigan and company president Roy Abernethy decided that AMC needed to compete more directly with GM, Ford and Chrysler. For the Kenosha manufacturer formed from the 1954 merger of Nash and Hudson to pull it off, a truly large car had to be created to steal sales from Impala, Galaxy And Monaco. With the wheelbase lengthening and restyling Dick TeagueAmbassador Rambler became that car for the 1965 model year. This is a once attractive Ambassador soft top from that year, found at a family-owned course just south of Denver city limits.
I’ve documented quite a few vintage machines here at Colorado Auto & Parts This series in the past year, including one 1954 Plymouth BelvedereOne Walker Electric Truck 1969One 1974 Ford F-250One Triumph TR3A 1960One 1947 Dodge Custom Club CoupeOne 1969 AMC Rambler 440One 1951 Studebaker ChampionOne Princess DM4 1959 limousine And several dozen first generation Mustangs and Cougars. This Ambassador is currently parked between a Chevelle and a Mustang.
The Ambassador 990 convertible isn’t the most expensive new ’65 Rambler you can buy, because Ambassador carriage And New Marlin sports costs a little more. However, its price of $2,955 ($29,907 in 2024) was still on the high side for Rambler shoppers accustomed to pinching pennies. Classic And American.
However, this car would cost much more than the base MSRP because it was built with AMC’s largest car engine at the time: a V8 327 cc rated at 250 horsepower. No, it’s not related to the Chevrolet 327 small block; it’s taken decades for dealership clerks to iron out that confusing naming issue (to be fair to AMC, Their 327 was first).
Kaiser-Jeep, not yet purchased by AMC, purchased AMC 327s for use in its trucks in the mid to late 1960s and call them 327 Guards.
The base engine for the 1965 Ambassador was a 232-cubic-inch “Torque-Command” inline-six, a 4.0-liter descendant of which is still being installed. New 2006 Jeep Wrangler.
The basic powertrain in the 1965 Ambassador was one Three-speed column shift instructionsBut this car does optional three-speed automatic transmission with the “Flash-O-Matic” shifter on the center console. If you want the original radio on your new ’65 Ambassador, you can add the “Duo-Coustic” or “Vibra-Tone” rear speakers.
AMC sold just under 65,000 Ambassadors for the 1965 model year, including wagons. Meanwhile, Chevrolet sold more than a million units. Its full size Biscaynes, Bel Airs And Impala that year (and GM’s Pontiac, Oldsmobile and Buick sold a lot their own version of those cars). As for Ford and Chrysler, there is no need to rub it in by listing their Huge sales figures for big cars that year. Ambassadors aren’t much bigger in comparison Competitor midsize cars at the timethat’s a factor in its slow sales.
American Motors already has its ups and downs after 1965, but the general storyline is that the Detroit Big Three used their greater resources to continue crushing their Wisconsin competitors until Chrysler finally bought what was left in 1987.
The final model year of the Rambler brand is 1968, after which all of AMC’s American-market cars received American Motors Corporation badging. The Rambler name lasted another year, as did the previous Rambler American model names for 1969: AMC’s Rambler.
This car would be very valuable if restored, but the body is rusted and the interior has been exposed to many elements over the years, making such a restoration a very expensive proposition.
The “Sensible Spectaculars” advertising campaign is somewhat confusing.
