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AMC Pacer Wagon

This is not a picture taken in the 1970s and scanned onto a PC. I took this picture in 2023, next to a garage that occasionally services modern-era old cars, and this AMC Pacer station wagon is one of them.

 

This is a 1979 AMC Pacer wagon, complete with fake wood grain, with American Motors' 304 V-8, which was first developed when Nash and Hudson were its brands. The engine is a testament to AMC's limited resources and Detroit's overreliance on aging technology. Ironically, the Pacer was designed for a rotary engine, but the project to develop it had fallen through.

 

The original Pacer hatchback - which look like either a goldfish bowl on wheels or an inflated Porsche 928 - deut for 1975, andthe wagon debuted ifor 1977. Although the wagon was certainly spacious, the deficiencies it shared with the hatchback - an engine bay intruding into the front-passenger space, heavy doors. No one missed the Pacer - a name previously used on an Edsel model - when it departed after the 1980 model year ended. In fact, production of the 1980 Pacer stopped in the fall of 1979 - before the 1980 calendar year began! And apart from the Volkswagen Fox and a Volvo sport wagon or two, no one ever again saw a station wagon without rear passenger doors on the market in the United States (thank goodness) after the 1980 model year.

 

Which makes the Pacer wagon an anti-classic. :-D

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Uploaded on December 17, 2023
Taken on December 16, 2023