This year’s “Winter Classic”, a.k.a. The Raleigh Classic Car Auctions at the North Carolina State Fairgrounds, will feature a bit of an automotive oddity in the form of the car that actually “fathered” the modern-day Sport Utility Vehicle. This forgotten progenitor of the SUV craze, a pristine 1987 AMC Eagle Wagon, is going on the auction block Friday, December 6th inside the Fairgrounds Expo Center.
For a bit of historical perspective on this American Motors Corporation 4×4 for the masses, consider that Subaru likes to say that “they invented the 4×4 wagon” in 1975 with their DL/GL model. However, the “Subie” was just a small, part-time four-wheel-drive car.
Sorry Fuji Heavy Industries, (the corporate parent of Subaru cars) but good old American ingenuity beat ya’ to the punch. Enter the 1980 AMC Eagle 4×4 Wagon, the true origin car for the family 4-wheel-drive sport utility crossover and debuting a full 16 years before the eventual 1996 Subaru “Outback” Wagon.
Here’s how they did it.
Ground Zero for just about every “SUV” or “CUV” (crossover utility vehicle) that you see in your typical Wal-Mart parking lot today, dates back to the early 1970s when AMC was pretty much broke after spending the better part of two decades chasing the “Big 3” automakers, GM, Ford, and Chrysler. They sunk nearly all of their research & development dollars into a homely new coupe named “Matador” and a revolutionary new car called “Pacer” for 1975. It was hailed as the first “wide” compact car and resembled a fishbowl on four wheels with its enormously bulbous greenhouse. Problem was, no one wanted a “wide” compact, the Pacer was a sales disaster.
Nearing the end of the Disco era, AMC was out of money to spend on another completely new vehicle but desperately needed something to bring customers back into their empty showrooms. As the ill-fated Pacer was being fazed-out by 1979, AMC released two new models for 1978. Actually, these two were really just warmed-over versions of the company’s antiquated Hornet that had been around since 1969. With the Hornet’s retirement scheduled for ’77, American Motors designers simply re-styled the older car for a more up-scale appearance and re-badged it as “Concord” and “Spirit.”
That’s when a crazy idea by a brilliant Jeep engineer took shape.
“What if we take the Concord, raise the suspension 3″ inches, tack-on some extra-wide fender flares, mount a couple of fog lights to the front bumper, and engineer it with Jeep’s full-time four-wheel-drive?”
Not exactly word for word, but that’s pretty much what Jeep Chief Design Engineer, Roy Lunn came up with at the time, when he proposed a “4×4 car” for AMC. The Jeep brand was a part of American Motors back then so it was a pretty easy segue to put Jeep’s famous off-road ability to work underneath the new AMC.
Just look at that gorgeous simulated woodgrain vinyl on this 1987 AMC Eagle Wagon.
Lunn’s idea turned-out to be genius and the newly minted for 1980, AMC “Eagle” family of 4x4s was born. Originally available as a 4-door wagon, 4-door sedan, 2-door lift-back, and 2-door kammback, (a design reminiscent of the 1970 – 1978 AMC Gremlin). Initially, the Eagle was a success with new customers coming into showrooms to tryout this newest concoction from underdog AMC.
When you slid across those brown vinyl seats, you knew you had “Quadra-Trac” at your command.
As you can probably imagine, sales of the new Eagle were strongest where snow and less than ideal road conditions were more the norm than the exception. AMC’s Kenosha, Wisconsin plant supplied all Eagle production from 1980 to 1983 but by 1984, the company was still reeling from earlier financial doom. That’s when French automaker Renault swooped-in to buy AMC. Eagle production was moved to Canada as the AMC/Renault alliance now built a new compact front-wheel-drive car named “Alliance” at the former Eagle factory in Wisconsin.
The 1987 AMC Eagle Wagon featured in our blog is a next-to-final production year model of the Eagle 4×4. In fact, this version is even more unusual in that it hails from Canada where it’s “Quadra-Trac” 4×4 system was surely put to the test over the years. The AMC’s vehicle description page on raleighclassic.com states:
“This is a 100% original AMC Eagle with just 45,343 miles. It was originally sold in Canada, so the odometer reads 72,973 in kilometers and speedometer also reads in kilometers. It is equipped with the 4.2 liter engine and automatic 3 speed transmission. Options include power steering, power brakes, clock, wire wheel covers, tinted glass, and leather upholstery. Everything including the air conditioning works as it should.”
In the end, the AMC Eagle 4×4 was a groundbreaking, new type of American car, and AMC as a car company was “Nostradamus like” in predicting that consumers would someday, want a vehicle that featured the comfort of a car but had the capability of a light off-roader.
So the next time you pull yourself up into the cab of your own high-riding, fender flared, body-cladded “sport-ute” vehicle (like the Jeep Compass shown above), give a little tip of the hat to the crossover-car that started it all, the 1980 AMC Eagle 4×4.
Written by Mark Arsen for LeithCars.com.
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