Background
In the late 1970s, AMC was in a difficult position. The company was cash-poor and all of its models were aging except one, the disastrously unpopular Pacer. One of the company's best-selling models was the Spirit, which was a modified version of the old Gremlin, which had been engineered beginning in 1969 and first sold on April Fools' Day, 1970. Though the late '70s was a dark period for automotive performance in the United States, certain elements at AMC surmised that if they marketed a subcompact car with a small V8 engine, they might be able to make a splash in this depressed segment of the market. The engineering for a V8 powered Spirit (suspension, crossmember, etc.) already existed, having been engineered originally for the earlier Hornet, and in fact the V8 engine was available as an option on the Spirit, so it was decided that AMC would reintroduce their dormant muscle car marque, the AMX.
Although it was widely dismissed as a case of "paint-on performance," the new AMX actually featured quite a few performance-oriented upgrades.
Read more about this topic: AMC Spirit AMX
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“In the true sense one’s native land, with its background of tradition, early impressions, reminiscences and other things dear to one, is not enough to make sensitive human beings feel at home.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)