Kelly Watts said:
Love to see the changes in the police cars on Dukes Of Hazzard. "Hot Pursuit" in a Chrysler product, then and AMC Matador (What's a Matador?) crashing into a tree.
From a baby-boomer car nerd: American Motors made Ramblers, which were good cars, but homely and frumpy. They had a bad public image as the kind of car only your Grandma would drive.
So in the early 70s, the company re-branded as "AMC" and came out with a line of poorly designed cars including the Matador, Hornet, Gremlin (Hornet with the trunk chopped off), and most notably - the Pacer, which became a laughing-stock as soon as it came out. Wayne and Garth drive a Pacer in
Wayne's World. The problem was - pretty much NOBODY wanted to buy these cars, not even your Grandma.
The one thing AMC did right is convince a lot of police departments to buy fleets of Matadors as police cruisers. LAPD used them in the 70s for a couple of years, so it wasn't unusual to see them in TV shows and movies.
Rest of the story: by the early 80s, AMC had given up on trying to sell passenger cars, but their Jeep division got hot when they came out with America's first smaller 4 door SUV - the Cherokee. That kept the company afloat for a few years until Chrysler bought them out (mid 80s, I think).
I apologize if this was TMI. ;D