"Nope – it was not a good car by any metric. But AMC didn't have much else to work with. Before that, you had the Spirit, which was just a reworked Gremlin, and the Concord, which was a reworked Hornet compact. Nothing really new or groundbreaking. I guess even the seventies compact surge wasn't enough to help them economically, but then again, all the American automakers were struggling against the superior build quality and fuel efficiency from the fresh batch of imports, particularly from Japan. They were the last of the American independents and stayed above water for thirty-some years as an entity, but they died a slow, painful death."