1950s American automobile culture
During the decade, many smaller manufacturers could not compete with the Big Three and either went out of business or merged. In 1954, American Motors was formed when Hudson merged with Nash-Kelvinator Corporation in a deal worth almost $200 million, the largest corporate merger in United States history at that time.
Roy D. Chapin Jr.
In 1977, on the 75th anniversary of the "birth" of two organizations, American Motors and "Popular Mechanics", Chapin described AMC's "corporate "philosophy of difference", under which we strive to offer the American motoring public a wider choice" and stated that "the most significant change we can look to will be the development of alternate sources of power to replace our dependence on fossil fuels."