American Motor's Made a Truck and it Failed: The AMC Cowboy

My aunt had a 2 door orange Hornet we called "the Pumpkin". When other family members cars took a sh*t you could always go get a workout from the pumpkin with no power steering. But she would ALWAYS fire up that straight 6 and get you around until you found or fixed your daily. Love the vids.

My uncle had a 69 Javelin when I was a little kid. This is the early 80s so I barely remember. He sold it for $500. He still talks about how bad he messed up letting that car go. Wait until I tell him AMC made a truck lol. I never knew this was a thing. Great video. Once again. 👊🏻

Don't ever apologize for an intro, this is your channel, they do not like it, they don't have to watch it! Keep pumping out this content, the people that want to see you share your passion will not care!

I had a friend with an AMC Eagle in high school. Used to ride with him to and from off-campus lunch once or twice a week. Off-road small station wagon, before we had cross-overs. Was ahead of it's time.

Wow, I have never seen the AMC Cowboy before! Had no idea they ever concepted a pickup. Awesome vid, as always, man. Love your family’s connection to AMC.

My family had a 1976 Hornet wagon that looked exactly like the one rolling off the car hauler in the intro. I was 6 in 1976, and I thought that car was cool because the hood emblem was a circular item about the size of a half-dollar, with a hornet in there under the clear plastic. As I said, it was a wagon with the wood grain on a dark green body and a dark green pleather interior. We later moved "up" to a 1979(?) Dodge Aspen wagon, also green but without the wood trim. It was terrible. The Thermoquad plastic carburetor gave constant trouble. Heh heh those paddle door latches!

We had two, 1973 AMC Hornets back in the day. I learned to drive on them. A few years later, we bought a 1980 AMC Eagle. We loved these cars, even though there were times we didn't actually 'like' them. (Suffice it to say they required a LOT of maintenance and TLC.) But I drove the Eagle for over 100,000 miles. As a model car builder, I think that AMC was underrepresented on the hobby shop shelves. We got models of the Gremlin, Pacer and Matador from MPC and AMT, and JoHan covered the Javelin and AMX. But I could never find a model of a Hornet, much less an Eagle. After seeing this, I would love to scratch build the Cowboy. Thanks for posting this! My Like is in the 1.7Ks

Love that you finally made a video on something from AMC. And thanks for sharing that your grandma worked at AMC!

Great video! I am a AMC and Studebaker fan. I also owned, a long time ago, an 1969 American Motors AMX. I probably still have pictures of it somewhere, I learned from that experience not to buy a classic car if you are poor. I had never heard of the Cowboy pickup. I went to a training school run by the State of California where one of the instructors had the AMC pickup based on the legacy Cherokee/Wagoneer from the Kaiser era. if you didn't know, about the only thing left of the Henry Kaiser empire today is the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan in California and Hawaii. They also have a health news outlet called KFF that provides content to PBS and NPR.

The Hornet hatchback is one of my favorite vehicles. It’s a great design. Also, the Sportabout is a great design, too.

I was 17 in 1973 and a car guy. I can't believe I never heard of the Cowboy before!

AMC just did not have the financial heft required to compete, but they had some good and unique ideas. (No small manufacturers can survive in an industry where the development costs are in the BILLIONS and governments keep requiring the wholesale trashing of entire lines of vehicles). I have to admit that I knew every one of the competitor products in this vehicle, but I don’t remember the Cowboy at all! My loss! Thanks for the great video!

I hope you get that Eagle. They are a beast in bad weather. My neighbor had an 82 for many yrs and it conquered many a Chicago blizzard. 258 6, Chrysler auto trans, Dana axles. His only complaint was horrid fuel economy. Oddly enough, he traded it in for a Jeep Comanche Eliminator p/u in 1991. As far as this AMC, I'd never heard of it, so thx for sharing!

I read a long time ago some Roy D. Chapin, head of AMC, interviews and articles where it was stated the problem wasn't that they could not produce another varient. Over 120, 000 73 Hornets were made. AMC also built over 120, 000 73 Gremlins. In 74 there were over 120,00] Hornets, and 170,000 Gremlins. In 75 numbers dropped on the Hornet to 85,000 and 56,000 Gremlins. Part of that line capacity was alotted to the new Pacer. They were all built on the same assembly line, and when the decision of what to build was made, they had limited capacity, and dealers were wanting small cars at the time, not small trucks. Also, they came to the decision that since all Jeep trucks were four wheel drive, and that was the only market advantage Jeep had, they did not wish to dilute the Jeep image with a two wheel drive vehicle they didn't really have the plant capacity to produce in any case. Should they have revisited it in the late 70's? Yes, and they did, but it took until the early 80's to get the four wheel drive jeep platform that produced the Comanche. That took too long because the 74 Matador and 75 Pacer just didn't sell very well, the company spent money on those designs instead of updating existing models, like the Hornet and AMC lost money on them, and had to apply tax loss carry forwards for a few years to make another try. That does not mean the Matador and Pacer were bad cars in and of themselves, even though the Pacer was, shall we say, slow with its inline six engine. The public just didn't really like them enough. That's how the automobile business goes, even today. That was a good video! ( my numbers are sourced from the Standard Catalog of American Motors) 😊

Can't call it a failure when it was stillborn due to production complications, but great to see it.

"Yo, That is fresh" was the first thing that popped into my mind. The Hornet is underrated anyway.

I didn't even know AMC had a Cowboy Prototype. It looks great. I had a 73 Hornet I bought in 89 for $150 and all it needed was a radio (gotta have my tunes) That car lasted me 3 years in the poorest years of my life. It was a lifesaver. Thanks for letting me know about this beautiful car. By the way, I still think the Gremlin was one of the coolest looking cars ever made. But I'm biased and have always been a AMC fan.

I wasn't aware of the AMC Cowboy. I wish they would have built it. It's really neat.

During that time Dick Teague was the designer . He did the rambler, AMX , hornet and pacer. The hatchback hornet is a great design and carried the moniker AMX til 1978

Another AMC pickup (Only available for Four years) was the CJ8 Scrambler(discontinued when shoulder harnesses became mandatory seat belts).