AMC Eagle
American Motors Corporation
ProductionAugust 1979 – December 1987
Engine150 CID AMC straight-4 engine / AMC I4 / 151 CID GM Iron Duke engine / GM Iron Duke I4 / 258 CID AMC Straight-6 engine / AMC I6
American Motors Corporation
The AMC Eagle is a compact four-wheel drive passenger vehicle manufactured and marketed in a single generation by American Motors Corporation (AMC) for model years 1980 through 1987 and continued by Chrysler Corporation following its acquisition of AMC in 1987, for the 1988 model year. Introduced in August 1979 for the 1980 model year, the coupe, sedan, and station wagon body styles were based on the AMC Concord. In 1981, the two-door subcompact-sized AMC Spirit-based models, the SX/4 and Kammback, joined the Eagle line aimed at both first-time buyers and fleet sales. A Sundancer convertible conversion for the larger Eagle two-door model was available during 1981 and 1982.
By 1984, only sedan and station wagon versions were available. For 1988, its final model year, only a station wagon was offered, marketed as the "Eagle Wagon". However, the name continued to be used by Chrysler Corporation as the Eagle brand of cars through 1998. The AMC Eagles were the only four-wheel drive passenger cars produced in the United States at the time. All models featured "passenger-car comfort, plus 4WD security for all-weather security." Marketing materials of the time refer to the Eagle as a "vehicle," "automobile," "car," or “sport machine.” Although the description was not in use at the time, the AMC Eagle is widely recognized as the first crossover vehicle.
From the Wikipedia article AMC Eagle, CC BY-SA.
This is the catalogue record of the AMC Eagle, one of 23 models American Motors Corporation has placed in the historical record and one of more than seventeen thousand cars the MotorJury library tracks. The record places its introduction in 1979. The photography on this page is hotlinked from Wikimedia Commons under an open licence, with the photographer credited on every frame.
To read the AMC Eagle properly it helps to place it in its decade. The 1970s were the decade the oil crises rewired the industry — emissions rules, safety bumpers and fuel economy suddenly mattered as much as horsepower, and Japanese manufacturers went global. Any car launched into that world was shaped by it — by what materials, engineering and regulation allowed, and by what buyers of the day demanded. Its direct contemporaries in this catalogue, introduced within three years of it, include the Mercedes-Benz Mercedes-Benz G-Class, the Lancia Lancia Delta, the Toyota Toyota Supra — the cars a buyer of the period would actually have cross-shopped.
On paper, the AMC Eagle reads like this: the record lists its engine as 150 CID AMC straight-4 engine / AMC I4 / 151 CID GM Iron Duke engine / GM Iron Duke I4 / 258 CID AMC Straight-6 engine / AMC I6; drive goes through 4-speed Manual transmission / manual / 5-speed manual / 3-speed TorqueFlite Automatic transmission / automatic; the layout is Front engine, four-wheel drive. Every figure above is a manufacturer specification carried by the Wikipedia infobox or the open Wikidata record for this model — nothing on this page is estimated, and where a source is silent the row simply does not appear.
Within American Motors Corporation's own catalogue the AMC Eagle sits alongside the AMC AMX, the AMC AMX-GT, the AMC AMX/3, the AMC Ambassador. Design is credited to Dick Teague. Assembly is recorded at United States: Kenosha, Wisconsin (Kenosha Engine: 1980–1983) / Canada: Brampton / Brampton, Ontario (Brampton Assembly: 1984–1988).
This library is generated, verified and rebuilt from the open record on every deploy. The catalogue skeleton comes from Wikidata, specifications from Wikipedia's infoboxes under CC BY-SA, photography from Wikimedia Commons under each file's own licence, and the ownership data from United States federal safety records. Nothing is written by hand and nothing is invented: every fact on this page traces to a public source, and every page is rebuilt nightly as those sources improve. Errors in the source record will appear here too — and disappear the night the source is corrected.
Most car databases stop at series production. This one deliberately does not, because concept cars, racing specials and cancelled prototypes are where the industry thinks out loud — the ideas tested in public years before they reach a showroom. Holding them beside the production cars they inspired makes the lineage legible: nearly every landmark road car in this library has a concept ancestor somewhere in the catalogue, and the connections run through the era links on every page.
The catalogue records what the AMC Eagle was; the ownership database records what it is like to own. MotorJury computes a verdict for every model year the United States federal record covers — complaints, recalls, real economy — refreshed nightly, with no opinions involved. If this car reached the American market, its verdicts are in there.
Specifications come from the Wikipedia infobox for this model (CC BY-SA) and the open Wikidata record, and are shown only where a source actually carries them — nothing here is estimated. Figures are manufacturer specifications, not measured results.
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Ownership verdicts are computed from NHTSA complaint and recall records plus EPA economy data, re-priced for your country. Verdicts are published per model year as the data is ingested — browse them live, or open the true-cost calculator to price any year yourself.
Contemporaries from other marques, introduced within three years of this car.