American Motors Corporation
The AMC Gremlin, also called American Motors Gremlin, is a subcompact car introduced in 1970, manufactured and marketed in a single, two-door body style (1970–1978) by American Motors Corporation (AMC), as well as in Mexico (1974–1983) by AMC's Vehículos Automotores Mexicanos (VAM) subsidiary. Using a shortened Hornet platform and bodywork with a pronounced kammback-like tail, the Gremlin was classified as an economy car and competed with the Chevrolet Vega and Ford Pinto, introduced that same year, as well as imported vehicles including the Volkswagen Beetle and Toyota Corolla.
The small domestic automaker marketed the Gremlin as "the first American-built import." The Gremlin reached a total production of 671,475 over a single generation. It was superseded for the 1979 model year by a restyled and revised variant, the AMC Spirit, which continued to be produced through 1983. This was long after the retirement of the Ford Pinto, which suffered from stories about exploding gas tanks, as well as the Chevrolet Vega with its rusting bodies, durability problems, and aluminum engine.
From the Wikipedia article AMC Gremlin, CC BY-SA.
The AMC Gremlin is one of 23 American Motors Corporation models in the MotorJury library, the catalogue that sets out to hold every car ever made — production, prototype and concept alike. The record places its introduction in 1970. 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 Gremlin 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 Chevrolet Chevrolet Impala, the Suzuki Motor Corporation Suzuki Jimny, the Range Rover Range Rover — the cars a buyer of the period would actually have cross-shopped.
On paper, the AMC Gremlin reads like this: the record lists its engine as 1984 cc Volkswagen / VW List of discontinued Volkswagen Group petrol engines#EA831 / EA831 Straight-four engine / I4 / 199 CID AMC Straight-6 engine / AMC I6 / 232 CID AMC I6 / 258; kerb weight is recorded at 2633 lb; drive goes through 3- or 4-speed Borg-Warner Manual transmission / manual / 3-speed manual w/ Laycock de Normanville Overdrive (mechanics) / overdrive / 3-speed Borg-Warner automatic (1970–1971) / 3-; the layout is FR layout. 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 Gremlin sits alongside the AMC AMX, the AMC AMX-GT, the AMC AMX/3, the AMC Ambassador. It was succeeded by the AMC Spirit. Design is credited to Bob Nixon / Dick Teague. Assembly is recorded at United States: Kenosha, Wisconsin (Kenosha Engine / Kenosha Assembly) / Canada: Brampton / Brampton, Ontario (Brampton Assembly) / Mexico: Mexico City (Vehículos Automotores Mexica.
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.
What this page cannot yet tell you is what the AMC Gremlin costs to live with — that is a different dataset. MotorJury's ownership verdicts are computed from federal complaint and recall records plus EPA economy data, published per model year as the nightly ingest reaches each car. If this model was sold in the United States, its years will surface in the ownership database; browse it live or price any car yourself with the true-cost calculator.
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.