AMC Hornet
American Motors Corporation
Production1969–1977
Engine199 CID AMC Straight-6 engine / I6 / 232 CID I6 / 250 CID Chevrolet Turbo-Thrift engine#250 / GM I6 (South Africa) / 252 CID VAM I6 (Mexico) / 258 CID I6 / 282 CID VAM I6 (Mexico)
American Motors Corporation
The AMC Hornet is a compact automobile manufactured and marketed by American Motors Corporation (AMC) from 1970 through 1977 model years, in two- and four-door sedan, station wagon, and hatchback coupe configurations. The Hornet replaced the compact Rambler American line, marking the end of the Rambler marque in the United States and Canadian markets. The Hornet became significant for AMC in not only being a top seller during its production, but also a car platform serving the company in varying forms through the 1988 model year. Introduced in late 1969, AMC quickly earned a high rate of return for its development investment for the Hornet. The platform became the basis for AMC's subcompact Gremlin, luxury compact Concord, liftback and sedan Spirit, and the innovative all-wheel drive AMC Eagle. Its design would also outlast domestic competitors' compact platforms, including the Chevrolet Nova, Ford Maverick, and Plymouth Valiant.
The AMC Hornet also served as an experimental platform for alternative fuel and other automotive technologies. Hornets were campaigned at various motorsports events with some corporate support. A hatchback model also starred in an exceptional stunt jump in the 1974 James Bond film The Man with the Golden Gun. Hornets were marketed in foreign markets and were assembled under license agreements between AMC and local manufacturers—for example, with Vehículos Automotores Mexicanos (VAM), Australian Motor Industries (AMI), and Toyota S.A. Ltd. in South Africa.
From the Wikipedia article AMC Hornet, CC BY-SA.
This is the catalogue record of the AMC Hornet, 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 1969. 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 Hornet properly it helps to place it in its decade. The 1960s were the decade of the pony car, the mid-engined revolution and the birth of the modern hot hatchback's ancestors — engineering advanced faster than in any decade before it. 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 Range Rover Range Rover, the Chevrolet Chevrolet Impala, the Suzuki Motor Corporation Suzuki Jimny — the cars a buyer of the period would actually have cross-shopped.
On paper, the AMC Hornet reads like this: the record lists its engine as 199 CID AMC Straight-6 engine / I6 / 232 CID I6 / 250 CID Chevrolet Turbo-Thrift engine#250 / GM I6 (South Africa) / 252 CID VAM I6 (Mexico) / 258 CID I6 / 282 CID VAM I6 (Mexico) ; drive goes through 3-speed "Borg-Warner 35 transmission / Shift-Command" Automatic transmission / automatic (1970–1971) / 3-speed "TorqueFlite / Torque-Command" automatic (1972–1977) / 3-speed Manual; 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 Hornet sits alongside the AMC AMX, the AMC AMX-GT, the AMC AMX/3, the AMC Ambassador. The record names the Rambler American as its predecessor and the AMC Concord as its successor, fixing its place in the model line's chronology. Design is credited to Dick Teague. Assembly is recorded at United States: Kenosha, Wisconsin (Kenosha Engine) / Canada: Brampton / Brampton, Ontario (Brampton Assembly) / Mexico: Mexico City (Vehículos Automotores Mexicanos / VAM) / Austra.
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.
The catalogue records what the AMC Hornet 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.