Rambler Marlin
American Motors Corporation
Production1965–1967
American Motors Corporation
The Rambler Marlin (later AMC Marlin) is a two-door fastback automobile produced in the United States by American Motors Corporation from 1965 to 1967. A halo car for the company, it was marketed as a personal luxury car. In 1965, the car was marketed as "Rambler Marlin".
For 1966, the car featured "Marlin" identification only and was officially named "AMC Marlin", as was the 1967 model. Its fastback roof design was previewed on the 1964 Rambler Tarpon show car, based on the compact Rambler American. The 1965 and 1966 model year production Marlins were fastback versions of the mid-sized two-door hardtop Rambler Classic, and 1967 brought a major redesign in which the car was given the new, longer AMC Ambassador full-sized chassis. This version had a longer hood and numerous improvements, including more interior room and new V8 engines.
From the Wikipedia article Rambler Marlin, CC BY-SA.
The Rambler Marlin 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 1965. The photography on this page is hotlinked from Wikimedia Commons under an open licence, with the photographer credited on every frame.
To read the Rambler Marlin 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 Ford Ford Transit, the Nissan Nissan Silvia, the Ford Ford Bronco — the cars a buyer of the period would actually have cross-shopped.
On paper, the Rambler Marlin reads like this: 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 Rambler Marlin sits alongside the AMC AMX, the AMC AMX-GT, the AMC AMX/3, the AMC Ambassador. It was succeeded by the AMC Rebel/AMC Matador / Matador: midsize / AMC Ambassador / Ambassador: full-size luxury / AMC Javelin / Javelin: sporty pony car. Design is credited to Dick Teague. Assembly is recorded at United States Kenosha, Wisconsin (Kenosha Engine).
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.
What this page cannot yet tell you is what the Rambler Marlin 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.
Tap a star. Ratings are kept on your device and feed the most-loved list.
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.