Happy Early New Year

The new year always gets off to a long head start in Detroit, where automakers have already begun 1969 model production. By rolling out its 1969s this week, aggressive, struggling American Motors Corp. has rung in the new year earlier than ever before.

With a showing at Washington's Shoreham Hotel, A.M.C. gets a modest jump on the Big Three, who will not begin unwrapping their new wheels until later this month. Why the rush? Maybe because A.M.C. has a lot to show this year. "We've got a whole line of cars to sell now," says A.M.C. President William V. Luneburg. "This company will never again be known as a one-product outfit."

Like a 707. Top of the new line is the Ambassador, which remains the industry's only car with air conditioning as a standard item. The new version is wider and four inches longer than the 1968 model, adding up to a full-size equivalent of Ford and Chevrolet. A.M.C. hopes that new grille and taillight treatment, a sculptured hood `a la Lincoln Continental and a dashboard that would do credit to a Boeing 707 will boost the Ambassador. Currently, 1968-model sales are running slightly behind the 1967 level.

Other models are in for smaller changes (except for slow-selling convertibles, which will be dropped altogether). The intermediate-size Rebel will sport little new styling, though its sales have been off by 23% during a year in which A.M.C.'s overall performance has shown modest improvement (233,000 cars so far, v. 207,000 in 1967). Much of the success has been due to the doughty American, which Chairman Roy M. Chapin decided to promote as a competitor to small foreign imports. So far, sales are slightly ahead of the 1967 pace --not bad for a car whose basic design is four years old. Next year, as a five-year-old, about all it will get is a change in name, from American to Rambler. It will thus become the latest--and now the only--line to carry the name that won fame in the 1950s when A.M.C. was dueling successfully with what George Romney called the Big Three's "gas-guzzling dinosaurs."

Nowadays, A.M.C. is doing some fire breathing itself--and the strategy so far has been a savior. Introduced at a time when the deficit-ridden company could barely afford tool-up costs, the hot Javelin will easily sell out its 56,000-car production run this year. Widely raced (it is currently second in nationwide stock-car standings, after General Motors' Camaro and ahead of Ford's Mustang), the Javelin has drawn younger crowds into A.M.C. showrooms. Next year, the company will race the new $3,245 AMX, a 150-m.p.h. souped-up Javelin that competes with the $4,663 Chevrolet Corvette.

Bucks for the Banks. When its new models hit the showrooms Oct. 1, A.M.C. hopes to do better than just hold its own--though even that is no small feat for a company which last year lost $76 million, held barely 3% of the U.S. auto market. While still short of its 4% market-penetration goal, A.M.C.'s share has risen to 3.14% in a highly competitive year in which both G.M. and Ford have had troubles.

Last week, moreover, A.M.C. reported that in the first nine months of the fiscal year, it earned $17.7 million, compared with a $48 million loss in the same period in 1967. In the third quarter of 1968, the company went $2.56 million in the red, but only because of a bookkeeping loss in the sale of its last nonautomotive division, appliance-making Kelvinator.

Loss though it was, the Kelvinator sale had A.M.C. executives dancing all the way to the banks--the 24 banks to which A.M.C. at one time owed $95 million. Using some $20 million of the proceeds, the company has whittled the debt down to $28.6 million, expects to pay the rest by year's end. Wall Street seems to see that as a sure sign of turnaround, and last week the company was huddling with Manhattan moneymen over plans to raise $50 million in new capital. The badly needed long-term deal would be used to bankroll new dealerships and build new models.

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