By Jeff Stork

AMC’s Pacer made its debut thirty-five years ago this past spring. It was a
distinctive car, a futuristic hatchback with a gigantic glass area and
unequal length doors. It is remembered today as a footnote of the disco
era, the fishbowl with wheels. But the car that hit the showrooms bore
little resemblance to what AMC had intended.

AMC planned a revolutionary car — one with a compact exterior but the
same interior room as a full size Chevrolet Impala. The heart  of the
design was a rotary engine- they had contracted to purchase the
upcoming two-rotor engine from GM. This engine fit snugly in the tight
engine bay AMC designers laid out and allowed an interior simply unequaled in a car of this length. AMC was certain that it had a
smash hit on its hands.

And then things went terribly wrong. Disappointed by the fuel economy
of the rotary and the challenges of meeting emission standards, GM
literally ripped the heart out of the Pacer when they canceled the
rotary project. AMC was left high and dry with a body already half-tooled and no powerplant. A compromise was worked out in which a
standard AMC six-cylinder engine was adapted to the car. It was all
the company could do. But the inline six required an additional thirty inches
of clearance, which necessitated moving the firewall back dramatically.
The planned interior was totally ruined. There was nothing
revolutionary remaining except the width of the car, and that became its selling point. “The first wide small car” was the theme. Ads
showed other cars fitting inside the Pacer’s body shell, and showed the
car’s ability to carry wide submarine sandwiches. The car actually sold
quite respectably at first and was a likable car that remained in
production through 1980, but it was only a pale imitation of the
revolutionary car AMC had planned.