04/02/2026
4-letter-word warning before you read this one, but...
In the 1970s, in North America alone, AMC sold almost a million of the ugliest car you ever saw. I s**t you not, the design chief for AMC sketched their internal combustion catastrophe on an airline barf bag. Really.
--On This Day in History S**t Went Down: April 1, 1970--
At the time, AMC was not one of the motor vehicle behemoths but it still wanted to compete with the foreign compact cars flooding the American market. So, they came up with a godawful mess and released it on April 1, 1970, but it was not intended as an April Fool’s joke. Just to f**k with people, they called it the Gremlin.
The designer said people would see the car as either “cute or controversial, depending on one’s viewpoint.” I think he meant depending on how many drugs they’d taken. He referenced it being “perfect for the free-thinking early 1970s.” There is freethinking, and then there is overdosing on L*D.
Even the name was f**ked. Merriam-Webster defines a gremlin as “a cause of error or equipment malfunction.” Equipment malfunction? This is a f**king car! That’s a bad thing. But young people are stupid and don’t use dictionaries, and the “cute and different” marketing strategy worked, with the under-35 crowd buying a s**tload of the ugly cars. I mean, people bought pet rocks and s**g carpets back then too, so I suppose it makes sense.
Despite its glitchy name, the car was actually pretty reliable and considered a good value for the money. What’s more, in a decade where most other cars blurred together for their style esthetic, the Gremlin stood out for its hideousness. I guess in this case there really was no such thing as bad publicity.
The car was discontinued in 1978, and in 2007 Time magazine put the Gremlin on their list of “The 50 Worst Cars of All Time,” describing the back end as looking like “the tail snapped off a salamander.” But the f**ker still sold. Hell, Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush both drove Gremlins.
NOTE: This piece was researched and written by a human, not some bulls**t "ai" plagiarism software.
Those who cannot remember the past need a history teacher who says “f**k” a lot. Get both volumes of ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY S**T WENT DOWN at JamesFell.com/books.
