Gerald Meyers, who sought to save the American Motors Corp. by introducing the unusual, bubble-like AMC Pacer, then arranged the struggling automaker’s takeover by France’s Renault SA, has died. He was 94.
(Bloomberg) — Gerald Meyers, who sought to save the American Motors Corp. by introducing the unusual, bubble-like AMC Pacer, then arranged the struggling automaker’s takeover by France’s Renault SA, has died. He was 94.
Meyers died on June 19 of natural causes at his home in West Bloomfield, Michigan, the Detroit Free Press reported, citing his family.
Meyers’s tenure as AMC’s chief executive officer from 1977 to 1982 coincided with falling US auto demand, an oil crisis and high interest rates. Contending with losses and declining sales, he closed unneeded plants and discontinued slow-selling models.
Meyers also focused the Southfield, Michigan-based company on niches that larger rivals neglected, such as for small cars, Jeep sport-utility vehicles and government vehicles. AMC had just 2% of the domestic market, the Associated Press reported at the time.
“We can live in the cracks,” he told an interviewer in 1978, the year he gained the added title of chairman, according to Charles K. Hyde’s 2009 history book, Storied Independent Automakers. “There aren’t many people there.”
AMC had success with the Eagle, an early American-built four-wheel drive vehicle aimed at the mass market, but weak sales overall led Meyers to seek outside investment.
Renault, the state-owned French automaker with negligible US market share, was interested in AMC’s dealer network and bought a stake in 1979. Its holdings grew to a 46% controlling interest before Meyers resigned in early 1982. Five years later Lee Iacocca at Chrysler Corp. bought Renault’s stake for $1.5 billion, and AMC operated as Chrysler’s Jeep-Eagle division.
‘Too Radical’
The perpetual No. 4 US automaker behind General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler, now part of Stellantis NV, AMC had struggled since its birth from a 1954 merger of Nash-Kelvinator Corp. and Hudson Motor Co. It contributed unusually styled cars to the US market, including the compact Rambler American in 1958. The compact Hornet and Gremlin — the first US-produced subcompact — were first sold as 1970 models.
Meyers, who had previously worked for Ford and Chrysler, came to AMC as a purchasing manager in 1962 and in 1967 became a vice president responsible for auto manufacturing. He was named group vice president for product in 1972.
The Pacer, introduced in 1975, was meant to be AMC’s most revolutionary offering. Meyers oversaw its development and introduction as group vice president for product engineering.
The Pacer was extra-wide and had glass over 37% of its surface, compared with 20% to 25% for most cars. “Everything that we do must distinguish itself as being importantly different than what can be expected from the competition,” Meyers said, according to a 2018 article in Hemmings Classic Car magazine.
“When you get a Pacer, you get a piece of tomorrow,” AMC boasted in its marketing. Initially a hit, sales waned as consumers deemed its design “too radical,” Hyde wrote.
Jeeps Take Off
Meyers also led the repurposing of military vehicles, Jeep Cherokees and Wagoneers, to capture about a third of the emerging SUV market by the late 1970s.
“We kept the brand name and the looks, but changed most of the components,” he wrote in a 2000 article in the New York Times.
For a while, Jeeps offset weak sales for AMC’s passenger cars. But Meyers expressed disapproval of the subsequent SUV boom. “Jeeps were supposed to remain small, nimble, fuel-efficient, safe and lovable,” he wrote. “They were not designed to be road hogs or gas guzzlers.”
Gerald Carl Meyers was born on Dec. 5, 1928, in Buffalo, New York, according to Marquis Who’s Who. He was the son of Myron and Berenice Meyers. His father, who immigrated from Germany in 1908 and served in World War I, became a clothing manufacturer. His mother was an understudy at New York’s Metropolitan Opera, according to a Times profile in 1976.
In 1950, he received a bachelor of science degree in engineering from the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh and went to work for Ford. After a two-year stint in the US Air Force, he returned to Carnegie, earning a master’s degree in industrial administration and then joining Chrysler. He spent the next eight years overseeing manufacturing plants before joining American Motors.
After leaving AMC following the Renault deal, Meyers became a consultant specializing in crisis management. Starting in 1985, he was a professor at the graduate school of industry at Carnegie Mellon University, a successor to Carnegie Tech, and 10 years later joined the University of Michigan Business School in Ann Arbor. He wrote two books on management, When It Hits the Fan (1986), with John Holusha, and Dealers, Healers, Brutes & Saviors (2000), with his daughter, Susan Meyers.
Meyers was married to the former Barbara Jacob in 1958. They had three children.
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