Scotty Did AMC Make Good Cars Back In The 1970s?
I've owned quite a few AMC cars (still have some) and they were really not a whole lot different in overall build quality than the other 1970s domestic cars. Of course that was overall a time of low quality for American cars, and crude engineering band-aids to meet emission controls made them all prone to running like crap. AMC never produced anything that fell apart as mind-numbingly quickly as the Chevrolet Vega or Plymouth Volare though! (At least until those awful Renaults, but that's getting into the 1980s.)
@chucktobias
on a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being the best) how would you rate The 1984 AMC Eagle reliability
I owned a couple of Eagles over a period of about 20 years and for reliability I would say maybe 8 as far as reliability of the main drivetrain components. Maybe not as good as the best the Japanese have to offer but still quite robust, with a little care they can go for a very long time. (Any Eagles that are left have already done that of course. I'd probably still have mine if rust hadn't finally killed it.)
Most Eagles had the 258 six-cylinder engine and Torqueflite automatic transmission along with a New Process transfer case, all pretty much bulletproof components. Where the Eagle falls down in reliability is mainly the complex emission control system required to meet 1980s standards with a carb. An electronic feedback carburetor is used along with seemingly miles of vacuum hoses and lots of gadgetry. The system actually works quite well when everything is properly maintained and adjusted but over the years those systems would fail and people would butcher them, causing the cars to run poorly.
Other than that there are annoying things from the old AMC Hornet and Concord that the Eagle is based on, stuff like nylon door hinge bushings that would wear prematurely causing latch problems if not taken care of in a timely manner. Power accessories like power locks and windows if so equipped tended to develop problems. If equipped with a tilt steering column, that's a GM part that tends to have internal bolts loosen up causing the wheel to flop around. The vacuum system that shifts between 2 and 4 wheel drive used on all but the earliest Eagles tends to stop working when it gets old.
So I'd give the Eagle an 8 (excellent) for the six-cylinder drivetrain, and a 5 (average) for the rest of the "stuff" the car equipped with. Of course if you're looking at reliability of an Eagle today you need to take into account that the newest one is over 30 years old.