I'd want Stude on board before the trouble starts, or it risks sinking *AMC...
I was thinking that the 1958 steel shortages and the incoming introduction of the small cars from everyone would be what forces Studebaker to realize the obvious, that their eventual decline is all but inevitable and that their best way of saving as many of their jobs and positions as possible is to join American Motors, namely with the pony car design they were working on, which would become TTL's Javelin.
I like this a lot.
I'm genuinely surprised drum brakes lasted as long as they did on cars - discs are far simpler, easier to maintain and work better, both in terms of single-stop ability and resistance to brake fade.
I'm wondering it this helps make NASCAR safer. Does it mean the *Super Bird/*Torino Cobra aero packages don't get banned? Does something like it also get used in Can Am? On the street?
I doubt it makes too much of a difference, unless the tiremakers in question choose to enter into racing. Michelin in North American racing in the 1960s is an interesting idea, namely because the tall tires of the time in Indycar racing might be changed by the lower profile tires. If they do jump in, I guarantee that Goodyear, Firestone, Federal and the other makers involved at the time would switch to steel-belted radials very quickly.
As far as making things safer, I doubt it. Tires didn't really cause too many issues until years later, and NASCAR has traditionally been slow as molasses to adopt change, and I doubt that changes here.
I'd hope the *Jav/*AMX use the *American chassis, rather than bigger *Ambassador (unlike OTL). I'd also hope there's a *Rebel, a bottom-market Road Runner-like sleeper.
What I had figured for this is that the Javelin chassis would be the one used on the Rebel (which is introduced about 18 months after the Javelin), and yes the Rebel does get the Rebel Machine treatment, using pretty similar to Javelin SST running gear inside a Rebel body.
As said above, I'd see big impact on NASCAR. (Similar to the '85 T-bird?) I also see impact on Le Mans/GT & CanAm. If the aero gets continued, it could have serious knock-ons for fuel mileage.
NASCAR does see AMC show up with the aluminum-block engines starting in 1965, the first aluminum-block AMC being a 294 cubic inch unit (3.75" bore, 3.33" stroke), but they would eventually be punched out to 4.25" bore and 4.125" stroke, which gives 468 cubic inches. AMC's overhead cam engines proved a big advantage in 1966 and 1967 until NASCAR slapped them with RPM limits to slow down their horsepower advantage. (The most common NASCAR motor from AMC was the AMC 428, which is a Gen-2 aluminum block with a 4.125" bore and 4.0" stroke.)
Outside of NASCAR, the biggest place this motor makes waves is in Can-Am, with the Eagle Can Am cars using a big-inch version of this motor in 1966 and 1967, but in 1968 starting with a 335 ci twin-turbocharged version of this engine (which rapidly grew to a torquier 364 ci unit), which in 1969 claimed the Can Am title with Dan Gurney's All American Racers, and the turbocharged AMC-powered cars proved good competitors to the mighty McLaren M8, Chaparral 2G and Porsche 917 competitors of the time.
The Javelin was also a formidable competitor right from the start in Trans Am, first claiming the Trans Am title with Peter Revson and the AAR Javelin in 1968, winning again with Steve McQueen in another AAR Javelin in 1971.
Does the aluminum FI V8 get applied to the 401 (or 451, which I think the 401 block is capable of being punched out to)? This could really, really heat up the horsepower wars; by 1970, EFI could be standard, without fuel economy being insanely bad.
The Gen-2 AMC V8 engine in this world has variants of 294, 310, 320, 335, 364, 377, 401 and 428 cubic inch variants. Fuel injection is an expensive option on most of the cars, though a fair number of Packards and higher-end AMC models (Javelins, Ambassadors and AMXs) use fuel injection. All use aluminum engine blocks and the best heads available from Detroit at the time. These units, however, don't last long - they are retired by the VI-8 and its many derivatives by 1976, most of the remaining applications of these engines being shut down by the 1974 energy crisis.
The Javelin here gets a rep for being more of a corner carver than a dragster - think less Chevelle SS454, more Camaro Z/28 - and the AMX takes that a step further thanks to a shorter wheelbase, fiberglass bodywork and other weight reduction measures as well as a stiffer chassis. (The Javelin SST and AMX join the Corvette as being the first cars to come with anti-lock brakes in 1968, and all three cars come with it as standard.) That being said, an AMX with a supercharged version of those motors could smoke just about anything, and most of the American Motors-running Woodward Avenue street racers quickly pushed their motors all the way out to as much as 468ci, and superchargers were common occurences.
Does this get used in the *Ambassador? I'm thinking it, or the *American, would make good police cruisers or detectives' cars. (I picture one as the unit in "Adam 12". Maybe also in an alt-"CHiPs".)
Oh yes.

AMC is plenty happy to offer Ambassador cop cars, and cop-package Ambassadors by 1968 use the 428ci motor, as well as mega duty brakes (with ABS, and water cooling as an option), double shocks and heavy-duty springs, reinforced chassis, four-speed automatic transmissions, locker differentials and faster steering boxes. (Ambassadors built after 1969 use rack-and-pinion steering, making things better still. AMC also offered police-package Rebels and Javelins, and many of these became truly awesome highway patrol and chase cars.
I'm seeing GM & Ford being smarter with the *Vega/*Pinto TTL, because they have to be, faced with better & more Nashes, besides the VW Typ 1. That being true, I wonder if the OTL Mustang II isn't badged something else (while the *'stang continues as the *Jav-fighter), & on a better platform. (Also, no Pintobombings.


)
I'm not, both because its a convenient excuse to introduce the Gremlin and Hornet as ways to bust the Big Three in the mouth

D) and also because the presence of all of the smaller cars, as well as the Volkswagen Type 1 and Karmann Ghia, Datsun 510, Toyota Corolla, BMW 2002, Honda Civic and lots of other imported small cars didn't make Detroit look ahead. The Vega was designed as an import fighter and had the potential to do a good job of it, but it had a number of design flaws (some of them truly idiotic, like not using galvanized steel in the wheel wells or plastic liners in the gap between the fenders and cowl and carburetor machining changes right before production which caused over-fuelling incidents) which ultimately ruined the car's reputation, and the Pinto was designed from the start to be dirt cheap and as such corners were cut in the design - Ford knew right from the start that the fuel tank placement on the Pinto was a design flaw but felt it better to pay off the victims of the Pinto's design flaws. Here, that flaw when compared to the Vega and Gremlin in particular kicked them in the nuts hard, and after several rounds of damning lawsuits, Ford realized that the Pinto was beyond saving and brought the British Mark II Escort to North America for 1975, followed by the then-new Fiesta in 1977. The Fiesta sold fairly well, but the escort, thanks to excellent design and being hilariously-fun to drive, scored massively, convincing Ford of the intelligence of 'World Cars', resulting in the second-gen Fiesta and third-gen Escort as well as the Sierra all being sold in North America, and resulting in a rather different Taurus when it was introduced in 1985.
BTW, if there's a hot compact that looks as good as the OTL 'stang II but runs more like a Porsche, could it end up driven by Charlie's Angels?

Could Rockford end up driving a *Jav?
I can imagine Rockford with a Javelin. Like the Camaro and Mustang, here it never goes out of production.
As far as Charlie's Angels, what I was thinking for them a Mustang II early on, but I did have the idea of the three of them each having their own fun car - one with a Cosworth Vega, another with an Escort RS1800, a third with a Gremlin X and a fourth an imported sports car of some sort. (Triumph TR8, maybe?)
That said, can I ask for a few things? A FWD transverse I4 or I6 *Gremlin (on the *American chassis? Or maybe even the *Metropolitan?), a *Gremlin "Camino" (prototyped OTL, but never built),


a 4wd *Gremlin Camino,

& a 4wd Packard "T-bird".

(Driven by Banacek?

Or somebody...)
All Gremlins were RWD from 1970 until their end in 1978, and retrofitting FWD and a transverse engine involves redoing the entire chassis, so I don't think that goes. What I had in mind there was that the chassis being worked on for the second-gen Gremlin becomes the AMC Spirit when Renault comes. I did also have the idea of a Metropolitan small sports car, but I'm not sure how well that would sell, particularly with the Spirit and the Renault Fuego around. (And maybe the Matra Murena, too.)
The Gremlin Camino, though, must happen. That idea makes way too much sense in the 1970s to not do, considering the state of fun cars in America at the time, the love of trucks and vans and the popularity of the Subaru BRAT. (Look up the Pinto Cruising Wagon to see what I mean by how sad that era really was.) I'm gonna have to think about what to name that....
I'm seeing a pretty nice *Gremlin, with better styling.

A pretty hot compeitor for the K-car *Shelby Daytona Turbo, too (presuming it still happens).
I had the AMC Spirit be a smaller rear-drive sporty coupe, but when the SX/4 comes into being in 1980 and the Renault Fuego comes stateside, I'm thinking that all Spirits get the four-wheel-drive system and turbocharged PRV V6 engines, becoming a smaller and somewhat-cheaper Audi Quattro, in order to clear the way for the Fuego, which stateside uses Renix-injected AMC engines, with the Fuego Turbo being a Renault turbo system and Renix fuel injection on an AMC I-4 engine. The Spirit becomes the AMC SX/4 in 1986 and lasts until 1993, and its popularity allowing AMC to equip lots of other cars in its lineup with all wheel drive.
And yes, the Shelby Daytona does still happen, and Chrysler doesn't use that awful Mitsubishi V6 in this world either.
The X-bodies were such a piece of crap that I'd just as well leave them alone, though we can still make the engines come to pass.
As far as the Cavalier goes, there isn't a turbocharged version, but not a lot of people cared - in this world the 1979-1983 period saw the Japanese import makers end up a little rattled when they see what turns up out of America (and the French partners American Motors and Chrysler have). The Renault Alliance, AMC Spirit and Rebel, Ford Escort MkIII, Fiesta MkII and Sierra, the Chrysler K-cars and the General Motors J-cars are here all incredible pieces. The Sierra and Spirit are rear-driven while the others are all front-driven. General Motors here learned their lessons from the Corvair and Vega (which is why the X-bodies never exist here) and when the J-cars hit the road in summer 1981, they come after six years of development - and they come with MacPherson strut front suspension and multilink rear suspensions, four-wheel disc brakes with ABS, powerful fuel-injected Quad-Four engines of 142 to 185 horsepower, five-speed manual and four-speed automatic gearboxes, galvanized-steel chassis construction and much better body fabrication. They proved to be pretty good on fuel efficiency, beautifully assembled (GM's production of them in the first year was slow because of their demand for better assembly quality), very well equipped and an absolute hoot to drive (particularly the Cavalier Z/24, which added faster steering, tougher brakes, a limited-slip differential and remote-reservoir shocks to an already good platform), and the Cadillac Cimarron version proved to be a hard sell at first but came to be well liked as more people realized just how good it was.
One of the results of this world is that the fun small cars that grew in Europe in the 1980s came here, too. The Renault Fuego, AMC Spirit, Chevrolet Cavalier Z/24, Ford Escort XR3i and Sierra 500 and Dodge Daytona quickly made sure people didn't have to be rich to have a fun car. The later Ford Fiesta XR2 and Dodge Colt Daytona (a license-built Peugeot 205 GTi) just added to the fun.
As for the Pontiac Fiero, it hits in the same week as the Toyota MR2 in 1984 - and the two are instant rivals, the MR2 the smaller, more maneuverable and more frugal of the two, with the Fiero being the faster and grippier of the two. The two remain rivals through two generations, but both become a lot bigger, fatter and more expensive, before they both get culled in the mid-90s, only to come back as more back-to-basics lightweight sports cars in the early 2000s.
A short-stroke AMC VI-8 engine makes its first appearance in European cars with the Renault 25 in 1983, and yes it does appear in Volvos, firstly in Canadian-assembled 760s starting in April 1984, and then in the European-market 780 Bertone coupe and many 760s starting in early 1986.
Packard largely runs as its own brand, easily racing through the 1980s both by expanding its global presence (Thank You Renault

) and by living with the decadent 1980s in America. The introduction of the new Packard lineup in the 1980s - the V8-powered Packard Constellation (a Seville/Continental/5-Series/300E sized upper-mid-level luxury sedan) and the V12-powered Packard Twelve (a large DeVille/Town Car/S-Class/7-Series/XJ12 competitor sedan), along with huge Packard Pacifica large luxury coupe and the Packard Evolution folding-hardtop convertible. The company eventually builds a smaller Packard (the Packard Sabre, which is built on the same chassis as the Renault Safrane, though this uses AMC's newest 3.5-liter 24-valve V6, introduced in 1991) and the company establishes a strong presence in Europe as well as being the second-largest of America's luxury brands. The company also builds the king-of-the-mountain Packard Executive in 2001, designed and built to be a rival to the awesome Cadillac Sixteen and Rolls-Royce Phantom.
Also, I'm wondering what happens when Renault decides to get into F1. Does this mean turbo V12s by Packard, instead of OTL's Renault V6s?

Hopefully, the combination of Renault $, AMC engineeering, & Packard quality control, they'd be more reliable than the OTL "teakettles"...
Formula One's engine rules from 1966 until 1987 limited naturally-aspirated engines to 3.0 liters and forced-induction ones to 1.5-liters. Renault's turbocharged V6 was sized the way it was to allow a 1.5-liter variant to be used in Formula One, a 2.2-liter version to be used in the Renault-Alpine A442 Le Mans racer and a naturally-aspirated 2.0-liter engine to be used in Formula Two racing. Packard doesn't have a major racing presence, but AMC by 1980 was focusing its efforts on Indycars (they began to race at Indy in the late 1960s, and the VI-8 engine is used in turbocharged as an Indycar racer at various times from until 1971 until 1984), rallying (The Spirit SX/4 wins the World Rally Championship in 1982 and 1983, in both cases narrowly beating out arch-rival Audi) and IMSA Sports Car Racing, in the last case with the VI-8 engine originally being used until the company begins using a 4.4-liter turbocharged V12 starting in 1984 in the back of a Lotus 96SC, used famously in IMSA by Team Lotus North America and by Bruce Leven's Bayside Disposal Racing.
In this world, Formula One has a rather different history - American involvement drops some after Gurney's 1967 title, but from 1976 until 1981 Colin Chapman changes that by making Mario Andretti and A.J. Foyt teammates at Team Lotus, with Foyt winning the World Title in 1977 and Andretti winning the title in 1978. Lella Lombardi and the Zakspeed use a very good chassis and awesome turbocharged Mercedes engines to win the title in 1979, and for the 1980, 1981 and 1982 seasons Formula One's divisions cause the series to be split into the two series, and one result of that is that both competing sides make a massive push to have American fans on their side, resulting in lots of American racers - Rick Mears, Mark Donohue, Elliott Forbes-Robinson, Hurley Haywood, Eddie Cheever (who found himself with a factory Renault ride), Tim Richmond and Johnny Rutherford, among others - driving in Formula One, and with the deal that ended the Formula One split (negotiated out by Jim Clark and Dan Gurney), America was in the middle of the Formula One world. Renault quite liked this - they could use their Formula One success to advertise the success of their turbocharged cars, and in the FISA Formula One season of 1982 Francois Cevert, Eddie Cheever and Alain Prost finished first, second and fourth in the championship for the factory Renault team.
Which also makes me think: does this impact Japan's ability to penetrate the U.S. market? Not only a surviving "major", but one with money & quality on par with Japan's. (Maybe not...)
Japan got its foothold in the late 1960s and into the 1970s as Detroit messed up a lot of things. Their share of the American auto market is rather smaller in this world (here, GM, Ford, Chrysler-Peugeot/Citroen and AMC-Renault-Nissan) between them hold about 75% of the American automobile market. Japan doesn't have the position they have IOTL, but none of them have gone away (though Chrysler owns a controlling interest in Subaru, GM in Isuzu and Ford with a large stake in Mazda) and indeed there are more players here thanks to the presence of Renault and Peugeot/Citroen through their partners and Fiat, which here is still owned by the Italian government, though after a massive series of lawsuits and legal issues in the late 1990s has given up Alfa Romeo and Maserati to General Motors.

Except for the timing: why can't this be in the '70s? Too hard to get AWD sorted? Or too heavy for too little benefit?
More of the latter than anything else. 4WD systems are heavy, and on cars with body-on-frame construction weight is already a problem.
Given the *Gremlin Camino, what are the chances for an *AMC *Dakota half-ton? Or for *Gremlin Camino sales in Europe? (For something like the Sera? {Which, IIRC, was a Toy quarter-ton pickup proposal around 1985. It was seriously cool, but never got built.

})
The half-ton truck here is the Jeep Gladiator, while the Jeep Comanche is the smaller pickup truck, a rival to the Dodge Dakota, Chevrolet S-10 and Ford Ranger. That being built is a given considering the size of the pickup truck market in North America.
As far as the Gremlin Camino being sold in Europe, that I doubt - Subaru never sold the Brat there, and I cannot see there being much of a market for it, as well as the problem of AMC not having much of a market there before the Renault tie-in.
With all this said, TheMann, would you object to this being reposted in the Save Packard thread?
Go ahead.