Economy of scale was anything but a friend to the Independents confronting the seemingly limitless resources of the “Big Three.” The Independents’ was an unenviable position nicely summarized by an American Motors ad that rhetorically asked, “If you had to compete with GM, Ford and Chrysler, what would you do?”
In a general sense, that was simply the way it was once the Big Three became dominant, but some of the Independents tried to offset their relatively tight finances with a dose of creativity. Marmon built its Sixteen, Graham produced cars with its Spirit of Motion styling and Packard developed its Ultramatic, to cite just three examples. Although it’s dangerous to make claims as to which Independent was best in any given area, AMC was, at the very least, commendable in
