Unsung heroes: Eagle Premier

This month the unsung heroes series returns to the USA with an especially bizarre choice that non-American readers will probably never have heard of and even Americans are likely to have forgotten. The Eagle Premier is a product of the 1980s, a dark time in US automotive history that created some frankly terrible cars, and if remembered at all is often cited as a perfect example of these with its unreliability and dull-as-ditchwater styling - a site called TheStreet.com even declared it the worst car of all time. I feel that is completely unfair: while the Premier may seem pretty boring it was actually very competent and quite innovative by American standards and I can think of cars that are far, far worse. Read on for the fascinating story behind this Franco-American crossbreed and how it should have shaken up the US motor industry. 

The perfect combination of American and European? It looks a bit like an Audi if you squint
(Image: allpar.com)

Americans' car buying philosophy seems a bit odd and very insular to British eyes, with a strict division between domestic and imported models. The majority of drivers are fiercely loyal to one of the Big Three (Ford, Chrysler and General Motors) and would never even consider buying an import, while European cars tend to be seen as exotic and a bit special and essentially compete amongst themselves in a separate market. American marques had tried to emulate the European brands but usually without much success, a good example being the dire Ford Granada ESS (European Sports Sedan) that shared nothing with its European namesake and was inferior in every way to the Mercedes it aimed to compete with.

The Granada ESS tried to be 'European' but wasn't a patch on a Mercedes or even its namesake
(Image: Ford)

The American Motors Corporation was the country's perennial number four car company, constantly trying valiantly to compete against the Big Three with far fewer resources but never quite succeeding. Rather like the position MG Rover would find themselves in much later, by the early eighties AMC were in a downward spiral of ageing products and not enough money to replace them, the Concord and Spirit models dating back to 1970. Creating innovative new variations of these existing designs like the 4x4 Eagles could only get them so far and a joint venture with another firm would be necessary to produce something entirely new. AMC turned to Renault, who by 1983 owned the majority of the company's shares, and the first fruits of this venture were the Alliance and Encore, US-built versions of the Renault 9 and 11.

AMC made this funky Renault 9 convertible we never got in Europe
(By 1xmaw (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons)

In contrast to the fortunes of their car division, AMC also owned Jeep and their market research indicated that Jeep buyers were among the wealthiest sector of the population. Their Jeeps typically shared garage space with premium European brands like Volvo and Mercedes, so AMC naturally wanted a piece of that market and hoped to get these customers buying cars as well as Jeeps from them. What they needed was a prestige European-style sedan, and the tie-up with Renault provided the perfect opportunity to make just such a car. This new model would become the company's flagship that was to reverse the decline and solve their financial woes, and on paper it looked to be a winner, especially as it was conceived as a modular design that could easily be adapted into coupe, station wagon and four-wheel drive forms, although none of these ever made it off the drawing board.

The Renault 25, a suitable starting point for the Premier

The Renault 25 was the ideal basis for the new car, codenamed X-58, but selling the 25 as it was wouldn't cut it in the US and it had to be redesigned to suit American tastes. For starters it was a hatchback but conservative American buyers preferred sedans, and the 25's suspension was replaced by that of the Medallion, the US-market version of the Renault 21. The centre section of the Premier is recognisably R25, but oddly dull new front and rear ends styled by Giorgietto Giugiaro at ItalDesign gave it a very different appearance; despite its boxy Volvo-like looks, it was supposedly even more aerodynamic than Ford's controversial jellymould Taurus, and the latter's too-radical shape should have helped the Premier's cause.

A box on wheels but supposedly the most aerodynamic sedan of its era
(Image: Autoblog.com)

Pre-production Premiers had appeared with Renault and AMC badges, but in 1987 Chrysler bought out Renault's shareholding in AMC, keen to get their hands on the desirable Jeep marque but also attracted by the brand new factory at Brampton, Ontario, where the Premier was to be built. It was launched as a 1988 model under the new Eagle brand that Chrysler had created for the former AMC cars, and the original concept of a car for Jeep buyers seems to have been forgotten in favour of some rather confused marketing that didn't emphasise the Premier's unique selling point of being the perfect blend of European and American. It was a step-child that suffered from the 'not invented here' syndrome and although reportedly impressed by it Chrysler didn't know what to do with this odd car they had inherited, so the Premier inevitably became a massive sales flop.

This rare survivor could have been yours for $2500 a couple of years ago. I wonder what happened to it.
(Image: Jalopnik.com)

The Premier was far superior to Chrysler's own range that was based around the ageing K-car platform, so conspiracy theorists might suggest it was deliberately badly marketed as it was too much of a threat to these core products. Contemporary testers described it as a world-class car and the most sophisticated model Chrysler had to offer, a remarkable achievement considering it had been developed by a much smaller company on a very tight budget. It was lighter, stiffer and roomier than any other model and had much better handling that was comparable to European competitors, and the cabin was packed with cutting-edge electronics. Sadly the latter was to be one of the car's undoings: the well-deserved French reputation for unreliable electronics soon manifested itself as the many gadgets in the Premier began to fail and fixing them was no easy task that often required parts to be imported from France.

Late-model Premiers were heavily discounted and a real bargain. This one reminds me of a Fiat Croma.
(By RJHuffman (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons)

The base-model Premier LX was originally powered by the old AMC 2.5-litre four-cylinder engine, while the ES had a federalised version of the 3-litre PRV (Peugeot-Renault-Volvo) V6, also used most famously in an earlier form by DeLorean. Although the PRV engine was fairly well-regarded in Europe and with 150bhp had more power than the Mitsubishi V6 used in other Chryslers, it just couldn't cope with tougher American conditions and frequently overheated. All drove the front wheels through a ZF automatic gearbox with floor or column shift, a manual version having been cancelled, and unfortunately this proved to be another Achilles' heel that often failed. Sales in the first year amounted to a paltry 59,000, a far cry from the annual target of 150,000, and would only go downhill from there.

AMC designed their own interior instead of using Renault's. Note column shift.
(Image: Jalopnik.com)

Chrysler had a contract with Renault to buy 260,000 PRV engines over five years and had to pay a financial penalty for every one not used. In a desperate attempt to meet this target, the unpopular AMC four was soon discontinued from the base model and a badge-engineered sister version introduced using the familiar Dodge Monaco name. The Monaco was basically the same as the Premier and didn't really have a place in the crowded Dodge range so it has been suggested it would have worked better as a Plymouth, filling the gap left by the demise of the Fury. Even so, it was objectively much better in every way than the similar-sized Dodge Dynasty, a boxy and dated 1970s throwback, yet for some inexplicable reason the Dynasty outsold the Monaco many times over.

The Dodge Dynasty. Never has a car been so aptly named and why anyone would choose this over a Monaco is a mystery to me.
(Public Domain image from Wikipedia)

The Premier was a truly international car, based on a French platform, styled in Italy and built in Canada for sale in the US, so it should have been the best of both worlds and appealed to buyers of domestic and imported cars. Tragically, the way it was marketed meant it turned into a halfway house that was neither one thing nor the other and didn't really appeal to anyone. Buyers of domestic models were put off by its French origins, while import fans felt it was too Americanised and not a true European car. As a result, only 130,000 of the Premier and Monaco combined were sold before they were dropped in 1992 at a huge cost to Chrysler in paying off Renault for the unused engines. Things could have been very different though and in theory the Premier should have revolutionised the US automotive industry by combining the best bits of American and European practice in one car.

A Premier by another name, the Dodge Monaco was no more successful
(By Karrmann (Own work (Original text: self made photo)) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons)

Despite its own failure, another reason to nominate the Premier as an unsung hero and not as one of the worst cars ever is the under-appreciated legacy it left. The new LH-series cars that were critically acclaimed and spearheaded the revival of the Chrysler group in the mid-1990s owed much of their engineering to the Premier and were built in the same factory, and the creativity of AMC's engineers used to working with tiny budgets brought a new philosophy to Chrysler that is still apparent in today's products - an amazing but true fact is that the Premier's rear suspension found its way virtually unchanged into the legendary Dodge Viper. Its lack of success inevitably led to poor after-sales support and challenges obtaining spare parts, which just added to the Premier's bad reputation for reliability as it became virtually impossible to keep on the road once out of warranty.

Many Premiers soon ended up like this, unwanted and abandoned in junkyards
(Image: thetruthaboutcars.com)

Thanks to its troubled background, the Premier is all but extinct and has basically disappeared into total obscurity now, which is a shame considering the potential it had. It was a brave attempt by a small player to shake up the market and might have been a success if AMC's original marketing strategy had been followed, but it just goes to prove what is successful in Europe won't necessarily work in the USA as conditions are so different there. Bravely going against the tide of negativity, Dan Roth of Autoblog went as far as describing the Premier as a future classic and one of the best American cars of recent times, and compared with some of the utter rubbish they have turned out I'm inclined to agree with him.

A future classic? I think it looks pretty good in that colour with those wheels and it certainly has rarity value.
(Image: Autoblog.com)

Although I've never seen one and am never likely to as it was never sold outside North America and I doubt anybody ever bothered to import one to the UK, reading the fascinating story of the Eagle Premier convinced me that from a European perspective it seemed deserving of unsung hero status and isn't really one of the worst vehicles ever made as American car bores would like to have you believe. It's definitely my oddest choice so far, but I think once you dive a bit deeper into its background this outwardly boring and much-criticised car has a lot more merit than is apparent and that makes it a very worthy inclusion in this series.