Way way back when we first started this site, back in April of 2022 – a time now known as the BGS era (before Grimace Shake) – I had a post that was supposed to be the start of a series called Phoning It In, where we find some exciting examples of automakers, you know, half-assing it. Like with the hubcaps of the Porsche 914. But then, unsurprisingly for those who know me, that series ended up being not so regular after all. In fact, I just sort of forgot about it until today, when I realized there’s a beautiful example of automaker phoning-it-innery that you should know about: the right-hand-drive conversion of the AMC Pacer.
Right from the get-go, if anyone was actually, really thinking about it, you could see that the Pacer would be a quite poor candidate for an RHD conversion, at least if you were to do it the right way. Most of why are inherent design issues; unlike most cars built then or even now, the Pacer was quite left-hand-drive oriented, because the passenger’s side door was a solid four inches longer than the driver’s side, in order to facilitate easier entry and exit for front and rear passengers when parked at the curb. This is really clever thinking and very thoughtful design but only if the car is actually LHD: in a RHD car, it needlessly penalizes the passengers and makes the driver’s door longer and more cumbersome for no good reason.
Of course, British car reviews of the era noticed this and pointed it out:
Then there’s the fact that while the AMC Pacer was designed to be a small car by American standards, they really only meant that on the long axis. Part of the whole appeal of the Pacer was that it was a wide small car, something AMC played up heavily in Pacer advertising, especially targeting America’s booming six-foot party sub market segment:
Or, they showed the Pacer’s prodigious width by having the Pacer wear the skin of what looks like a Ford LTD, xipe-totec style:
Now, wide may be great in America where we love width, just on its own merits, but in the UK there’s many places with narrower roads and garages and in general cars are smaller. The Pacer, at over 77 inches wide, was almost half a foot wider than a Bentley Corniche! All that and it cost, at the time, only £1,000 less than a Jaguar XJ6.
And, you have to remember that gasoline wasn’t cheap in the UK, either, probably because renaming it “petrol” was a costly undertaking. The Pacer, which was designed for a Wankel rotary engine that never came, ended up having the robust-but-kinda-thirsty AMC inline-6 engine shoehorned in, making the two rearmost spark plugs less accessible than atonal music. That big 4.2-liter engine was well over twice the size of most British car engines at the time, and it got a dismal 15 to 18ish mpg.
Oh, but there’s more, there’s so much more! Arguably the whole thing about RHD cars is that the D is done on the R side, so you need the steering wheel re-located and the dashboard and instruments mirrored accordingly. AMC seems to have taken the most half-assed approach possible to doing this. A first clue can be seen here in this shot of the engine compartment, also from that same 1976 review:
So, the brake servo is still on the left, as is the steering column, and yet the steering wheel is on the right. How did they pull this off? With the cutting-edge Shakespeare-era tech of cogs and chains. That review in Autocar describes it like this:
“They have used instead a simple system of cogs and chain to take steering rotation from the original column on the left to the new wheel position on the right. Surprisingly, this system does not introduce slack or stiction and such shortcomings as the steering has – very low gearing (nearly four turns lock to lock) and overdone power assistance – are those of the original set up, though the conversion may have contributed to the almost total lack of caster action.”
“Stiction” is a funny word, it kinda sounds like what it is, the resistance of something stationary to become motile.
I haven’t yet been able to find pictures of the specific setup on the Pacer, but there are some examples of 4×4 truck RHD conversions on a mig welding forum:
Along with moving the steering wheel, you’ll need a whole new dashboard as well, and I’m happy to report that AMC seeming spared every single expense when it came to making one:
As you may guess, the reviews of the dash saw it for what it was: crap. Look:
“Of the regular controls, only the indicators are on a column stalk (the dipswitch is on the floor) and all other controls have been mounted on a flat panel protruding through cut-outs in varnished plywood facing. The idea was borrowed from Ford’s old Cortina 1600E but unfortunately neither the quality of the wood veneer or the workmanship is up to the same standard; the overall effect is one of cheapness.”
Well, to be fair, “cheapness” was sort of AMC’s mantra, so they can’t be too upset.
So, where the original US-spec dash was shaped, molded plastic, pleasingly asymmetrical and canting the instruments to the driver, the RHD version was a simple flat panel, with a relatively crude wooden facing. The main instrument cluster was still shaped to fit the original design, but in the RHD version just slapped on the flat panel, its angled rows of warning lights canted for no clear reason. The HVAC controls were all shunted to a box shoved up under the main dashboard, even though the dash panel sure looked like it would have had room for them. Even worse, the Pacer only had one side mirror that could be adjusted via a little joystick on the door, and that mirror and joystick were now uselessly on the passenger’s side, leaving the driver to have to roll down the window and adjust the mirror with a hand, like some sort of filthy animal.
Oh, and the windshield wiper orientation wasn’t flipped for RHD also, so there’s nice big un-wiped areas on the driver’s side glass. Bang up job, fellas.
As if all of this half-assery and phoning-it-in weren’t enough, there’s a huge, wonderful cherry for this shit sundae, and it has to with how AMC advertised the Pacer for the UK. AMC had designed and printed many, many glossy, full-color brochures for the Pacer in America. So what would be the least-effort way to adapt this to the British market? Maybe, say, they could have just flipped the photo negatives and re-touched where there was backwards text, and maybe added some ‘u’s to words like favourite or colour and added in proper UK pricing and metric units then re-printed the brochures? That’s the minimum, isn’t it?
Oh, girl, no no no. You have no idea. They did this:
Remarkably the AMC Pacer was on sale for a time in the UK with a rather rudimentary RHD conversion. Sadly British buyers didn't get their own brochure, but a special sticker was made for the cover of the US-market publication. #carbrochure #AMC pic.twitter.com/ghZSZfLa3D
— Car Brochure Addict (@addict_car) December 8, 2019
See that? Look closer:
A sticker. That’s it! One lousy sticker, assuring buyers that what they’ll drive home before getting trapped in their garage because the car is too damn wide and they can’t open those huge doors is, in fact, an RHD car.
Every bit of this conversion for the British market was the least possible effort. It’s really incredible. I can imagine the whole process ended with some AMC executive pulling on a jacket as they walked out a door yelling fine, fine, I’m sure it’s fine, yes, sure, go ahead run it and then immediately heading on a plane to some beach, the British Market Pacer project never to be thought of again.
I’m truly humbled by the intense, beautiful example of phoning it in displayed here. This, my friends, is the standard for which we should all strive to achieve during those times when achieving is the last thing we give a shit about.
I guess we should also note that the Pacer’s driver’s side door was longer than the passenger side door to provide easier access to the back seat, a feature which was, I dunno, better or worse here? I’m assuming they didn’t switch the door design either.
You might want to re-read the second paragraph…
Churchill said, “If you’re in hell, keep going”. That pretty well describes the poor engineers given the task of converting the Pacer to RHD. Bad decision after bad decision, each almost reasonable, and no one in management had the guts to pull the plug.
“And, you have to remember that gasoline wasn’t cheap in the UK, either, probably because renaming it “petrol” was a costly undertaking….”
Gold! Just…. Gold! Nothing like an early morning laugh!
A big part of our national debt was incurred in the renaming of French to “freedom” fries.
Yeah, that was the best part!
The Peugeot 206 came in RHD, and it was mostly a normal conversion. All except for the switch for the brake lights, which for some French reason couldn’t be moved from the left hand footwell, and instead there was a bar running under the dash, from the brake pedal across the car, to engage the switch.
Ahh, French cars 🙂
new favorite fact
Not only the 206 … among the french manufacturers it was the norm to keep all the mechanic bits in the same space inside the engine compartment. I know for a fact that 307s and Megane IIs were also done with a relay bar that was linking the pedal on the right with the pumps on the left.
I still maintain it was because they were only willing to go so far in accommodating us Rosbifs 😉
“…but in the UK there’s many places with narrower roads and garages and in general cars are smaller…”
This reminds me of this hilarious scene in Oxford Blues, a 1984 film starring Rob Lowe. He brought his 1955 Ford Thunderbird along when he attended Oxford University.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KA1qlzKIls
He had the front fenders cut out to extract the Thunderbird from the narrower path…
“…Oh, and the windshield wiper orientation wasn’t flipped for RHD also…”
Why does the photo of engine bay show the wipers flipped to the right?
One of the RHD remanufacturers in Australia used the angle helical gears and rods instead of chains for RAM trucks, preserving the integrity of components in the engine bay and firewall. I couldn’t recall off my head which remanufacturers.
When I visited Australia in 1987, one item on the bucket list was visiting the American car sales centres in Sydney and Melbourne. They had wide range of North American-built vehicles from GM, Chrysler, and Ford. That included 1978 Buick LeSabre sedan (?!?). What impressed me the most was how they were able to do the excellent mirror-flip of asymmetrical dashboards without CAD, 3D printers, 3D scanners, etc. in the 1980s. I asked the specialist how they did it: “trade secret” was his reply. They sometimes sourced the components such as steering boxes from Australian manufacturers, namely GM-Holden and Ford Australia.
While in Alice Springs, I came across a very immaculate 1966 Oldsmobile 98 Regency with beautiful RHD dashboard. The owner was kind enough to explain how it was done: it involved cutting up the dashboard into smaller components then rearranging them in the proper places. The gaps were filled in with plaster of Paris, then a thin textured film was applied to the final form of Frankensteined dashboard before making a mould out of it. Then, they worked on the anchoring points behind the dashboard. It was very time-consuming work and required lot of knowledge and expertise.
“The HVAC controls were all shunted to a box shoved up under the main dashboard, even though the dash panel sure looked like it would have had room for them.”
I think that big flat dash panel might be where the steering chain is going all the way across the car, ready to saw the back off any HVAC control that doesn’t keep its head down.
> making the two rearmost spark plugs less accessible than atonal music
Genius.
My favorite bit of laziness in this whole shit lasagna is the outside mirror adjustment joystick and lack thereof on the other side. That’s not just lame, it’s insulting. It’s punishing you for being English. Maybe that was the passive aggressive manifestation of a 200-year-old grudge from a brand named American Motors? Not Former English Colony Motors.
First coffee spit-take of the day…thanks.
“It’s punishing you for being English.”
Hear hear! Being English is punishment enough!
This wasn’t the only vehicle AMC sold like this, either.
For a while, they also sold Full-Size-Jeeps (mostly SJ Cherokees) here with a similar chain-behind-dash setup to make them RHD.
I think some Jeep CJs might have had the same treatment too, although I’m not 100% sure on that one.
Later CJs we’re certainly “proper” RHD, with the brakes and steering box moved to the same side as the driver, but I’m not sure if they ever did the same for FSJs.
I’m really not a fan of these bad conversions or the lack of parts availability, so I’m much happier that my Grand Wagoneer is just a regular LHD.
Side note – I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Pacer on the road here, although I’ve seen a couple for sale on eBay. I’d LOVE to pick one up one day!
Maybe an interesting story for another time – I believe the 2000s Fiat 500 (and platform mate Ford Ka) kept their brake components on the left, even when sold in RHD countries.
I believe there was some kind of linkage under the floor.
I believe this led to a recall, because passengers were able to activate the brakes if they pressed the right area of the floor with their foot.
I hope that’s true, because it’s amazing
The RHD BMW E30 3-series also has a LH mounted brake booster with a cross car linkage.
You should see the brake AND steering set-up for the Honda Z600 that were sold in LHD markets
A friend in high school (early eighties) had a car with a spot on the passenger side floor you could press to activate the brakes. He didn’t know it was there and I didn’t tell him. He could never figure out why his car would occasionally randomly brake.
I’m thinking it must have been a Japanese make.
It was the Citroen C3 Picasso that had the issue with the passenger applying the brakes
https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/motoring/c3-brake-problems-spark-20k-recall#:~:text=Citroen%20is%20recalling%20more%20than,drive%20for%20the%20UK%20market.
No idea about the Fiat 500 being bodged that way- it might also be a bit of a hack job for RHD!
Interesting – I didn’t realise the C3 had that problem too!
I’ve managed to find some reference to it for the 500:
https://www.fiatforum.com/threads/passenger-side-brake-pedal-suprise.280197/
Didn’t even know the Pacer was sold in RHD form, and I live in an RHD market just next door to the UK.
As for the door: the first generation Mini Clubman had that silly little suicide door on the right hand side of the vehicle, irrespective of which market it was being sold, meaning if a passenger was alighting in the RHD market, it’d be into traffic. Considering Mini love to market their “Britishness”, right down to having tacky looking union jacks in their tail lights, this seems like a major half-assing.
Probably could do a phoning it in on the 914 since it was a crap car.
When the Rover SD1 was sold in left hook form as opposed to the original RHD, instead of commissioning a new dash they just inserted a HVAC vent into the dash where the original steering column used to be – centrally to the now passenger seat!
No one out-half-arses 1970’s Rover!
Well, weren’t that just “clever design”? 😉
Shouldn’t vents for your face be right in front of your face?
I also thought of Rover SD1 when I read the article.. 🙂
That’s right, clever efficient design. Instruments contained in a pod that sits on top on whichever is the drivers side, leaving passenger side with a non slip mat. Steering column or face vent through the vertical gaps. I suppose it works because of the angular fashions of the time.
I had forgot about the Pacer inside the LTD TV ad, I thought it was hilarious when it was new and it still is.
That seem like it’s a ready-made shtick for Lemons racing.
but, Pacers are fairly heavy for their size
Many years ago we had a ’68 Impala come in to rectify play in the steering. It was sold new here in New Zealand as a RHD car, however the steering box was still on the left. There was bike cog at the bottom of the truncated column and another the same on top of the steering box. These were attached by bird shit welded chains to an Austin 1800 steering rack that sat up under the dash. We couldn’t find any play in the cars steering components and after some head scratching we realised the play was actually in the transplanted steering rack. Bear in mind, this was a factory endorsed conversion completed when the car was new. Although we drive on the left here, all three of my cars will remain LHD.
Also, my 1983, Factory RHD ‘UR’ Audi Quattro had rods and levers travelling along the fire wall to the brake master cylinder that was still mounted on the LH side. As the rods and mounts flexed the brake feel would constantly change. Also, the car was only ever fitted with one heated seat. One particularly cold night I switched the seat on for the first time and mentioned to my girlfriend that I was about to have a toasty butt…nope, her’s was though – guess that got overlooked at the factory…
Wait… what was the Austin steering rack achieving if it still had the steering box?
Exactly! That’s what we couldn’t figure out. Instead of having a chain running the full width of the car the chains were short, welded to the tie rods, with the rack filling the gap. Replaced the inner rack ends and viola!, no play – well, no more than a regular ’68 Impala.
TIL they sold the Pacer across the pond, or tried to. But…why?
For the wipers, Peugeot didn’t flip them for RHD on the 206, which seems more egregious considering that actually was a car that was going to sell in volume there.
GM sold the GMT400 Suburban in Australia as a Holden, but used the dash from the RHD versions of the narrower Blazer and had to extend it to fit. But that was just 90s GM plastic anyway, the RHD Pacer is somehow more and less effort at the same time.
Inexplicably, GM didn’t bother with the perfect mirror-flip dashboard that Quigley 4×4 did for the Silverado/Sierra and Tahoe/Suburban from 1991 to 2000 (or thereabout) prior to the launch of Holden Suburban in 1998. Quigley 4×4 ceased the right-hand-drive conversion works in the early 2000s as to focus on 4×4 conversion for the vans.
https://www.quigley4x4.com/
Here are the photos of the Chevrolet Suburban with Quigley conversion:
https://car-from-uk.com/ebay/carphotos/full/ebay605394.jpg
https://car-from-uk.com/ebay/carphotos/full/ebay605399.jpg
The photos of Holden Suburban with stretched Blazer dashboard:
https://car-from-uk.com/ebay/carphotos/full/ebay147369.jpg
https://car-from-uk.com/ebay/carphotos/full/ebay147372.jpg
If you look at Holden dashboard on the left side, you can see the vertical gap at the bottom where the Blazer dashboard was stretched to the left.
I did not know that the Quigley RHD conversion existed! That makes it even more strange. What stood out to me in pics of the Holden I have seen is just how much the Blazer dash juts out for the front passenger due to the air vent, looking obviously out of place even from the outside looking in. It might look natural were it not for that.
Are we not forgetting what the British was putting out in the 70’s? This is just par for the course.
I would be tempted to agree, but if you’re falling short of the quality standard set by a Ford Cortina, things must be pretty desperate.
My thought also. A RHD Pacer might actually seem like a quality product compared to an Austin Allegro.
“making the two rearmost spark plugs less accessible than atonal music”
Hahaha.
Arnold Schoenberg walks into a bar, “I’ll have a gin please but no tonic.”
Gear and chain for steering???? Hard… fucking… pass.
I believe the huge Pacer R&D costs and lack of sales pretty much did AMC in… Basically every model thereafter was based on the Hornet platform or some other existing platform to keep costs down. I own a 1968 AMC AMX and love it. Want me a Pacer X, Gremlin X, Hornet AMX, Humpster AMX (Javelin), Sprit AMX, Matador X, Scrambler (S/C Rambler), The Machine, Eagle, Eagle Wagon, the AMC list goes on.) But, hey I am married and I guess I will settle for a single AMC. Tonight I posted a picture of my car sitting next to a 1970 Mustang, a ‘friend’ made this comment “Nice Mustangs” Story of my AMX life.
Well of all the AMCs on your list, you have the most desirable of the bunch, at least to me.
I agree the Pacer almost single-handedly killed AMC but the Matador 2dr certainly did its part to burn up a bunch of capital.
It actually didn’t. They sold just enough Pacers to recoup their costs. Even more than they were expecting the first couple years. But then everyone who wanted a Pacer, had one already. So they introduced the wagon which put the Pacer thoroughly in the black.
I’ll always wonder how the Pacer would’ve done with that GM rotary engine. I mean it might have been a complete disaster, but considering that the entire car was developed around that engine, it may not have been worse than the Frankenstein creation that AMC ended up with.
It really looks like something you’d see in a 1970s kit car, except some kit car builders actually did use some quality veneer from time to time.
Speaking of which, some high gloss walnut burl, padded faux leather, and chroming some of the plastic vents and switches could have saved the arrangement
WTF? This looks like something a bunch of stoners in 9th grade shop class would have designed.
Holy shit. And the Brits let them market and sell this piece of shit?
Sorry I forgot, it was the 1970s then and human life had no value then, right?
Then?
AMC didn’t actually do these conversions. It was the Brits themselves who thought this was acceptable.
Exactly! So many British publications have tried to throw the Pacer under the bus as an example of how “bad” Americans are at making cars, yet the things they criticise were all done by us in the UK.
So can we expect to see the next Phoning It In right after the next edition of Mercury Monday? I’m thinking April.
March 32nd
Or, and hear me out, they could have flipped the image in the topshot and not fixed the backward text. But who would do such a thing? 😉
THAT’S THE JOKE
Heh heh – I get jokes
bɘ⅃O⅃ I
I don’t read British.
Colloquially it’s a portmanteau of sticky and friction: it’s often used to describe telescopic motorcycle forks that – instead of sliding smoothly – move in small, abrupt movements.
Funnily enough, it’s also a portmanteau of the proper term static friction; this, as Torch described, is the resistance of an item currently at rest to start sliding. This is in contrast to kinetic friction, which is the friction between two objects once one starts sliding.
If you’ve ever pushed something heavy across a floor, you may have noticed that getting the object moving was more difficult than keeping it moving. This is because the coefficient of static friction tends to be higher than that of kinetic friction between the same two objects.
A. Barth, we are blessed to have you here. Just know that we all think that.
Thank you very much, David. You’re far too kind but I genuinely appreciate it.
And I’m happy to be here. 🙂
Can I coin the word ‘kiction’, or has that been done already?
i.e. “I thought we were going to slide forever on the black ice, but eventually kiction slowed us down”
You are technically correct, which is the best kind of correct.
Technically correct is the only kind of correct.
The only type of correct, is what my wife says is correct.
If you keep a running top 10 for Phoning It In, the RHD Pacer will be very hard to dislodge from it’s number one position. Keep your tires on the ground and keeping reaching for the stars, little Pacer!
Totally forgot about the LTD costume ad, pure gold!
Yes all these errors made the Pacer the equivalent of others cars of the error that had their own issues. Can we skip pointing out one cars foibles vs another’s because everything, everywhere sucked and is worse than cars made today. But given price difference give me a car from yesteryear.
Adjusted for inflation, a Pacer today would be about $25,000. If you could still buy them new, I would pick that over $25,000 worth of whatever soulless, generic crapmobile that much money would get me in a modern car.
Make mine red, with red interior, and before the heinous ’79 formal grille/power bulge update.
Even with the RHD Pacer half-assery, would it have actually have been any worse than a Morris Marina? That was such a horrible car….
A Pacer is so bloated, you would need to drop a Grand Piano.