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Just off Sunset Boulevard, parked next to the Directors Guild - this seems to be a 1958 Rambler American in original condition. The paint is new but the color scheme is correct. American Motors Corporation (AMC) made Ramblers from 1958 to 1969. The American was their second try - a Rambler compact had been sold under the Nash and Hudson Motors name in 1954 and 1955. But this was all new for 1958, or at least the body style was. They produced this for two years before making something bigger and far different as a Rambler American.
You can credit this first generation to the company president, George W. Romney, and the Eisenhower Recession of 1958. People suddenly wanted smaller cars, or so the thinking went. It was available only as a two-door sedan 1958, but they moved 30,640 of them. In 1959 they sold 91,491 units, having added a two-door station wagon. In 1960, they added a four-door sedan and hit 120,603 units. Then they changed it all. The recession was over.
George Romney resigned to become governor of Michigan, and the company reversed course and tried to turn itself into a full-line imitation of the Big Three. That didn't work out and by the late seventies they were looking for a partner to bail them out - and that would be France's Renault in 1979. The arrangement lasted until March 1987, when American Motors was purchased by the Chrysler Corporation, and they discontinued the use of the AMC and Renault brand names in the United States. The Jeep line was continued. The Rambler American was no more.
But there's one in Hollywood.
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