A year ago, Millionaire Investor-Sportsman Robert B. Evans began buying up nearly $3,000,000 worth of American Motors Corp. stock figuring "what a deal it would be if I could turn that company around." Last week, reporting A.M.C.'s 1966 operations as the auto firm's principal stockholder and its chairman since June, Evans showed that American has farther than ever to turn. After a modest $5,200,000 profit in 1965, the company came out with a $12.6 million loss for the fiscal year ended in September — and in the red for the first time in nine years.
A.M.C. was particularly hard hit in the 1966 model-year slump: its U.S. auto sales were down 20% , to 272,000 cars, against an average 4% for the Big Three. Gamely, the company found reassurance in the fact that the deficit was "substantially lower than anticipated." Said President Roy Abernethy: "We've reached the bottom, from the standpoint of the current slide." Possibly — although, despite high hopes for its jazzed-up '67 models, mid-November A.M.C. sales ran 13.5% below the same period last year. Apparently trimming his own expectations a bit, Chairman Evans declared that "there is absolutely no possibility that A.M.C. might not survive."