I worked for American Motors in the 1980's. The Pacer was universally hated as a horrible design. Then Ford comes out with the Tarus, which looked almost identical to the first Pacer and it is given huge awards and is the best selling car in America. American Motors was just 15 years too early.

Another cute AM story or two - they designed the Hummer army vehicle and could just never get it into production so they sold it. Big mistake. Then Iacocca buys AMC for $1 Billion just to get the Jeep name. The very next year Iacocca reports that Chrysler made $1 billion in Jeep profits that year. Nice return on your investment.