AM General
Having been founded during the centralization process of the American military-industrial complex, the corporation AM General was the head manufacturer of a wide standardized vehicles range for the U.S. armed forces and many world countries. It considers the firm Overland to be its ancestor, which became the base of the company WillysOverland at the beginning of the XX century. After the war it joined the Kaiser Jeep group, which in 1964 at the plant Studebaker in South Bend arranged the army truck production of the 2.5- and 5-ton classes, made earlier by different USA firms. In 1967 there was formed Defense and Government Products Division.
In winter 1970, when the firm Kaiser Jeep was acquired by American Motors Corporation, it turned into General Products Division, and since April 1971 it got the status of the company AM General. The abbreviation AM specified the formal owner – the concern American Motors-, though AM General, fulfilling mainly state defense orders, was in fact a separate corporate entity. Thus practically all the range of standardized military vehicles turned out to be at the disposal of AM General. In 1985 AM General started mass production of its most famous automobile Hummer. Since the end of 90-ies the main care of the company has been the “hummers’ serial production, and also the earlier made trucks reconstruction.
The teeming activity of the company AM General, having become the American monopolist in the military vehicles sphere during the 80-ies, had always attracted the attention of corporate giants. On the 20th of September in 1983 the firm AM General was bought by the airspace company LTV, and after its bankruptcy since April 1992 AM General has been a member of the steel Renco Group. In the 90-ies the company AM General got the status of a corporation (AM General Corporation< AMG). The abbreviation AM now has an impersonal meaning; the word Automotive (automobile) is encoded in it, therefore the company’s full name can be interpreted in two ways – “Automotive Corporation of General Purpose Products” or “General Automobile Corporation”.
