The AMC Eagle was an all-wheel drive passenger car produced by American Motors Corporation (AMC). Introduced in August of 1979 (as a 1980 model), the coupe, sedan, and wagon were based on the AMC Concord. AMC Spirit-based models joined the line in 1981. Production of the Eagle continued until December 14, 1987 as the 1988 model year.
The Eagle, revolutionary when it debuted, came about when Jeep's chief engineer, Roy Lunn, joined an AMC Concord body with a Jeep-like 4-wheel-drive driveline.
Such a vehicle was a logical step for AMC, according to then-AMC CEO Gerald C. Meyers, as a second energy crisis had hit in 1979, and sales of AMC's highly profitable truck-based Jeep line, which was not famous for good fuel mileage, plummeted, leaving AMC in a precarious financial position. Because of this, the Eagle provided a low-cost way of bridging the gap between AMC's solid and economical, but aging, passenger car line and its well-regarded, but decidedly off-road-focused, Jeep line, as the Eagle used the existing Concord (and later, Spirit) automobile platform.
A first in passenger cars, early Eagles came with a true full-time automatic system that operated only in permanent all-wheel drive. The Eagle's central differential was single-speed (no low range option) and used a thick viscous fluid coupling for quiet and smooth transfer of power to the axle with the greatest traction, on wet or dry pavement. Similar vehicles -- Subaru Leone (1983 and a year later in the U.S.) and much later the Toyota Tercel (1983) -- only had part-time four-wheel drive systems that could not be engaged on dry pavement.
The full-time system four-wheel drive in the Audi Quattro Coupe, which also debuted in 1980 in the European market (introduced in 1982 in North America with total sales of 287 units), was a limited production model available only with a five-speed manual transmission.