Roy Abernethy (September 29, 1906, Pennsylvania – February 28, 1977, Jupiter, Florida) was an executive in the American automobile industry, serving as CEO of American Motors Corporation (AMC) from February 1962 to January 1967. Prior to his tenure at AMC, Abernethy had been with Packard Motors and Willys-Overland. Abernethy replaced George W. Romney, who resigned from AMC to become Governor of Michigan.
Background
Roy Abernethy was a native of Monterey, Pennsylvania, and his first job was caring for coal‐mine mules. He moved to Pittsburgh to become an apprentice mechanic and he also took night courses in engineering at the Carnegie Institute of Technology. He began his automotive industry career in 1926 as an apprentice mechanic at luxury automaker, Packard, earning 18 cents per hour. He then moved up establishing success in auto sales, reaching US$1,000,000 in Packard vehicles in a single year from his dealership in Hartford, Connecticut. Abernethy also held the post of vice president of sales at Willys.
Changing AMC
American Motors was formed from the merger of Nash Motors and Hudson Motor Car Company, and the company hired Abernethy in 1954. During AMC's formative years, the company struggled with costs and sales. Abernethy became vice president of sales and concentrated on building AMC's sales and distribution network. He recognized that promotion and advertising are useless without a strong dealer organization, so his first task was to convert every Hudson and Nash dealer into an AMC dealer. He then kept many of these dealers allied with AMC, thus helping to keep the corporation afloat, until AMC found its compact car niche under Romney's leadership. He was known to fly a year to make AMC synonymous with the compact car. Abernethy achieved sales successes for the company and by 1962, Rambler was number three in sales rank among all the brands of cars sold in the United States.
The "rigidly conservative" Romney resigned from running AMC in February 1962, to be elected governor of Michigan. On February 12, 1962, the AMC board of directors selected the 56-year-old Abernethy to replace Romney. This was the first time the company had separated the position of president from the chairperson of the board. Abernethy became responsible for day-to-day operations as president, while Richard E. Cross, the automaker's legal counsel and new chairman, was now called AMC's Chief Executive Officer.
Both took command of a financially strong company (working capital increased from a low of $46 million in 1957, to $103 million, and the firm eliminated all long-term debt), with sales increasing from $362 million (91,469 automobiles) in 1957, to more than $1 billion (422,273 total units) in 1960. Abernethy predicted a total of 450,000 Ramblers to be delivered for the 1962 year, despite increasing competition from the new domestic-made compact cars offered by the Big Three. However, Abernethy "was more or less given an anchor and told to swim" after taking over the automaker from Romney. He "may lack some of the eloquence of his predecessor, George Romney, who revived the company in the late 1950s, but he makes up for it with vocal volume." One of the first tasks for the small automaker was to make its capital work harder in the face of competition with the automotive giants.