More on the automakers’ involvement in the New York World’s Fair, and where was AMC in the whole thing?

Along with the various displays and pavilions at the 1964-1965 New York World’s Fair, Detroit’s automakers had a significant presence in the official guide to the fair in the form of full-page advertisements. Both GM and Chrysler took out double-trucks to hype up their attractions while GM and Ford took out single-page ads to promote specific production models.

Besides single-page ads for Chrysler production cars – which already got plenty of exposure in Chrysler’s pavilion and in the thrill show, as previously mentioned – or ads for foreign automakers, the program lacked ads for full-size cars and luxury cars. That seems to indicate that fair organizers had a pretty concrete idea of who would be attending the fair and that they shared those demographics with their advertisers and corporate partners.

So where does that leave the independents? Well, in 1964, only two independent U.S. carmakers were left, and Studebaker was in no position to spend the kind of money the Big Three were blowing on pavilions and ads. American Motors, on the other hand, apparently considered a pavilion (rejected as not cost-efficient; it considered buying the New York Times building on Times Square instead), then downsized its plans to sponsoring the fair’s Information Arches, then when negotiations for that broke down, went with a simple double-truck ad.

(By the way, apologies for the poor quality of some of these scans. We borrowed Lentinello’s copy of the world’s fair guide and didn’t exactly want to cut it up just so we could lay these pages flat on the scanner.)

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