The thing with AMC, if you bought a Gremlin in the 1970's with a manual transmission, that manual transmission was a leftover from the Rambler more than a decade earlier. They seemed to have a huge inventory of parts in the parts bin. While it was thrifty to keep using stuff on hand, technology marches on and it kept them from keeping up with the imports and the big three US automakers.
I've heard the same criticism of British Leyland.