Ownership: the LTV and Renco years

1983 – 1992

Sold by AMC: American Motors, weakening through the early 1980s, sold the subsidiary that had so often carried its results. In September 1983 — the dating is the Government Accountability Office's, from its report on the Humvee program — the LTV Corporation bought AM General, and the company became a subsidiary of LTV Aerospace and Defense. The sale preceded the Humvee's production start by a year: the contract was won under AMC and the vehicle was produced under LTV. American Motors itself was sold to Chrysler in 1987, by which time AM General had been gone from it for four years; the Jeep line that had shared AM General's parentage went with Chrysler, and the two halves of the old Kaiser-Jeep purchase never shared an owner again.

The Renco purchase: LTV's own bankruptcy-era restructurings ended in a second sale: in April 1992 the Renco Group, Ira Rennert's industrial holding company, bought AM General. Renco held the company through the Humvee's Gulf War fame, the civilian Hummer's launch, the GM brand sale, and the H2 plant's construction, and converted the corporation to a limited liability company in 2002 — the AM General LLC of the modern contracts. The ownership line continues in the modern-ownership entry below; what the Mishawaka record carries through these decades is simpler: three owners in nine years, and the plant's work unchanged by any of them.

Sources:

1. U.S. Government Accountability Office, NSIAD-84-136 (12 June 1984) — the LTV Corporation's September 1983 purchase and AM General's place under LTV Aerospace and Defense.
2. AM General reference histories — the Renco Group's April 1992 purchase; the 2002 conversion to a limited liability company.