This almost never happens in the auto industry, but American Motors pulled it off. For the 1958 model year, the automaker returned to production with a car it had discontinued back in 1955.

George Romney, the chairman and president of American Motors from 1954 to 1962, was a Detroit automobile man through and through, but he had his own ideas about the car business. (Americans probably know him best today as the father of U.S. senator and presidential candidate Mitt Romney.) When the Motor City was headed off in one direction, Romney was typically headed off in the other. He liked to call the big Detroit cars of the era “gas-guzzling dinosaurs,” always insisting that what many Americans really wanted was a “smart, economical, compact car,” as in the print ad above.

As the head of American Motors, Romney phased out the Hudson and Nash names, which had lost their luster with car buyers, as he refocused the company’s efforts on the popular Rambler brand. But as the carmaker was navigating the transition, the original compact Nash Rambler model introduced in 1950 (see our feature here) was discontinued in 1955. That left a sizable gap in the American Motors product line between the tiny Metropolitan and the mid-sized, 108-inch-wheelbase Ramblers. And that gap became even more apparent as the U.S. economy began to slow down in 1957, triggering the nation’s first true recession since the end of World War II.

To plug that gap, Romney and his able lieutenant Roy D. Chapin Jr. performed a maneuver that has seldom been seen in the auto industry, before or since. They dusted off all the dies and tooling for the old Nash Rambler, cranked up the production line again, and sent it back into the showrooms, now rebadged as the Rambler American to distinguish it from the standard, mid-sized Ramblers.

With a few mild styling updates, including a new grille, opened-up rear wheel arches, and a flattened roof crown, the Rambler American was the very same car that had been discontinued back in ’55. Same 100-inch wheelbase, same unit construction, same 195.6 cubic-inch flathead six with 90 hp. (See our feature on the trusy AMC L-head 6 here.) To keep things simple for the relaunch, a single basic body style was offered in ’58, a two-door post sedan.

In article for Car Life magazine in April of 1958, entitled “Now it’s Our Turn,” Romney spelled out his reasoning behind the reborn Rambler American. He wrote, “Let’s build an automobile for the American people that appeals as much to their native intelligence as to their ego.” Romney’s timing was perfect. While U.S. auto sales tumbled more than 30 percent in 1958, American Motors actually surged ahead with its economical pricing and messaging, and the company recorded its first annual profit since the Nash-Hudson merger of 1954.

In its first half-year back in production, the compact Rambler American racked up more than 30,000 sales, and the model was a popular mainstay of the AMC lineup through 1969. Romney stepped down from American Motors in 1962 and served three successful terms as governor of Michigan from 1963 to 1969.