American Motors Corporation (AMC; sometimes referred to as American Motors) was an American automobile manufacturing company formed by the  merger  of  Nash-Kelvinator Corporation and Hudson Motor Car Company on 1 May 1954. At the time, it was the largest corporate merger in U.S. history. AMC’s most-similar competitors were those automakers who held similar annual sales such as Studebaker, Packard, Kaiser and Willys-Overland. AMC’s largest competitors were Ford, General Motors and Chrysler. After periods of intermittent but unsustained success,  Renault  acquired a major interest in AMC in 1979, and the company was ultimately acquired by Chrysler.