ACM Rivera (1948)
1948 was a good year for ACM, not only presented the ACM-35 Volcán, but also included in it’s line-up the Rivera, a car designed to compite with the Chevy style-master and some of the Ford’s cars. It had 2 trims, simply reffered as “coupé” and “sedán”. The Rivera was build upon a ladder galvanized steel chassis, with double wishbones at front and a solid axle leaf at the rear, with a steel body. No new engine was designed for this model, using the same engines of the ACM-22 and ACM-35 in a longitudinal configuration.
The Coupe versión looked a little bit like a VW sedán, but way larger and
prettier. The heart was the very reliable inline 4 cylinder of the ACM-22, a second muffler was added to reduce the cabin noise, and it added 1 ft-lb of torque. It featured a manual 3 speed gearbox with an estimated top speed of 142 km/h (
88 mph). The wheels were 135/100R14 equiped with 275mm drum brakes front and rear.
Interiorwise, it had 4 seats (being a coupe, the accesibility of the rear seats was difficult) with cloth-padded seats similar to the ones in the ACM-35
Volcán, an single speaker AM radio, which was helpful in long rides. One weird thing, the car has
no rear sway bar, but still was pretty comfortable and quite ease to drive. With a weight of 1074 kg, it managed to get 8.12km/l (
23 mpg). Market price: $10,605 ($1,079 in 1948). Even tho was destined to conmmute and family markets, due to the lack of national cars,
the Rivera Coupé was pretty good selled in different markets as well.
The sedán version, on the other hand was more expensive; market price: $12,744 ($1,296 in 1948) and it looked quite different, it was sustancially bigger than the coupé. It had a larger trunk and could fit quite comfortably up to 5 people, and it had suicidal doors, it looks very sofisticaded. As that, it was heavier as well, it weighted 1275.7 kg, so, it need a *larger *engine to move it around nicely. Under the hood was the inline 6 3.5L engine found in the ACM-35, with double muffler, so you can listen to its radio easily. Other than that, and the rear sway bar, the car was pretty much the same as the coupé, the same dashboard, the same seats… well, except for the fuel economy, this trim got 6.58 km/l (18.5 mpg). And as the coupé, it was sold quite nicely in different markets.