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The Pacer was a different car with the same obsolete mechanicals under the skin. The Gremlin had that truncated rear end that didn't do much for its styling, but not terribly worse than one of the competition, the Ford Pinto.
Years ago I worked on an AMC Hornet, of indeterminate vintage, 70-something, another last-gasp AMC product before they went under. Very similar under the skin to the Gremlin. Re-did an engine job that someone else botched. By that time, AMC was sourcing many mechanical components from other major companies. IIRC, the smallest engine available in the Gremlin was a four made by Audi (also not a very good product at that time). You could get a wide variety of engines in the Gremlin, up to their 401 cu. in. hot rod version. Most of them were AMC's own. Their 304 V-8 was a very good engine. 3 and 4 speed manuals were Borg-Warner; in the automatics, also Borg-Warner (T-35) and later Chrysler Torque-Flite. Carburetors were Motorcraft (Ford), also some ignition parts. AMC also made Jeep and same deal. I drove a bro. in law's Commando across a couple of states; it had a Buick V-6 and a Chrysler Torque-Flite transmission. Rough-ridin' son-of-gun. It would shake the urine right out of you, have to stop every 50 miles, guaranteed.
You know how the auto makers, even now, have emblematic devices to represent their brands and models? Like Ford has the blue oval, Cadillac has the crest (as many used some kind of over the years), Chevy has used the Bow Tie for decades, etc. Similarly, many specific models have a definitive emblem, like Mercury Marquis used to have a bogus crest that we swore was a direct take-off from a Seagram's 7 Christmas gift box. Well, the Gremlin had this strictly goofy little image of a Gremlin. I guess if you are gonna pick a goofy name for a car, you might as well pick a goofy emblem. Ditto the AMC (not Hudson) Hornet, which had a stupid little bug for a plastic emblem. At that, they could've called the car an Amber and given customers an ancient, real bug embedded it Baltic amber.
Oh, under the hood those poor Gremlins, Hornets, Spirits, Concords, Eagles, etc, with the AMC inline sixes were a deja vu of what the company had made 20 years earlier. The Borg-Warner 35 transmission was a design that had been in use since the late 1940's. Leaf springs in the rear, another old design. The list could go on. Basically, AMC was trying to beat the competition to the market with a compact car of this sort, so they simply chopped the back off of a Hornet. The shortening of the car while retaining (in most of them) the same old heavy six cylinder engine out front resulted in a choppy ride.
Richard A. Teague was the chief designer of the Gremlin, along with the Hornet, the Pacer, the Matador coupe (remember that bug-eyed creature?), the Javelin, and the AMX. He had kind of a history of jumping aboard sinking corporate ships. His brief at AMC was to design things that stood out from the pack and to do it within severe budgetary restraints.
Gremlins are kind of hot merchandise with certain hot rod enthusiasts now; they like to convert them into dragsters. Real "Funny Cars," I'd think.
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...for a lowly E3 it was my only mode of transportation-it served me well thru the years(it cost me $2000 brand new in '73)....and gas was paid for 'cause I was the only fella with a car that did the "I FLY-U BUY" for fast food etc off base... 
