The body panels on the car were made of aluminum with "a sharply sloping hood, upswept tail fins and a covered, smooth underbody for aerodynamic efficiency.

An advanced 12 square foot power sliding glass panel sunroof feature was difficult to integrate into a slender roof structure lacking A-pillar support at the front.

The interior featured four bucket seats and the retractable reel-type seatbelts were mounted in the door and fastened across the occupants to the full-length center console which was later adopted in the early 1990s to satisfy passive restraint regulations enacted by the US Department of Transportation.

[5] The car missed its intended cargo shipment from Italy and was instead put into a container on the next available ship, the passenger ocean liner SS Andrea Doria.

The car was shipped on the ocean liner SS Andrea Doria, which was involved in a collision off the coast of Massachusetts and sank, with the loss of fifty-one lives and all cargo.

Automotive designer Dick Teague, who worked for Chrysler as a stylist during the mid-1950s, was responsible for many of American Motors' vehicles and the "Norseman's resemblance to the 1965 Rambler Marlin fastback coupe, or vice versa, was uncanny.