During the early-1960s, Teague's styling team began developing an entirely new concept for AMC - a sporty fastback design. Teague knew that the automaker was just not willing to spend the millions of dollars needed for all-new tooling, his design team made imaginative use of existing tooling and create spin-offs from existing products. The results were proposals for which Teague selected the names for both: the Tarpon show car and the production Marlin. Although promoting the smaller version, Teague recalled that "Abernethy had decided that instead of a 2+2 we would build a 3+3 sports-type car."