The company changed leaders from the likes of Romney, who defined the compact car segment, to that of Abernethy, "a likeable super salesman who unfortunately landed at the top as the market began to quickly change." He discounted the obvious industry trend toward youthful performance models. Even with the Big Three entering AMC's market niche, Abernethy insisted that the compact car revolution was not over and predicted the automaker would sell 550,000 units in 1964, and that the total market would increase from 2.6 to 3 million compact-sized cars. However, Abernethy presumed that customers needed more choices among those available from the Big Three with their new models in the compact car market. American Motors did not have deep resources and market power.