Founded in 1971 in the United States, AM General is currently headquartered in the United States in South Bend, Indiana. The company was originally a part of Willys-Overland Motors, which was subsequently purchased by Kaiser Motors and then the American Motors Corporation in 1970. KPS Capital Partners acquired AM General in 2020, which retains ownership today.

The company is best known for developing the military vehicle known as the Humvee, on which the civilian Hummer is based. The Humvee, or High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle, is a four-wheel military truck that began to replace the jeep during the Gulf War of 1991. Each unit cost $220,000 in 2011 when up-armored, or the equivalent of nearly $260,000 in current value. Today, AM General focuses on a combination of government and military contracts, along with some commercial vehicle lines. In the last two decades, it has been tasked with creating purpose-built taxi cabs, assembling the electric drivetrain for the Ford Transit Connect vehicles, and acting as the assembler for the Vehicle Production Group. Its Mishawaka assembly plant also served as the site for the production of the Mercedes-Benz R-Class, which ceased production in 2017.

More recently, AM General was one of the front runners to manufacture the United States Postal Service's Next Generation Vehicle, but ultimately, it was not chosen. The USPS has widely used its Jeep DJ-5 series since the 1970s; the DJ-5 series consists of right-hand drive mail delivery vehicles built explicitly for postal services.