Last month I took a large figure-eight roadtrip involving going to Minnesota and back home and then continuing (after one day’s rest) to the West Coast without backtracking on any single road. At the tail end of the first portion I found myself in Murdo, South Dakota for an overnight. Wanting to get back on the road for the leg home, I woke up early and put my bag in the car. While yawning, stretching and turning around I glimpsed something perhaps CC worthy, and a slightly closer look revealed a For Sale sign. Eureka!
While the price seems shockingly high for an 39-year old AMC, it certainly did come across as being in excellent condition. But wait, there’s more! What’s this about a hearse?
Here’s the business end. Oh, so late 70’s, early 80’s with those exposed hinges but large, almost oversize, tail lights and a huge bumper extrusion with plastic or rubber end caps. The rear-most side window almost looks like it’s too small for the space it occupies, as is AMC was trying to save money on glass or something – along with saving money on everything else.
The publicity shot of a Concord Limited Wagon shows a nice little applique or painted area around the rear window that solves that problem, I suppose I am not the first person to have pointed that out. The whole car looks pretty good here, actually.
Here’s a slightly better view of the back and the license plate area pronouncing it as being part of the U.S. Government Department of Indian Affairs. Did such cars really not get actual license plates? Or is it just this one since the plates were removed? How else would one identify such a car should the need present itself? Then again, how many hearing-aid beige 1980 Concord Wagons really were/are running around?
It looks almost factory fresh in here. It’s easy to look at an old car like some of the ones we feature (especially one from Eugene without door panels etc.) and wonder how they were ever sold as new, but looking at this I can see how someone might, well, not “fall in love” with it, but could be persuaded to take it for a test drive and then maybe home for the night and then perhaps sign the big check. Maybe. It certainly doesn’t look like it got much use.
I’m pretty sure the first digit on the odometer is a 3 and it doesn’t look to have rolled over so yeah, 39,000 miles seems believable. That’s about the sparsest instrument cluster I’ve seen in some time but the car does have air conditioning so it’s not completely bare bones.
I leaned over the backseat to get that shot as the one glaring defect the car had was that the driver’s door didn’t open from the outside, the latch just pulled out and stayed out without unlatching anything. Hence I was not able to get an engine shot as I mistakenly assumed the release would be on the left side as opposed to the right side of the column.
I believe the only two engines for 1980 were the Iron Duke, sourced from GM, and the 258 AMC I-6. My money’s on the Iron Duke being under the hood, it being a gummint car but who knows, it’s got A/C after all.
If this really is some kind of hearse, well, here’s where the action is. No rear seat, but a bolted in platform covering the rear area. And a space blanket on top, not sure of the point of that, but I suppose it’s period correct. It seems kind of short for anybody (or, more properly, any body) to stretch out back there but what do I know.
If you’ve ever had a hankering for a Concord wagon, this one’s about as good as it gets. It’s owned by the proprietress of the motel even though the ad says to call Dave. My guess is that the price is negotiable but then again, maybe they know what they’ve got.
Hearse? Maybe for short people?
Odd, but interesting!
I suppose there were at least two of them equipped as hearses… as hard as that is to believe:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/cc-for-sale-1979-amc-concord-bureau-of-indian-affairs-hearse-the-most-modest-hearse-ever/
and it’s not the same car, since that one was blue. But the last comment in that earlier article has a picture of this particular car (I assume)… for sale in 2016.
It’s odd how both still have the “For Official Use Only” decals still attached. Well, not that anyone would try to impersonate a federal undertaker while driving a 40-year-old wagon, I suppose.
I’d really love to know just how AMC got to supply the Bureau of Indian Affairs with hearses. The whole thing seems very odd, and very intriguing.
The “For Official Use Only” labels mean that the car can’t be used for an employee to, say, go run a personal errand. Working for a government contractor I can tell you the federal government is very particular about what their property is used for.
If, for example, the government agrees to pay for an oscilloscope for a government program we were contracted for, that oscilloscope can only be used for that program. Even if another guy in the lab, working on something else, needs an oscilloscope, and no one is using that one, he’s not allowed to borrow it. That would be misuse of government property.
§ 102-34.225 If an employee willfully uses, or authorizes the use of, a Government motor vehicle for other than official purposes, the employee is subject to suspension of at least one month or, up to and including, removal by the head of the agency (31 U.S.C. 1349).
Yes, the minimum punishment is a 30-day suspension. This is law, not regulation and therefore cannot be reduced by management.
Wow! I usually check the archives but didn’t bother this time, what are the odds. And both are South Dakota based. Looks like the market values have increased over the last six years. Or at least the asking prices…. Other than the color it’s identical, the rear platform etc. Just wild.. You could have his and hers…
Sen. William Proxmire, D/Wisconsin is probably how. He was able to get AMC classified as a ‘Small Business’ (it was, compared to GM and Ford). As such, AMC was given preference in bidding for government contracts. It was the reason AMC dabbled in transit buses (many were purchased with Fed. funds) and was a major manufacturer of military trucks. The military truck business came with the purchase of Jeep from Kaiser, and AMC was able to profit from it significantly in the 70’s. Funny to think AMC built trucks like the M54 5 ton 6X6!
It is called procurement. The BIA (like most agencies) put out a request for x amount of cars/trucks at this price per vehicle and goes with the lowest bidder. Unlike a lot of folks in the USA think, Govt agencies are not buying fleets of super expensive cars an trucks. They really want the cheapest vehicles possible. This meant back in the old days, that most agencies got stripper cars with almost no extra niceties. So you could be the poor b*stard driving the 1972 Dodge Dart with manual steering and no AC in the middle of Texas.
So most likely the BIA put out a request and AMC was the lowest bidder.
Now Uncle Sam is still frugal but, no longer are folks going to suffer with no A/C in a car. I worked at USDA back in early 2007 and helped a coworker pick up two new Chevy Trailblazers for one of the regional offices. We picked them up at the dealership. To my surprise they were 2 2006 Trailblazer SS models with the 6.0L V8. It seemed some entity ordered 2 from the factory specially made and then declared bankruptcy and GM got stuck with them. USDA got them for far far less then a base Trailblazer because GM wanted rid of them and offered a great price to USDA.
At my current job, our motor pool has a eclectic fleet of cars. Several Fusions,Impalas, Caravans, Sonata Hybrids and a sad looking 2005 Crown Vic with a tire that cannot keep air in it(I suspect a bad rim)
The license plate on that AMC is long obsolete. All government vehicles use a GSA plate so nobody is going to mistake a driver of an almost 40 year old car with old BIA plates of being a employee of BIA
At my last job, we serviced quite a few GSA cars. Was always fun to call in to Wright Express for authorization. They had mostly Fusion hybrids, Sonata hybrids, and Grand Caravan value packages. A few Focus SEs too. They had begun cycling out the Impala Limiteds for Taurus SEs throughout 2018. The one guy that complained for ages about having to inspect orchards in a Fusion Hybrid finally got his wish and ended up in a new CUSW Cherokee with steelies, and promptly had us install some A/T tires (Firestones, IIRC) at less than 10k miles. He was happy as could be.
Not all government vehicles use GSA tags. Depends on whether the agency uses GSA to manage their fleet or still manages their won. For example, the Army manages many (but not all) of their own non-tactical fleet vehicles. They issue their own US Army tag. Almost all NAF (non-appropriate fund) activities manage their own fleets and use their own tags. Not sure what the BIA does, but they might not have been a GSA customer when this Concord was tagged.
Back when Concords were new, my MP station was issued an even dozen of these for patrol cars. Big improvement on the handful of Mavericks we still had. While we were glad to turn the Mavericks in, my patrolman were not as happy when we also had to give up a few of the older and larger Plymouths still in the patrol fleet.
The Postal Service doesn’t use tags at all. They are an independent, non-appropriated fund agency.
Technically, no U.S. government vehicle needs to have a registration tag, since they belong to the Sovereign. One of the many interesting legal facets we inherited from the United Kingdom. The U.K. Royal Family does not have to have driver’s licenses or vehicle registrations. Although I believe Prince Charles has what amounts to vanity plates on at least one of his vehicles…
The more you know…
Well yes and no
On the delivery vehicles that deliver mail, there are no plates because there are several places on the vehicle with a number to denote which is which. Plus it says USPS on the thing so it is easy to identify.
By contrast the unmarked cars that USPS uses (for the inspector general and regional management) do have the a GSA plate.
And since Rob mentioned it, US Army license plates bring up another historical oddity.
Most federal agency/department license plates have a letter prefix that corresponds to the agency itself. Therefore, C = Commerce, I = Interior, SI = Smithsonian Institution, N = Navy, etc.
But the Army’s license plates start with “W.” Turns out the W stands for War… the Army’s license plate prefix was never changed after the War Department was renamed in 1947.
Would it have a GSA plate even if it operated solely within a reservation? That was my first thought when I saw that plate.
Great find. The price is very optimistic for the seller. When a Concord appears this stripped, it would probably look better as a Hornet. With round headlights and a simple grille. The Concord nose, taillights and bumpers looking out of place on a car, many would otherwise guess as a base Hornet from 50 feet. Also, given the typical Concord was better equipped.
Calling this a ‘hearse’ sounds like typical government nomenclature for a vehicle otherwise used mostly just for cargo transport. Plus, calling it a hearse means that, in a pinch, that’s exactly that it could be used for, albeit with the coffin sticking about a third of the way out the back hatch. Or, sadly, maybe this is something of a commentary on the mortality rate of Native American children at the time.
It’s worth mentioning that AMC products were used extensively by the federal government and, by the end of AMC’s life, it’s not like there were a lot of vehicles that could be used/modified for hearse duty. So, a strippo Concord with a platform in place of the back seat it was.
My guess is that this was more of a coroner’s wagon than what we would typically think of as a hearse — a vehicle to haul a body to the morgue, probably simply wrapped in a body bag, not an actual coffin.
When, in the course of my employment, I had to visit the Cook County morgue back in the late 2000s, the vehicle of choice for the body transporters seemed to be far and away a Ford Freestar or Windstar. So, if you’ve ever said you wouldn’t be caught dead in one of those, and happen to live in the Chicago metro area, I might have some bad news for you.
I think you guys have nailed it. ‘Hearse’ sounds better than ‘body transporter’ for the morgue.
Still, a Concord (aka Hornet Sportabout) seems like an odd choice, even with the rear seat removed and a platform installed. I can only guess this was some kind of Rube Goldberg solution where AMC underbid the Big 3, got the contract, and the yahoos that wrote it weren’t real specific on the required dimensions. I can only imagine the cussing done by whomever drew the short straw and had to go out to retrieve a body in this.
I mean, sure they could jam a body in a bag back there, but they’d first have to get it over the taillight panel, and then it would have to be folded a bit to get the hatch closed.
I was just reading the other AMC “hearse” that was linked to in the second comment. Someone in that thread pointed out something I hadn’t thought of. These cars were probably purchased right after the second fuel crisis. It seems like an odd choice today but back then it was probably seen as a more fuel efficient alternative to a truck, van, or full sized wagon.
$6,950?!!! Crack pipe (Nice Price or Crack Pipe is a daily article in Jalopnik, Paul, where the price of a used vehicle that is advertised online is polled by readers as being a Nice Price or a Crack Pipe. However, if you feel the need to delete this again, please be my guest)
I’ve *always* thought the side windows between the C and D pillars was the only real styling misstep on these cars. Not awful, but just a miss.
Wow, I had never really noticed the slightly undersized rear side windows before. I cannot un-see them now.
Yeah, what JPC said.
The black paint on the rear window area between the C and D pillar on the Concord Limited wagon in the brochure photo really helps smooth out and modernize the look.
If I recall correctly, Ford did something similar to the upper, exterior door panels and rear quarter panels on certain Mustang IIs and Pintos of the late-’70s to give the illusion of greater window area / modernity.
Once again, let us be reminded “rare” does NOT mean valuable!
That instrument cluster looks sparse because of how it’s laid out, but the actual amount of instrumentation is pretty typical for an American car of that time. It’s got an actual temperature gauge, which is more than some cars had. My 1988 Buick had a big old horizontal strip speedometer taking up most of the space, a fuel gauge, and warning lights for everything else.
Had one of these when it was called the Hornet sport wagon, 70s somewhere.
same color!
It had been driven from CA to NY by an Australian tourist needing a car to get across the country.
Had an 8-track player in it and he left a whole batch of tapes in the car.
Jim Croce’s was memorable.
Jim Croce was memorable. Younger viewers, look him up. Modern radio has forgotten him.
There was a PBS documentary on Jim Croce a while back. He was one of the brighter musical spots to come out of the seventies and quite sad the way he died in a plane crash.
By the time this car rolled off the lines, AMC was pretty much making cars largely for gubmint and local utilities. Dad, who worked for Southern Bell, was very proud at one point to have a lend of an AMC Matador. There were regulations at Southern Bell (from what I dimly recall) that a third of the fleet had to be GM, a third had to be Ford, and a third AMC.
What was with that beige in the late ’70’s-very early ’80’s? If the fifty shades of grey aren’t attractive now, these weird body fluid/body parts colours from the ’70’s were far worse. I remember this colour being inexplicably popular at that time, despite it being a wildly unattractive colour, and for some reason when I think of a Fairmont/early Aries, this colour comes to mind first. It was available on nearly everything at some point.
To me, especially on cars with more neoclassical styling elements like the Aries with its upright grillle and C-pillar, the makers were trying to channel that pre-war off-white color, and failing miserably.
Wow-dog dish hubcaps and beige paint. It does not get more municipal than that!
2J Jamaica Beige is the color.
Had the sedan version of this Concord.
Good car.
The fact that buggy was only saleable to the “gummint” doesn’t make it rare. And yeah, good luck with that $6,950. Let us know how that works out for ya. Dreaming…dreaming is free
I can’t get behind the nearly $7K asking price, but that’s what it is, an asking price.
I love the looks of these cars; if you lose the gingerbread that makes up the Concord, the solid lines of the Hornet shine through.
That car is great but weird, as all AMC’s are. Yeah, I’m not sure that it’s long enough to be used as a hearse, but oh well. And yes, I have seen one, at a car show last year. It’s just a station wagon.
I wonder how many years AMC got out of that hubcap design. I always thought those were kind of grim looking, even by the standards of poverty caps.
Great find Jim! I must admit I do have a slight soft spot for these final AMC wagons! $6,950 is a hellavua steep asking price considering these are worth more as scrap metal. In any event, it certainly has character… somewhat eerie character considering its alleged past.
The only AMC product I’ve ever owned was a ’75 Hornet sedan that was almost the exact beige color of this wagon.
In the late 70s / early 80s there was a used car dealer in the town next to mine who delt in surplus government vehicles, mainly Volares and Chrysler B-Bodies, and they were definitely strippers. He also had a bunch of ex-Post Office Jeep Dispatchers which were (badly) re-painted in matte pastel colors for some reason. One of my classmates actually bought one.
Reading the comments questioning the size of the cargo area for “body carrying duties” prodded me to do a search. Best I could find was a ‘74 AMC wagon brochure. The Hornet wagon, basically the same thing as the Concord, had a maximum cargo length, to the front seat, of 74.60 inches. You won’t be toting a casket, but a blanketed body on a slab would fit just right. I don’t recall too many Native American NBA players, but if you had to haul one you could always prop the feet on the back of the front seat, if the need should arise; you might also be careful when slamming shut the hatch.
Yes, this car would be adequate for most coroner duties.
I owned this car its pretty nice!