Since we’ve already started the week with a fine Rambler American CC by longrooffan, and I have some others by that compelling dead brand just dying to be released, we shall call it AMC Week! That doesn’t preclude other intrusions into the All-American fun fest, but that will be the focus. Of course, that will make finding good Clues that much harder. There’s always something that has to be sacrificed.
One AMC car we won’t be finding on the street is this handsome AMX/2 concept by AMC’s Dick Teague, from 1969-1970. Everyone in those yeas had to prove their mettle by showing a mid-engined prototype, once the Lamborghini Miura popularized that format.
YAY!!
A few years back there was a guy making replica panels for the AMX/2, you could technically build your own but it wouldn’t be street legal and it would be a “pushmobile” though.
This should be good.
Birddog, I thought it was AMX/3 bodies that were being reproduced. A small number of running AMX/3 cars were built before AMC pulled the plug on the project. I don’t see any reason why one of these repop bodies could not be put on a custom chassis and licensed as a kit car.
Follow this link to the site where you can find repop fiberglass AMX/3 bodies.
http://www.amx390.com/
You’re right, I confused the two. That would be cool to pop onto an older Vette chassis.
AMC, woulda, shoulda, coulda…
Actually I always liked the AMCs which stayed “on mission” of efficient transportation + affordable family cars crossed with the occasional crazy idea like a Gremlin with a V8.
As you can tell by my avatar, I have a soft spot for AMC’s, although I have never owned one. I’d passed up several in the 80’s and 90’s when my kids were little and money very tight. I’d still like to get a nice Javelin and drop a LS motor into it, even a clean Hornet hatchback would do the trick, but it seems that every d*mned thing has gone up in value. I’ll wait a little while longer and see what shakes out…
Hit me with good stuff, Paul!
Sigh…. I have owned several vehicles with AMC drivetrains, but never an actual AMC. The first was a Jeep DJ5 with a transmission that failed right after I sold it. The next was my beloved IHC 1100 pickup with a 401 V8 that spontaneously self destructed one day on the highway. The next was a Jeep Wagoneer with a nasty old 360 V8 that smoked and leaked so much it would kill you if you idled to long. So, my feelings towards AMC might be a bit skewed by these experiences.
This guy is so happy to hear this:
Holy cow, that AMX\2 is simply stunning! Beautiful.
AMC was indeed a curious car company, always forced to do everything on the cheap. If only they had the capital, I believe their cars would’ve leap-frogged Chrysler in quality and durability, as Chrysler seemingly chose to do things on the cheap and their legacy appears to prove it.
In the late 1970’s, when an independent shop owner, master-mechanic friend who drove only Chrysler products suggested an AMC product when my mom needed a new car in 1979, that explains everything.
They had the capital, or at least some; inevitably, they wasted it.
In the 1960s, it was chasing the GM Land-Barge market…after having great (for them) success with “compacts,” Abernathy thought he was the next William Durant.
Then there was the Kaiser Jeep switch-a-roo…not unlike the Stude-Packard blender-sauce. Henry Kaiser still desperately wanted to own a functioning car company, having basically failed to create one…first he bought Willys, which then failed in its attempt to re-enter the passenger-car segment; and then he began buying stock in the new American Motors.
Kaiser Industries owned a sizeable share (don’t remember the percentage) by 1967, the time of Henry’s death. And it was they, not AMC, who were hot for the merger/purchase…first Henry’s appetite; and then the impending new safety standards.
I think the evidence shows that the purchase, as originally conceived by Kaiser forces, was to have been for AMC to become a Kaiser Industries property. Only Henry Kaiser’s death and the subsequent dissolution of the Kaiser conglomerate, kept AMC independent – as Kaiser slowly sold its AMC stock at market prices.
And only goofy luck, of the sort AMC had more than its share, had the Jeep take off as a recreational vehicle – something inconceiveable six years earlier.
Had AMC carefully marshalled their capital, and not gone off willy-nilly buying Jeep and crafting a car for a radical new motor supplied by others….they might have been able to keep up; at least purchase licensing for manufacture for a European front-wheel-drive design.
And Teague could have put his weird designs on such chassis.
Sadly, there is probably a 0% chance of a CC for The Machine.
Maybe one for the Rebel is possible?