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cfz2882

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Bringing the AMC car thread over here LOL
I have one amc car,an'84 eagle wagon-parts from other car companies can be
found on it:GM steering colum and alternator,ford starter,chrysler 904
tranny,and so forth...
In high school,in 1987,a friend had an AMC pacer-goofing off with it one
night he went off the road and rolled it(went over once,landing back on it's
wheels)Amazingly,no doubt helped by it's rounded shape,damage was minimal;
a small dent in the roof above the "A"pillar,some scratches,and a flat tire
due to grass in the bead.Friend was afraid parents would find out about the
rollover and take the car away for a while,but they never did!
 
1974 Hornet

Was my first car. My mother bought it new and handed it down to me in 1981 when I got my license. It was a lemon from the day she drove it home, by 1982 it was in the junkyard.
 
'74 hornet

a local AMC fanatic has at least 30 ramblers and AMCs-including at least 2
'74 hornets;a brown and tan one and a dark metallic green one.
 
Back around 1980, a friend and I resurrected a '61 Rambler American that had been sitting on a driveway for a couple of years after its drive shaft fell out.  The in-line six cylinder engine had been rebuilt not long before the drive shaft incident.  My friend was told by the owner that he could have the car if he could get it out of there.

 

We succeeded in replacing the drive shaft and I fondly remember the clandestine test drive around the neighborhood.  We were really proud of ourselves, and my friend had a free car!  It was a lot of fun and easy to work on.  A boxy little buzz bomb in a chalky, washed-out cream-of-celery green.

[this post was last edited: 1/29/2011-14:14]
 
There are quite a few AMC collector clubs out there. There is a large one in Houston.  While they collect AMC cars it seems their specialty is the AMX & The Javelin. 

 

Back in the mid 70's after I was done with the high price of muscle cars, I bought a used 72 Gremlin. 232cu 6 and automatic trans and not much else, not even a radio.  I think I bought it for $900.00 in 1974.  By 1976 the tops of the front fenders had rusted through and by 1978 the front floorboard on the passenger side rusted through.  But at least it was easy to work on! All it really needed in 1976 was a top overhaul on the engine which I did myself for about $80.00.  I sent the head to a machine shop for new valves, springs and grinding.  It lasted until about 1979 and then the oil pump failed while I was on the freeway and that was the end of the car.

 

Somewhere along the way I thought about buying a Pacer, but that never happened.

 

I remember a souped up version of the Rambler American painted in red white & blue paint with a 343 V8 factory installed.

It went for about $2100.00 brand new. This would have been around 1969-70. The local AMC dealer had one in the showroom.

 

A neighbor of ours had a 64' Rambler Classic4 door.  They kept it quite a number of years.  It was quite reliable.
 
AMC cars were sold here in AU till the mid 70s, they were assembled in Port Melbourne by Australian Motor Industries. AMI also assembled Standard and Triumph cars from the UK. From 1963 they assembled Toyotas too, the first Toyotas manufactured outside of Japan. (Australia was Toyota's first export market.)

The name AMC was never used here, long after Rambler became AMC in the US, we still had Rambler cars, so we had Rambler Hornets, Rambler Matadors and a very small number of Rambler Javelins and AMX. They only had a very limited range and sold in very small numbers. Although they were Australian assembled and therefore right hand drive, they still used the original steering column from the USA so the blinker was on the left and column gear shift on the right, which would have cost them a few sales.

The Hornet was probably their most popular model here since the American of the early 60s but they are very rare now. I always thought the early Hornet was a good looking car - simple and cleanly styled. Later ones with the big USA bumpers looked clumsy by comparison.

we never had Gremlins here and no Hornet wagons, and Pacers were never sold here though a green Pacer was imported for the Melbourne Motor Show when the model was new in the USA. They decided not to do that model here as different door sizes (bigger on the passenger side) were the wrong way round for Right Hand Drive Australia. That one car was sold off and it lived near me in inner suburban Melbourne till into the 1990s.

Rambler was dwindling seriously in AU through the early 70s, the last was sold in 75 or 76, Matadors I think. (?) By then AMI was assembling Toyotas in big numbers so they dropped Triumph and Rambler. Later Toyota in Japan bought out AMI and it became Toyota Australia. Toyota Australia head office is still at the old AMI site in Port Melbourne, though the factory has closed, with a new plant built nearby at Altona which assembles Camry cars.
 
A Bit of Trivia

In January 1954 Nash announced the acquisition of the Hudson Motor Car Company as a friendly merger, creating American Motors Corporation (AMC).

The car pictured is a Nash Rambler Custom Convertible Sedan. Although this is a '54 model, who can guess what famous TV character drove a car like this for a few years before the show switched to Chrysler products in the mid to late 50's? (hint..it was "super")

dirtybuck++1-30-2011-14-02-57.jpg
 
Superman?

Phillis Diller was also a spokesperson, or as she says it "SalesLady" for AMC during the early 70's.......I was only about 5 or 6 when she visited the dealership my dad worked at....

there was some joke about Why do AMC dealers sell cars so fast?......How else do they get to vacuum the rug!.....there was a record album and film strip that played in the showroom of her voice and highlighting the new cars....

does anyone remember the acquisition of Renault to AMC.....the one car I like was the Fuego Turbo, mainly the little penguin that "popped" out when you turned on the A/C.

also did anyone ever see the little Gramlins, which was actually a go-cart with a plastic body to promote the new car....the mechanics drove them in the towns parade, with their heads popped out the top....
 
AMC/Renault

i remember the renaults sold by AMC after renault bought into AMC;both the
u.s. made renault models and the french imports-i do remember the fuego
turbo with it's sophisticated turbo system that even included a fan-cooled
intercooler.I remember in 1987 looking over new renaults on display at the
mall and noticing a french built"medallion"had a bright pink battery that
said something like"La batteriet rose"on it LOL.'88 was the last year for
renault here.Around 1985-87,jeep cherokees were avalible with a renault
turbodiesel as an option but few were sold and those remaining are highly
sought after by diesel enthusists.
 
There's a mechanic in Austin, Texas who loves older Renaults. He thinks nothing of showing up here in LA at car shows with one of his cars. They're generally not pristine but nice drivers, and some are rare like his Matra D-Jet, which isn't a Renault but has a Renault power train - Matra was the first company to produce mid-engine sportscars back in the early '60s. Once he made the trip in a diesel Fuego he put together. The car itself was pretty straight but had been consigned to a salvage yard for some reason. He wanted an economical highway car so sourced a Renault diesel engine from a Winnebago and managed to install it in the Fuego. It went very well, and got something like 50 mpg on the trip.

 

The one car I wished Renault had sold through AMC dealers was the Alpine GTA. By then Renault had swallowed up Jean Redele's Alpine company in Dieppe, and some AMC dealers would have loved to put an Alpine on their showroom floor - just imagine, a really sexy car down at the AMC dealer's! The PRV V-6 engine in the Alpine was already smog-legal and being sold in Volvos and Peugeots, although de-smogging the very hot turbo version might have taken some work. In the end they decided against it, sad but true. While I couldn't have afforded a new Alpine in the '80s, had the car been sold here I would have absolutely nosed around for a good used one after awhile!

hydralique++1-30-2011-16-06-14.jpg
 
Dirtybuck . . .

Did you know that shortly after Nash bought Hudson they actually badged some Metropolitans as Hudsons? I had no idea of this until I saw one last year. It's no different from the normal Nash version (built by BMC of course), but it has a big Hudson badge in the grille and Hudson nameplates here and there. It's evidently very rare - Hudsons were big cars, and I suppose Metropolitans hardly flew off the shelves at Hudson dealerships. The Nash Rambler in your pic was considered a small car, so the Metro had a better chance down at Rambler dealerships where some customers were looking for a smaller car.

 

Another Rambler memory: When I was in elementary school in the late '60s of course I knew what cars my teachers drove. One had an unusual '63 Rambler Classic four door in a light bronze color, similar to the pic. The car was getting older by the standards of the day but she maintained it beautifully, and what made it unusual was that it was an American car with four doors, bucket seats and a console - this was something no other American company made except perhaps to very special order as they restricted bucket seats to two door cars only. Her Classic also had the Twin Stick manual overdrive transmission, with a conventional floor change for the three speed gearbox and an additional lever next to it for the overdrive. A really nice car, I hope it has survived.

[this post was last edited: 1/30/2011-16:36]

hydralique++1-30-2011-16-35-33.jpg
 
I drive my 1965 Rambler American to work every day. It's on it's 46th New Jersey winter with no garage. If it was a Nova/Falcon/Dart it would have rusted in half years ago.

AMC may have built some odd looking cars, but they had to be different, a small automaker could not compete with the big 3 by building the same thing they built.

Note that AMC never had a model that was a lemon, and never had an engine design that was less than excellent. Can you say that about any other US automaker? I don't think so. Back in the 1960s they won the Mobilgas econony run almost every year with the best gas mileage, a contest Chevy stopped entering when they got tired of coming in dead last every year. Legendary car tester Tom McCahill wrote that he never met a Rambler owner that wasn't satisfied, and that he couldn't say that about any other brand. He also found the 1967 Rebel to be the best handling mid-size car on the market.

AMC cars may have been different, but they were generally excellent cars. The 1963 Rambler Classic was the first low-priced car to have curved side glass. All AMCs have a dual master cylinder brake system starting in 1962, the only other brand to have it that year was Cadillac. The Nash Rambler / Rambler American was the first succesful compact car in the US (1950). The 1956 Rambler was the first mid-size car. The 1957 Rambler Rebel was the quickest family car built that year, less then half a second slower than the rare fuel-injected Corvette in the 1/4 mile that year. The 1941 Nash 600 was the first true unitized body on a US car. Did you know that 1902 Rambler was the 2nd mass produced car in the US? A year after Olds, and a year before Ford.

Most people that put down AMC are like religious nuts, afraid of what they don't know about or understand.

Ken D.
Driving AMCs since 1979
 
DING DING DING!!!!

Yogi and Alan! Congrats to both of you for guessing correctly.

I think Phyllis drove the Nash a bit more than Noel, but I distinctly remember Noel behind the wheel more than once.

An interesting item about these cars is you had to press down on the starter which was on the floorboard.

You both will get a box of your favorite detergent! Please don't forget to pay for it at the cashier stand on your way out. :)
 
Hudson Metropolitan

I remember my going with my sister to a consignment lot to look at a Hudson Metropolitan.  I remember thinking it had to be a rare car, since Metropolitans were commonly known as Nash products, and even those had all but vanished from the roadways by then. I have never seen another one.

 

My sister was always interested in off-beat cars.  As I recall, the Hudson was in great shape but still priced a little on the high side for the time, probably mid-late 70's, and it would have been very difficult at the time to find anybody to repair it.  Besides, she's horrible at maintaining cars and recognizing early warning signs of trouble, and would have literally driven down the value of it in short order.

 

 
 
sudsmaster wrote:
"I always thought the Chrysler Airflow was the first unit body on an American car."

*******

Well sort of, the Airflow had the frame welded to the body. The Nash 600 used what we consider today to be unibody construction. That said, the Chrysler Airflow was a very strong car.

Ken D.
 
That Rambler classic shown above is what the family down the street had. But it was a blue/green color and had bench seats and three on the column.  It was a reliable car. They had it til at least 1972 when they replaced it with a Dodge Dart.

 

Those little Metropolitans were VERY popular in the late 50's.  I have a friend who bought one years ago. It's still sitting in his garage waiting to be restored. There are two of them I see every once in awhile here in Houston at car shows. A turquoise/white one and a red/white one.

 

The original Hudsons were huge cars. My uncle had a 54' Hornet 4 door.  I swear you could fit a queen sized bed in the back seat.

 

I still think the Gremlins were pretty unreliable cars for most people.  I knew a couple of women who had them and they used to compare stories about "Where did YOUR Gremlin leave you stranded at?" I had one that ran pretty good, but the body rusted through way before its time.
 
My sister had several Gremlins throughout the 80's, so the car was already eight or so years old by that time. Though she is always known to beat a dead horse into walking an extra mile or two. She always had good luck with the Gremlins. The hardest thing to find for one is the rear window. It was a non-tempered plate glass on the hatch, and for some reason she managed to be in the wrong place at the right time which put us on the hunt for a rear glass on more that one occasion.

I remember the last time I rode in her white Gremlin. It was just getting dark and we were driving through a part of town you didn't want to get stranded in especially in the dark. Just as we went through an intersection she said "The car just died."
Just as if in a calm conversation I looked over and said "That's becuse it's on fire."
It seems when the fuel pump went out her ex didn't want to mess with changing the mechanical pump, so he just rigged an electric under the hood. It choose that particular time to short out. That was the end of her Gremlin era.
 
Had an AMC Hornet (yellow) for some years; a 6 cylinder three speed manual shift on steering column. The biggest problem with that vehicle was the vacuum wipers. The tan Ramblers looks a lot like the one my Aunt had. I was given a Metropolitan by friends and drove it for a while. Occasionally I had to get out and move the shift levers under the hood with a steel rod to get it into gear. A neighbor in Maryland had a Gremlin as his daily drive for his commute into DC. It seemed reliable. I had virtually no problems with my Yellow Hornet other than that vacuum wiper system. My Hornet A/C unit had a position on the temp selector for 'Desert Only'. I use that most of the time in Washington DC's hot and humid summers. Definitely not desert like there!
 
Gremlin . . .

By law the rear window must be tempered glass, but not laminated like a windshield. Tempered glass is stronger in some respects than ordinary glass, and has the safety advantage of breaking up into small and not overly sharp pieces, but if hit just right will break more easily than ordinary glass. Although the Gremlin has quite a few drawbacks, the first one being that it has appalling space efficiency, it was a really clever bit of design on the part of AMC and Dick Teague. Teague was the head of design at AMC for many years and quite a talented guy. AMC spent a lot of money to create the almost all new Hornet for 1970, as a replacement for the old Rambler American. This was justified because they'd always done well in the compact market against the Falcon/Coment, Valiant/Dart, and Chevy II, but it left them with no competitor for the new Pinto and Vega.

 

The Pinto and Vega were a big, big deal for the '71 model year as both were all new (aside from the Pinto's European engines), and represented a new "sub-compact" class of American car. Ford and Chevy also advertised them heavily even bofore their introduction. AMC simply didn't have the money to do another new car, and it was also questioned by many as to whether or not American companies should even try to compete with the VW Beetle - this was before the Japanese were selling much here. By cutting off the tail of the Hornet, Teague and AMC managed to create the Gremlin on a tiny budget for both design and tooling, and the kamm tail was very stylish at the time. They also had the only six-cylinder sub-compact built anywhere, and while this didn't help the fuel economy, many Americans at the time looked at four cylinder cars as devices suitable only for third-world countries and didn't mind paying a bit extra in fuel to have a six. The six also worked better with an automatic than the smaller Pinto and Vega engines. The Gremlin wasn't a big seller, but it carved out a little market niche of its' own and did OK by AMC standards.
 
Chrysler Airflow unitized body

The Chrysler Airflow is probably more appropriately termed a unitized body rather than a unibody design. It was still a first in American automobile production. As detailed in the following note, while there was a frame that was welded to the body, it was a highly modified frame, lighter than the standard automotive frame of the time. It also extended the frame rails to the outer portions of the vehicle, which allowed for a lower floor pan and lower overall height. The net effect was very similar to that of a unibody design: greater strength and stiffness of the overall vehicle for less weight. However it also led to difficulties in changing the basic shape of the Airflow, which turned out to be a drawback when the public didn't buy the somewhat amphibian look of the front end. Also, while the Chrysler engineers were confident of the strength of their design, the production side of the company added more weight to the chassis out of sheer habit. Presumably this involved extra bracing added to the undercarriage. This added weight adversely affected the car's performance, but which was still above average for vehicles of the time.


Unitized body (Airflow, 1934) — though Bill Watson wrote, “Although Chrysler hypes the Airflow as unibody [see bottom of page!], it still had a chassis frame. The frame was not as stiff as normal and the body framework was welded to the chassis to provide stiffness. The first unitbody in the design we are familiar with appeared on the 1941 Nash 600.” For what it's worth, Nash ended up as part of Chrysler later!

 

The foregoing came from the following link, which also contains a wealth of information about other Chrysler Engineering firsts and superior technology. For example, Chrysler started putting hardened valve seats in its engines in the mid-1930's, at a time when its competitors were still just grinding the valve seats into the relatively soft material of the block or head. This has enabled vintage Chrysler vehicles to transition to unleaded gas in the modern age without having to undergo an expensive valve seat upgrade process.

 

 

http://www.allpar.com/corporate/technology.html
 
Actually, the Gremlin shape was designed on a Northwest Airlines airsickness bag. Teague was coming back from a trip with an AMC engineer and they came up with the chopped tail design.

 

I remember adverts of the time comparing how much more you got in a Gremlin vs a VW Beetle at nearly the same price.

 

Speaking of AMC, on their Weather Eye ventilation system why did that have "Desert Only"? Was that for cabin air recirculation? What exactly did "Desert Only" do?
 
whirlcool wrote:
"Speaking of AMC, on their Weather Eye ventilation system why did that have "Desert Only"? Was that for cabin air recirculation? What exactly did "Desert Only" do?"

In the desert humidity is very low and there was no need to have the air conditioning compressor cycle off to defrost ice off the evaporator coil on the air conditioner. The "desert only" setting was "constant on" for the compressor. In a humid climate this setting would cause the evaporator coil to ice-over.

Ken D.

Ken D.
 
Desert Only if I am correct made the compressor run constantly, without cycling on and off....

I liked the AC in my 72 Javelin.....when you hit the gas, as in passing, the tranny would shift down and the Air would turn off, until the tranny reached 3rd gear again.......all power to the wheels.....

I also like cars like the Rebel, the had air vents on each side near your feet for cool flowing air right up your pant leg, to keep said items cool....
 
American Motors came into being on May 1st 1954 NOT January

and the company was not known as AMC until the mid 60's.Before that it was known only as American Motors....and their slogan for a few years in the 50's was Ameriocan Motors means more for Americans....PAT COFFEY
 

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