Insolent Green

["Mahoney, John" <JMahoney@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

In the rumbleseat of my green car,

http://ah.bfn.org/h/pierce/julyLaC1/source/14.html

everyone is welcome to a free ride.

If they disapprove where it came from,

http://ah.bfn.org/h/jm/2/source/15.html

where it could've originally been sold,

http://www.roadsidenut.com/pierce10033.jpg

http://www.roadsidenut.com/pierce1003.jpg

or where it may be headed, they can walk,

http://ah.bfn.org/h/pierce/pierce/source/21.html

http://ah.bfn.org/h/pierce/pierce/source/22.html

drive their own cars and sing their own songs,

http://snapshots.dewercs.net/archives/laughables/kermit.jpg

and ponder if "it's not that easy bein' green"
 
"But green's the color of Spring 
And green can be cool and friendly-like 
And green can be big like an ocean 
Or important like a mountain 
Or tall like a tree..." 

or if "a picture says a thousand words" indeed.

http://tinyurl.com/gwlc3

Enough said?  More than.

As April approaches and thoughts turn to Gremlin, baseball and similar spring things, I had hoped to have several AMC beginnings and ends all wrapped up in a big basket.  I thought it could be fun to recall those February and March events that made AMC and you and me what we are now.  I had wanted to take the time machine from 1899 to 1954, from 1959 to 1985, from 1971 to 2006, and to touch down on other dates during that flight.

Yet, like AMC after 1980, I'm running out of time and I haven't begun.

But then, "Project Titan" [no, not a NASA ICBM!] was a year late, too.

The dead don't tell tales, do they?  They just become more forgotten. 

Don't have time to discuss wheels either, but will repeat what some of today's designers have told me.  Bigger is not necessarily better, whether it's for performance -or- styling.  I've heard this from retirees and from youth (20- and 30-somethings), so it is not just generational thinking.  16s-17s on '60s-'70s cars seem a great compromise between the "now" and "then" --- and no one can go wrong updating "classic" wheel designs.

http://www.vintagewheelworks.com/products/wheels 

>>
some clear 6 volt mini-lights that he mounted behind the
clear bezel clock delete - hooked to the distributor somehow.
Each bulb lit according to the cylinder firing -
"Psychedelic........"
<<

Pre-Leary, pre-LSD, pre-Dead, pre-Stones, and possibly purely porthole.

Ned Nickles liked WWII planes and punched holes in the sides of his '48 Roadmaster ragtop hood, fitted eight amber lights (wired to distributor) behind to suggest a "powerful engine with flaming exhaust" and the C. W. Nash of that time (Buick General Manager Harlow Curtice) liked what he'd done (but the Buick production boss [and later GM also] Edward Ragsdale, who had "created" the hardtop convertible, said Nickles had "ruined" his car...) and ordered holes [hold the lights] added to the 1949 models only seven -months- before production began.  Back then GM -could- turn on a dime.  And turn a profit. 

The rest was history.  Everyone in the world learned what "three-holer" or "four-holer" signified (even those who knew what the crescent hole in a wooden door signified) and Buick VentiPorts (even those who don't know a grille from a "grill" know that was the proper name) then appeared, on [until 1959] and off [ha --- did you blink?] since.  Not only on Buicks,

http://tinyurl.com/zaqs2

http://tinyurl.com/m6cko        

http://tinyurl.com/fzscb

of course, 'cause Buick wasn't really the first auto make to see them.

And that's another story no one here will want, or take time, to read.

But Nash, Hudson, and AMC always knew that they'd rather have a Buick.

Over and over and over again throughout their years.  When they weren't trying be Cadillac, they were trying to have a Buick and sometimes they came curiously close.

http://www.tocmp.com/pix/Buick/images/part2/Buick70Wagon_01-or.jpg

http://mclellansautomotive.com/photos/B32541.jpg

Those were the days: GM, Ford, Chrysler, AMC and American automobiles. 

But now they're gone.  Everyone in the world must scramble to survive.

http://www.automfg.com/articles/030602.html

http://fastlane.gmblogs.com/archives/2006/03/toyota_first_ma.html#more

Pedal to the metal; rubber to the road.

Feet to the fire; future on the grill.

Everyone except AMC, apparently.

Must AMC be dead -and- dumb?