[AMC-List] Car Craft Rambler - inside scoop!

["Mike Kindle" <mike90066@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I got to talk to Douglas Glad today.  He's the Car Craft editor who is 
building the 67 Rambler that you may have seen recently in the magazine.  He 
talked about the difficulty of doing a Rambler.  Because of the smaller 
following, he can't put it on the cover, and after all the work that goes in 
he only gets a few articles out of it.

And apparently he's been getting a lot of grief from some AMCers criticizing 
how he chose to build the AMC engine.  He did a bunch of tests with 
different combinations of aftermarket parts so that anyone out there could 
benefit from the dyno knowledge of different combinations, and mostly he got 
back complaints that he spent too much and his connecting rods were the 
crime of the century and he should have done things differently etc.

I told him that being a diminishing minority, AMCers can feel threatened and 
get panicky and lose the big picture, and for every critical comment he 
should assume ten times that in quiet approval.  Still if he had to do it 
over again, I don't think he would.  And it's his car!

But he did say that he thinks the coverage it has been getting in the 
magazine, with a circulation of 2 million, is having an upward effect on the 
value of Rambler Americans that he's noticed on ebay, and if you're going to 
sell one now is the time to do it.  He said the same thing happened when 
they focused on 3rd Gen Cameros (whatever that is).

So I think everyone on the list should send an email to Car Craft, or post 
something on the forum for the project under "project cars" at carcraft.com, 
thanking them for paying attention to AMC's and encouraging them to 
continue.  I used to think that working at a car magazine would be the 
coolest job ever, but after talking to him, I don't know.

Inside scoop?  Well, I guess I can say he is planning to see once and for 
all how big a tire and wheel combination you can fit in the American, while 
showing for the benefit of all how to measure for this on any car.  I think 
215/75-14 on the back and 185/75-14 on the front.  We'll see what the 
magazine comes up with.

Mike Kindle


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