[Amc-list] Saw a sign?

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

When the server sank and the list re-set to individual messages, maybe it was a sign of something: "Seek the AMC?"

(And when Brian N's list message appeared, it was a sign to sit down and write a serious letter.  Will do so ASAP.) 

Excuses, excuses.  Nothing new in that.  Nothing new in "time magic" either, so nothing on the "Big-Four" AMC now.

I haven't had time for AMC listing since before Christmas and don't see much AMC elsewhere, but as someone said on New Year's Eve (in the Ryman Auditorium, conveniently in Nashville...): "Once a Nash Rambler, always a Nash Rambler!" --- or something similar.  Sing out Garrison, Emily, and the band.

Of course, I see AMC in passing --- maybe more AMC than on Jock's [ink-stained] hands.  Maybe that's because I'm still looking for AMC.  A bad habit is hard to break.  I saw AMC Eagle in the 1980 "Rear View Mirror" (or rearview mirror: see a style guide) and Rambler Ambassador seen as "standing apart" in 1958 (and standing nicely unrestored now: open the trunk and doors and see --- that carpet?!), and I see Tom Jeffery seen in an eye-blink of history for the speed-reader in 2/07 HCC.  If there was more AMC, I missed it --- unless "Packard was simply the best car for the money for almost its entire corporate life" was a misstatement by an ex-AMC, now-Packard historian with hidden meaning (or words that shine brighter if not shone on Kenosha --- likewise shinier coins.  So what was Nash-Rambler-AMC then?  Merely a stepping-stone?  If a $1200-$1800 Ambassador was merely as fine a fine car as was a [$3500-$10000] Pierce-Arrow (and, if truth be told, it was a finer fine car that a
 ny but the most Senior series of fine Packards...); if a 100-mph 160-hp 6.5-liter Lycoming-powered Auburn [1260-A] phaeton was priced at only $995 in 1932 (with a "Dual Ratio" differential), how can Packard really be called "the best car for the money" in retrospect?  Maybe I'm missing much more than just seeing AMC.

I see that I'm not a "real amc'er" for not reading individual e-mails, so I will not say: "Ask the man who still owns both Packard and AMC!" but I will say: "The more words on auto history that are written (and read) the better --- after making certain they are 'fit' to be seen."   

I see that everyone saw AMC on sale in Scottsdale; does everyone see what such sales mean?  Does everyone see where the scramble for both SC/Rambler and AMX will lead?  Will Mopar muscle worth $5000 in 1970, $50,000 in 1990, and $1,000,000 in 2000, be worth $5,000,000-plus in 2010, or will it be more like a Model T?  I can't see into the future but I still can read now: 

"Some classic cars will always be valuable due to their rarity and/or exceptional history, but the recent run-up in muscle-car-era Detroit iron is clearly irrational exuberance."

(Who knew Alan Greenspan is a car guy?)

The "Truth" hurts sometimes.  So I see.

So did the Arizona Republic, evidently.

"Veteran collector-car writer and publisher Keith Martin was stripped of his media credentials and escorted off the WestWorld grounds of the Barrett-Jackson Collector Car Auction this week after he made what officials called disparaging and damaging public statements about the event.

Wednesday's ejection of Martin, well-known as the former auction commentator for Speed Channel's live coverage of Barrett-Jackson, comes after a blowup with the auction regarding recent columns and coverage in his Oregon publication, Sports Car Market, which covers collector-car auctions in the United States and Europe.

The disagreement resulted in Martin being fired as commentator by Speed and Barrett Jackson which partner in the coverage, said auction President Steve Davis.

In the latest situation, Martin was "holding court" in the Scottsdale auction's media center before dozens of media people and the auction goers, Davis said, telling them that Barrett-Jackson is rife with problems and irregularities and they should instead attend one of the competing auctions in Scottsdale and Phoenix.

"He was holding a seminar on why you should leave Barrett-Jackson," Davis said. "It came down to him advising people that you need to go to Russo and Steele and RM, and that Barrett-Jackson has, at best, just average cars."

Except, of course, AMCs: strong, good-looking, and above-average.

Until AMC starts to spin its Model 20s.  Smell something burning?

http://www.kumhotireusa.com/pressrelease.do?newsId=156

I see that I said something here (weeks before the "news-that-you-noted" was posted) in effigy.  Burning.  Man!  Once an AMC Rogue, never another Rogue.  Never again?  So call me a Rogue.  Frankly (Wright and Gehry), I see a successful vehicle.  I see what AMC, if it had survived, could be.   

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLexPnhKKQE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44lo2eILyAk   

If you see it as a new Aztek, so it stands.

AMC never saw a "tin can" as a new Gremlin.

http://world.honda.com/mechanical-illustration/large/image/large-01.jpg

http://world.honda.com/mechanical-illustration/large/image/large-07.jpg

No one knew where it (and AMC...) would end.

http://www.hondanews.com/CatID3046?mid=2007012547267&mime=JPG
http://www.hondanews.com/CatID3046?mid=2007012547290&mime=JPG

http://www.hondanews.com/CatID3046?mid=20070108022070&mime=MOV

Oh, say can you see?  Not AMC, and not me.

I recently saw a '64 Studebaker Commander sedan (actual car) onstage in a short-lived production of "Floyd and Clea Under the Western Sky" (the show was sort of a country music "Star is Born" story told in Montana; the car was sort of a Teague-type styling miracle: giving an "old girl a new dress and making her young again [which is Dick's own description what he mostly did at AMC]; it's funny that he and Brooks [Stevens] did the same sort of thing so easily; it's why they -competed- so fiercely)

http://img.theatermania.com/news/images/9594a.jpg 

and a '55 Ford Fairlane Sunliner (actual car) in the NYCO production of "Elixir" (which has been "drawn" by carriage and "corrugated" by truck 

http://tinyurl.com/2tpop7

but never --- at least AFAIK --- has been "conceptualized" by Peugeot

http://www.forum-peugeot.com/images/407elixir01.jpg
http://www.forum-peugeot.com/images/407elixir02.jpg

[looks like a nice new Gremlin; read more if you're into -all- cars...]) 

http://car.nikkei.co.jp/sp/motorshow2003_photo.cfm?i=20031022m3016m3

http://www.cartype.com/page.cfm?id=733&alph=ALL&dec=ALL

and which was fine because the show was reset in the old "Happy Days" of chrome-and-linoleum diners, computer gas pumps (which are probably -not- what many think they are if they think computers are Macs and PCs now...),

http://www.apple.com/getamac/ads/

http://www.justforfunusa.com/pumppics/t36-computer2.jpg

full of James Dean greasers, poodle skirts, and, of course, bubble gum.  Don't swallow it before your aria.  G-uurrrr-pppp.  Goog.

http://www.playbillarts.com/news/article/5379.html  

Old AMC cars could have been seen on either stage.

They weren't.  Then that's neither here nor there. 

I recently saw an Audi (if you see a Rambler as an AMC, that's what an Auto Union is to me) in a Big Apple --- albeit not in a big GM glass eye Box.  I thought it interesting that what is expected to be the costliest car ever sold will be sold in a -European- auction where, of only seven American-made cars on the block, one of is an AMC.  America's Ambassador to France it never was.  It's a funny thing.

http://www.cinemasterpieces.com/nutty6sh.JPG

http://www.legiondhonneur.fr/flash/index.html

http://www.checkitout.co.uk/autounion/

http://tinyurl.com/2bue7g

http://tinyurl.com/yrkktf

It's quite funny, too, that the AMC is expected to fetch the very same euros as Mick Jagger's 1964 Galaxie 500 convertible.  It's a funny auto union.

And AMC's still a funny way to find fun in old car memories.  Ramble on.

Funny.  All that just to ask that I be returned to "No Mail" --- please.

When I signed onto the AMC List back in 1996, I didn't chose a password.

Now I'm probably too old to learn one. 

Thanks, Tom and Frank.
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