Stop...

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

the nonsense and step up with something new.  We don't need to read who
thinks what of whom and who is or is not "real" --- we want to read about
cars.  We want to learn about manufacturers AMC competed with, about people
who made AMC, about reasons AMC did what it did, about things it could have
done and about its past, its present and about its future.

We want to see information and insight and news we can use.  Of course we
need to read specifics about AMC hobby sleazeballs and of course we like to
laugh when we read.  What we don't need is more status-quo, no-go AMC show.


>>
Tujunga Ave collapsing in Sun Valley ...unmistakable lines of a Gremlin,
(maybe) AMX2, Nash (not sure what model) as well as many other classic cars.
Sadly, down in the 30 foot deep hole appears to be a Rambler Classic
convertible.
<<

Online video is available

http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/news/022005_nw_sinkhole.html

(KTLA is more auto-graphic, but server's in failure mode)

as are several stills also

http://www.nbc4.tv/slideshow/4215268/detail.html?qs=;s=22;w=320

http://aolsvc.news.aol.com/news/photo.adp?id=20050221212109990013

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/state/la-me-sinkhole22feb22,1,4364706.stor
y?coll=la-news-state&ctrack=1&cset=true

(If that weren't enough, Tony the Tiger was on the prowl...) 

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=domesticNews&storyID=7717766


Before we slip into silence, say "sayonara" (or throw a rod through the PC
screen), we want to remember what we didn't see written here this year, this
month and this week.

On February 3, 1973, we didn't remember who signed a licensing agreement
with the Curtiss-Wright Corporation.

We didn't recall who was co-owner of which patent rights then, who agreed to
let the smallest American automaker build its product.

We didn't talk of how that license, covering both passenger cars and Jeeps,
required AMC to pay $1.5 million over the coming four years.

We didn't note how that agreement also allowed AMC to access -all- the new
rotary technologies of -all- the Wankel licensees worldwide.

We didn't consider the possibility of a Mazda-built rotary in an AMC.

We didn't mention how the document also gave AMC the right to sell any
rotary engines it produced to any other car companies in the world.

Nor did we read what Roy D. Chapin Jr. [AMC chairman], said in 1973.

"We believe that the rotary engine will play an important role as a power
plant for cars and trucks of the future."

We believe that's more what more might want to read about AMC.


In February of 1959, American Motors' shareholders received a letter from
their company stating that the success of compacts "signals the end of
big-car domination in the U. S."

AMC wrote that small-car sales might number 3 million in four years, so it
would allocate $10 million to a Kenosha expansion that would allow it to
assemble 440,000 units "straight-line" - up from its [then-taxed] 300,00
capacity.

(American Motors had built 217,332 1958 units at its plants in Kenosha; it
would build 401,446 1959 models soon.)

In February of 1959, Henry Ford II also wrote to shareholders, but he did
not state that Ford had plans to sell a new compact in October.  He only
said that Ford would do so "when the demand is strong enough for such a
vehicle."

Falcon, Corvair, Valiant and domestic others, not to mention VW, Simca,
Renault and more from overseas would prove AMC's prediction accurate.  But
long before Toyoda, Datsun and today's USA sales leaders ever competed,
AMC's own
future turned out quite differently.

We want to read more of -that- type of writing about AMC.