Show-and-go

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

Back home for one day before heading in the other (east) direction, and I take time to read the AMC List???  "Bad" habits are hard to break!

I won't take time to talk about the Monterey weekend and other car-life adventures, but will say that Pebble Beach is edging closer to Kenosha.  How?  Chronologically.

Whereas a '30s Nash Ambassador might've been the bearer of Family AMC's concours dreams before, a '50s Nash sports car is almost in the '60s-'70s that most AMC fans own and love.  A very nice red car it was --- even if it was, in some places, labeled a "1963" when it really was a -1953- model.  It held its own with peers by Alfa, Cisitalia, and Ferrari; it looked a lot better (the gray skies helped) than a pair of gray Mercedes.

Some of you were discussing the Model X: it looked like an unrestored 1927 sedan; unless you -also- looked into the American auto history books.

More on some of that later.  
  
>>
Got a few interesting AMCs at auction in Kansas soon.  One is billed as a Matador Barcelona.  The picture shows what appears to be the Barcelona crest on the side, but the car appears to be black.  I thought they only came in tan and cranberry.  Also, the padded roof is gone, but it may have been removed at some point.  After all, these are apparently junkyard cars.
<<

"Tan and 'cranberry'" were Barcelona II colors, but if the auctions' "I"

http://www.purplewaveauction.net/cgi-bin/mnlist.cgi?purple18/5249

is a "#3" too [also] (so seller sez), condition must be measured differently in Kansas than in the strange state of Kahleeforneeya I just visited.  

Ahnolt announced that BMW will sell fuel cell Sevens in CA by MY 2010.  Honda will sell cells too, but theirs may not be as hip with hipsters, unless they're even hipper.  One never can tell.  GM announced that it "will complete [an] engineering analysis on hydrogen vehicles" by then.  Will some old jokes never end?  What's wrong with America?  Maybe our schools and ourselves...  


Meanwhile, down east, Sandwich (MA) way:

http://www.latimes.com/business/investing/wire/sns-ap-china-daimlerchrysler,1,4347803.story?coll=sns-ap-investing-headlines

(if hay fever can't buy a bejiing jeep, bejiing'll build 'im a benz.)

Sorry for the non-tiny URL.

About fifteen pages of Boberg-at-Liberty can be read for free at:

http://tinyurl.com/7ee9e

Some of the remainder is more interesting, if not any better written.

>>
Of course, there is no such thing as a 1979 SX/4.  As for the fender
interchangeability, Eagle fenders will physically mount to the 2wd cars (like
77 up Gremlin, Spirit) but they are not the same.  The wheel well opening is
different (its bigger on an Eagle)  I didn't believe it either until I measured 
them side by side.
<<

And one reason the stillborn '82.5 AMX was to use Eagle front fenders: to complement its for-then-revolutionary 16" alloy wheels.

(The other reason, of course, was so it would also have fully faired-in plastic bumper coverings.  Even if the -rear- bumper would have been an AMC shoestring-style makeshift design thing...)  

>>
I have heard a commercial for a while touting a 7-spd
auto in the new M-B. What's up with that?? Is the
engine in that M-B so small they need that many gears
or is the engine so torky it can pull the obviously
overdriven tranny. How many gears do you need anyways.
I suspect a PR ploy.....Russ
<<

Six are probably enough speeds to need, but Mercedes' seven will be beat by Lexus' eight and the world's cheapest cars will have five speeds.  It won't really save that much gas and it won't improve performance by a big degree, but I'll be touted and shouted as the next must-have thing.

(Which is not to say that other developments won't be touted also...

http://www.antonov-transmission.com/aad.htm

or that today's advanced technologies won't advance even further.) 

http://www.nissan-global.com/EN/TECHNOLOGY/INTRODUCTION/XTRONIC_CVT/

More speeds will please marketing departments, more complexity will make service departments more profitable and more electronics will make more drivers "recycle" their out-of-warranty models (and then buy new ones...) as repairs become more costly.

The weight of cars will keep rising, the weight of rear-wheel-drive cars will rise even more, and somebody will market ten-speeds with dual-ratio rears.  They'll say we can drive more big trucks and more powerful cars and still ignore what a song in "SUV: The Musical" (which just closed at the New York International Fringe Festival) says, "How did your oil get under our sands?  ("Bigger is Better" and a Beach Boys-style "My Little Yugo" are also heard.  The poster car is, of course, a Blinged-up H2...)

When we buy what they sell, we're our own best idiots.  Whether we drive manuals, multi-speed automatics, or muscle-era cars that manage ~12 MPG.  When we built roads instead of rapid transit, we dug our own graves.

>>Does anyone know what an El Morocco was? <grin> No cheating Googling!

Jerry, it actually -has- an AMC connection, twice removed.  What ended up in the Chevy sales book for 1956 and 1957, was adapted from what was first seen as the pre-production El Dorado prototype at the October 1955 Paris show (both it and a fiberglass XP48 Town Car were pushmobiles that toured '56 Motoramas; the former's dual headlights redone as quads) and they were, of course, based on the Fleetwood Castilian (style-wise, a done deal by March of 1955) which, in turn drew from '54 La Espada and El Camino (and from the studio Celebrity), but, like a very influential [non-GM] Chevy custom, El M had also been drawn with Clipper taillights.  You know whose.  You know who designed it.  You know where he ended up.

Since Jerry issued a challenge, I'll issue one, too.  What "outside" AMC designer's taillights on what independent-chassis '55 one-off, were seen on production '64 Cadillacs and then on only one "AMC Cadillac" as well?

Here's a hint: the #2491 (built in America) and the indie (which was not built in America, but also was not built, as many think, by Ghia...), both belong to the same collector today (and are not stored anywhere in CA...)  

Here's another hint: that 1960s-1970s AMC subcontractor's "Caddy" was actually bodied by a firm that is now a sort of "lost cousin" to AMC!

Here are the answers.  You'll have to figure out to which questions.

http://www.buecher1x1.de/Maybach_Karosserien_aus_Ravensburg.html

http://tinyurl.com/bd8o2

http://www.maybach.de/sw353842.htm

http://www.design-classic-cars.de/maybach/maybach1.html

http://www.classics.com/brntw15.jpg

http://www.purplewaveauction.net/cgi-bin/mnlist.cgi?purple18/5266
  
http://tinyurl.com/8d76o

While I'll again miss the Chilson show,

http://epage.com/js/mi/1781406.html 

Three more before WNY turns white and cold.

http://www.hfmrotary.org/

(we had 30 National Winners last year, and even a few AMCs showed!),

http://thewindmill.com/carshw.htm

(I've never attended this one), and

http://www.hiltonapplefest.org/pdf/Auto-2005.pdf

It won't help anyone suffering losses due to Katrina, but the frozen form of storm surge isn't good for people --- or old cars --- either: 

October 2004:

http://www.hiltonapplefest.org/html/auto_show_gallery_7.html

February 2005:

http://www.fingerlakesclassicchevy.com/may05news.pdf

(Life would be easier if we collected buttons, watches, and postcards...)


See you in another week or so.