"Never on Sunday"

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

That was what led Jules Dassin (Manos Hadjidakis, music; Billy Town, English lyrics) from Greece to America in 1960.  "I Never Work on A Sunday" was what kept Keith Urban (music and lyrics) in Nashville after Caboolture and Whangerei many years later on.  I'm here on a Saturday after giving the cook's campus tour to a crew of architects (I am not impressed with names, power, or money: I judge people solely on what they've done, what they're doing, and how they act --- in the moment.  If Frank Lloyd Wright flew in from some bat cave, I'd be curious [his oeuvre was so unusual; his persona so obscene], but it'd be like encountering Bill Clinton, Michael Jackson, Cher, or a train wreck.  You didn't want to look, yet couldn't resist...) and before meeting them* for dinner, I have a few minutes to waste on something.  Enter AMC?

(*One of them I'm especially curious about, having clambered around one of his oldest famous piles [it really was; literally and figuratively]

http://tinyurl.com/a9uot

when it was 0 and I was barely 14, because I expect one of his newest piles [which could bear some resemblance to something built when I may be barely breathing

http://tinyurl.com/9pkyf

to be unusual, also.  Only problem, he's merely coming back for free food and chatter; the NYC/European contingent is here to draft up their judgment on me.  It's not enough to be, oh, qualified nowadays; attire and table manners are part of the package.  In the future, they'll be testing DNA.  My first inspection tour (culture) went OK; this week's group (art) is easy to talk to, so there's only one bunch (cash & politics) left to come in late September.  Then I might actually know whether to sell, store, or <gasp> revive my poor old AMCs!

Bruno Sacco (aka The M-B Bear) said he was watching yesterday's post:

Wrong Tiny Little Big Car.

http://tinyurl.com/clluz

Ron Reagan (aka The Gipper) said he was watching for the '78 Matador:

Wrong Turn Without a Map.

http://tinyurl.com/ab2c3

I said to acknowledge how I'd overlooked the "SWB Matador" paint job:

>>Correction....it was RWB but painted as BWR.......

("Vanishing point" of the fender triangle ticked RAT): thanks, Jim S!

I also say to add that 1933 was like 1955 (you know why) and like 1968 (for AMC, of course): the earth moved, the world changed, and American cars were never the same again.

That's why that Alpaca Brown Packard --- along with the Pierce Silver Arrow, the Cadillac Aerocoupe, the Chrysler Airflow and the [Briggs] Lincoln Zephyr --- were key.  (There was another key, but even some of the best experts overlook it [some of those who don't, have been known to write "Northrup" on a Blue Streak], that's another car story...)  And that's why everyone should know a little about them.

Finally, I say to add that, in 1940, when the Head was 17, in a melting pot that was America, long before Nash or Hudson had any idea they'd become AMC, when assimilation was golden and American English was the tongue to speak, there were kids who played with cars in California.  More than a few of them turned play into work into reality.

In addition to a one-eyed guy who'd acted in B-pictures, there was an Asian who thought he would be a Boss on the racetrack, there was a Limey-like chap interested in aerodynamics and an Armenian who tinkered with carburators.
There were headcases and eggheads; some of them with a manifold destiny; some to build car engines, some to build car magazines.  They were that "Greatest Generation" of American auto enthusiasts.  The made the '50s and '60s.

The first Fords that they raced on those dry lake beds and sandy deserts inspired the last Matadors and Hornets history will remember from AMC; some of them survive in museums now; one of them survives in a garage-cum-living room in Beverly Hills.  Everyone should know a little about them as well.    

http://tinyurl.com/9336h

Uh oh.  Late for dinner.