Duty calls

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

With the Files list down or empty and the Gremlin list a one-liner joke paragraph (where "Can you help?" can't be helped via e-mail to "@XXXX"), unless these words are digestible (and forgettable when one suspends for a few days and has no online archive to catch up by reading from), this old AMC list just isn't happenin'.  Write some words after giving up on reading?  Throw them into the wind and they float off to "thud" in that famous forest where the trees fall silently?  Even if no paper is being harmed, is this model of AMC still a good use for time and electricity?  Or is it the natural cycle of birth, life, and death by car?  "We came, we talked, and we drove off.  We parked the AMC and pulled the battery.  We might start it up again someday.  Until then, we'll let weeds grow."

As Chevy, after many years, retakes the domestic sales lead from Ford, we might retake a pair of design cues from American Motors.  Remember when it actually sold automobiles?  (Remember how its engine seized?) 

Well, what's old is, as it always has been, new; and what's NOS (new, old-style, that is) is, in a manner of '60s-'70s AMC-speaking, "now."

So now, let's stop talking and start looking for AMC.

In 2005, "AMX gills" breathe deeply --- mini and maxi  

http://tinyurl.com/apwbr

http://tinyurl.com/8t24u

http://tinyurl.com/d2lra

(sometimes, even bearing AM badges 

http://tinyurl.com/ad738

and sometimes, bearing beyond AMC!)

http://tinyurl.com/87dgt

"Javelin bubbles" still hump along --- mild or wild

http://tinyurl.com/8hmxq

http://tinyurl.com/au2p6

http://tinyurl.com/cq2t4

http://tinyurl.com/at5m7

http://tinyurl.com/a3l52

http://tinyurl.com/cqww3

so, as Jerry Casper saw, "Matador taillights" are still running 'round.

All are free for viewing, unless AM stylin' fools don't want to bother.

Let me tie up some loose ends.  Things mentioned demanding completion.

Q - What did you miss because there's still no national AMC community?

A - Dinner in Detroit and an evening full of American motors learning.

Days before Bill Ford named his brother-in-law chief of [Fomoco] staff, Steve Hamp was president of the Henry Ford Museum and one chief Detroit culture man.  In addition to autos, art, music, and civics were always on his beat.  He could schmooze with Republicans or with Democrats; he could work with the broken city or the blooming suburbs.  He hosted a dinner on October 13th --- and one of youse coulda went.  If hobby AMC were more than a series of solo events.  If AMC had one big RW&B tent.

To conclude a week of events that would have been every car nut's dream, (reception and tour of the W. P. Chrysler Museum, dinner at the Chrysler Design Center, Ford Rouge factory tour, visits to Ford's Piquette Avenue and Highland Park plants, lunch at the GM Heritage Center and a tour of the Tech Center --- the holiest spot in the history of auto styling --- plus trips to both Meadow Brook (Dodge) and the Detroit Institute of the Arts), you and your guest would have dined with 348 other motor heads.

http://tinyurl.com/7mbbm

Your speaker would've been Edsel Ford II (great-grandson of Henry, son of Deuce, current board member and owner of Pentastar (Chrysler's old logo) Air and your table-mates could've been Bob Lutz (vice chair of GM), Tim Bryan, head of the Heritage Motor Center [UK]), Koji Yamada (curator of the Toyota Automobile Museum [Japan]), Judy Endelman, director of the Ford Research Archives, Marc Haynes, director of the Haynes International Motor Museum [UK]), Jace Baker (director of the International Motorsports Alliance), Michael Buennebier (director of the Verhehrsmuseum [Dresden]), Peter Mitchell, OBE, director and trustee of the Jaguar Daimler Heritage Trust [Coventry]), Barry Dressel (manager of the WPC Museum), Trevor Creed (VP of Chrysler Group Design), Peter Liebhold (chairman of the Smithsonian Division of Work and Industry), Scott Mallwitz (director of the HFM Experience Design), Richard Messer (director of the Petersen Automotive Museum), Stefan Roehrig (manager of the DaimlerChrysler [Mercedes] Classic [Stuttgart]), Matthew Lombard (curator of the National Motor Museum [Australia]), Allan Unrein (director of the Crawford Auto-Aviation Museum), Brent Dewar (VP of GM marketing and advertising), Ron Gettelfinger (president of the UAW), Chris Overland (new director of the Henry Ford Museum), or maybe, if you were the right place at the right time, Bill Chapin, grandson of Hudson and son of AMC presidents: living automotive history.

I had two tickets ($150 each), but couldn't attend.  Almost everyone I knew in Motown would be there (or had been-there-done-that; the event has taken place every two years over two decades, in a different major city of automotive interest around the globe every time), and almost everyone I knew elsewhere couldn't attend either.  I assumed some AMC types live near Dearborn but I didn't know them --- even remotely.  And I ended up asking the organizers to sell my tickets for the betterment of Detroit's automotive heritage or the HFM; two more for humanity; one less for AMC. 

If you were more than a name-with-address posting parts-for-sale when it suited your schedule, more than occasional bursts of comment when it was your choice to pull the string, or even more than reasonably regular but reliably silent readers, I could've offered you that fine evening.  What you say, they say, can be held against you; what you don't say, I'd say, can also limit your life and your love of automobiles.

>>
all the amc big cars were 'stretched' forward of the firewall, so the
ambo will work.  for 'interior' sheetmetal like floors probably any
big car from '67-78 would be the same.
<<

Even inner rear doors were unchanged save welded-on shoulder patches.

But what about the advent of cats below the deck?  Any small tweaks?

"Falto due --- e cuerpa" was a saying from the Piedmont of Italy; IIRC, among the mottos of a certain coachbuilder.  Zagato, I think, but I may be entirely wrong.  Whichever it was, he had a test for job applicants.

He gave them a ball of aluminum, maybe about 14 to 16 pounds (certainly more than the 3 pounds of carbon-fiber to fender the 6-piston/6-pad 14" cross-drilled disc and 275/35ZR-18 Goodyear EMT that stop 3,132-lbs of American icon [yes, America can accomplish something if it works hard --- and smart --- enough still] with world-class alacrity) and he told them to hammer out a fender (from a model) and make it a perfect fit.

The hammerers he hired were the cream of the crop.  The bodies he built were legendary.  One of them inspired an AMC body builder.  One of them inspired a production AMC.

The motto was "Do your duty --- and die."

I did my duty; now hammered out of hours.

I'll tie up more loose ends another time.