When was AMC?

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

Homecoming happened, multi-layer cake had: her "home" (growing up, back for '81 Masters), my "home" (personal and professional since 4 years 'fore '79 when we first met), and a "home" we both treasure, even if it's filled with 3,000 "guests" --- except for weather (ice under an inch of snow) that kept the best cars at "home" (too bad Doc's "Absolutely Breath Takingly Gorgeous" orange Hornet wasn't on the streets of upstate...) rather than serving as eye candy (although there was plenty of heavy metal up and down the block: BMW 7s, Audi 8s, M-Bs, Lexii, etc. as car-ticipants, the "place of honor" [beside crosswalk from the Theatre marquee to "Max" {that uproariously-overpriced restaurant}] was filled by a new shiny black and supercharge-blown Range Rover SUV.  400-hp for $80k?  I'd rather see a 40-hp or 80-year-old Rolls-Royce, Packard or Nash!  As proof that the 20-something valets may still respect American muscle though, they parked the bright red '05 Z-06 some show-off dragged through salt (hopefully his date didn't drag her dress on the ground...) three places down from "pole position" --- where it could be seen from the Miller Center Atrium windows during post-show festivities.  Maybe they will be driving (and restoring/collecting) American cars when they're in their 50s.  Who can know?     

Despite a cold (which no one would have noticed had she not cracked her second-half joke: "This evening could be sponsored by Robitussin!"), the music was magic; the air electric.  When finally time for dinner (well after ten), a year of planning was over in a flash.  AMC content?  Yes --- someone (grandfather, great-uncle, teacher, or ??) somewhere --- owned a big fat old [bathtub] Nash!  (Someone else might have had a tail-finned Rambler.  Unless it was a Plymouth, or a Ford, or, well, you know how non-car-gals go.)  But enough about homecoming, street rods, or love.  Let's look lovingly at American Motors history.

In 1979 (26 years ago this very month), AMC built the final Pacer.  Come 26 years hence, it may be acknowledged a milestone in postwar American automotive style.  In the interim, it might spend 52 years (like I have) as a funny car from a funny company that gets an occasional laugh.  (Except in Europe [they are smarter than we are!], where Pacer is loved.      

36 years ago, AMC built the final -American- Ramblers --- after over 4.2 million were served.  AMC sold just under 275,000 vehicles that year and over 95% of them were -not- 390/4-speed.  The most expensive AMC car cost less than $4,000.  $2.00 change and you had an Ambassador SST wagon.  The most appreciated [read carefully] 1969 AMC car was a Rambler.  It cost less than $3,000.  With $2.00 in change you drove home a new SC/Rambler.  It Hurst [sic, sick] to imagine how much that car --- in untouched original condition --- would return on such an "investment."  If you hadn't spent it on school, girls, gas, groceries --- or on drivable Ramblers --- instead.  Imagine.  You're so sad.      
AMC grossed just under $740,000,000 in '69, but still was SC/Rambling Mite-ily (yes, I know the year/joke equation isn't correct; so sue me for $2.00!) just to stay alive.

And if you missed your chance then, you thought smarter in 1970, right?  There was another AMC which cost you just under $4,000 that year so you bought it and drove it home.  You got -$5.00- back on your purchase; you're glad you resisted every urge to go crusing (or go to the grocery store) and to lay rubber during the 35 long years since.
Good for you, bro (or sis): your $3995 Trans Am Javelin was your ticket to riches.  You qualify for the "Smartest Person in the History of AMC" award.  (So why are you even reading this stuff?)    

46 years ago, AMC was about to count to a billion in Ramblers --- in dollars, not in vehicles sold.  AMC's planet, uh, plant would be the single biggest auto manufacturing facility in America.  AMC would be able then to make over 600,000 -1960- cars.   Romney was running AMC (and running on about running for higher office); AMC was on the run toward growing bigger --- to avoid being run out of the car business.  All the while GM, Ford, Chrysler (plus poor little old Studebaker) were running after Rambler sales.  And since we're talking about funny, America was falling in Love with VW Bugs.  Japan was silently running toward an American Dream.  Don't Miss Saigon, but do target Dee-troit.  (If you can hear the music, you're reading with eyes -and- ears open.)  (Yes, she's 46 now...)

Then, 56 years ago, Nash, Hudson, and Packard built zaftig bodies beyond Peter Paul Rubens' canvases, beyond Peter Paul Candy's calories, and probably even beyond Peter Paul & Mary's (we pray for her health) cloudscape (when they did --- or didn't --- do what folk, especially folksingers, did creating clouds of smoke and such in daze when AMC smoked tires, pipes, and sometimes, street racers across Peter Max's America), so yes, they still sent out ships to battle with GM, Ford, and Chrysler products and they sold just enough of 'em to keep building more (Studebaker was doing rather well in 1949; style was selling their funny-looking models); nonetheless, N-H-P were all under great pressure to grow or wither away.  When they saw that none of them, fighting -alone- for survival, could continue, they began to plan an American Motors for a Big-4 century.

56 years ago, few could imagine Nash, Hudson, Packard, Studebaker, and both giants that -were- created to compete, survive, and build the cars we now find interesting (if not always appealing...) would ever be gone; and even fewer [read: none?] could imagine how Toyota, General Motors, and Ford could become the 2006 Big-3.  And 4 years after the death of the dictator, no one, in Europe, in America, or on clouds of atomic debris could possibly imagine a DaimlerChrysler Dodge by Hyundai-Mitsubishi.  Voila!

106 years ago, a Rambler was a PPV.  In 2111, America may again drive PPVs, not SUVs.  Who can imagine.  But one thing IS certain: it won't cost just under $80,000, $40,000, $4,000, or $40.00.  Will it have 40-hp?  You'll see.  

http://tinyurl.com/8faj9    

>>
the purpose of regulating the position of the VIN had very little to nothing to do with law enforcement - snip - It was to make it easier for the NHTSA to positively identify the vehicle at a crash site so statistics could be compiled.
<<

Precisely --- and precisely why it was written in a '66 SAFETY bill.

Thanks, Matt.  It's good to see AMC people thinking and remembering.

>>
There was no "national VIN" required prior to the 1966 10-13 character
mandate. AMC only used 5-8 place serial numbers prior to 1966 (minimum
<<

Required reading is to find "required" in my posted VIN history notes.

Finished [re-]reading?  Found any stated or implied "required" quotes?

OK.  

There was no -uniform- national VIN employed (or required) but American motor vehicle manufacturers have had a national ID policy for 51 years.

Required reading is to read what (about [AMA] VIN history) NHTSA wrote:

http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/cars/rules/theft/vinnumber.html

Or if you don't trust your gummymint, to read another John's book.  Rae, John B., (the professor at MIT): "American Automobile Manufacturers" (published in 1959 and updated in '84) or to "read Renault" --- Jean-Pierre Bardou, Jean-Jacques Chanaron, et al: "The Automobile Revolution: The Impact of an Industry" (translated from the French [!] in 1982) for more useful info.

Thanks, also, Frank.  It's good to see AMC people digging deep to know.

Early AMC-related reading?

Yes, AMC people should read --- and write --- more about the Automobile Manufacturers Association, about which too little now seems to be known.

The AMA (which now seems to mean a lobby full of lobbyists stuffing cash into politicians' pockets while promoting health "care" [ha!] that could easily turn America into a bankrupt third-world state) had a role in AMC history.  The 1957 AMA ban on direct involvement in racing was among the reasons Rebel didn't get Electrojector EFI (but the '62 Ford withdrawal* from that pact was among reasons '63 Classic got its ["all new" 287] V-8 groove back) and the AMA chapter of "modern" history should make all AMC collectors hear "ancient" dialogues of Henry Ford and Charles Nash.

And thanks, in advance, to any AMC people reading and saying, "Gotcha!"

Did -you-?  Relax and read on.
    
*Although Ford had begun to cheat in 1960, with its "Special Power" 352, GM added "Tri-power" and, when 390 dragged Chevy into the dust, turned a "Truck Option" into a legendary "so fine" 409, and Mopar rammed aluminum to take in [clever] more air a-cross [more clever] both 383 and 413, and while the AMA ban was still intact, American motors were squeezing 375+-hp from 11:1 or 13.5:1 compression (with "Max" muscle eras yet to come), AMA compliance laid the groundwork for an image problem AMC would never overcome (a problem AMC lovers are still trying to do something about),

>>
  Any info you could share with me would be greatly appreciated because I need
to do this thing right, there are some people that don't believe the power that 
these AMC engines can produce.  I want to make believers out of them (and rub
their noses in it to boot!).
<<   

but it was not until June 1962 that Henry Ford II -officially- withdrew from the AMA agreement.  "Deuce" wanted to show the world that American motors were tops: Ford planned to run in the most important race of all.  Their "Tin Lizzie" set out to win Le Mans.  When Mustang debuted in April of '64, so did Ford's GT.  New York had never seen such an American motors vehicle.  Two weeks later, Ford was testing GT's aerodynamics in France.
Two crashes later, American motors were racing against the world's best. 
  
http://www.carword.com/special/ford100/gt40_5.jpg

Then, as every American motors aficionado should know without thinking,
two years after that, American motors were -beating- the world's best.

http://www.seriouswheels.com/pics-def/Ford-GT40-LeMans-Victory-1966.jpg

The same year, American Motors revived its 1957 "Rebel" name, "Rambler" names were removed from AM's "best" [named Ambassador and Marlin], and there was a Rogue in the former palace of Romney: American Motors was finally ready to break that old AMA ban.  A thin-wall 290 would become a 401, a SC/Rambler would say, "American Motors' race is on!" and it was 1960 in 1966 RWB land.  It would be the most exciting decade for AMC lovers and it would be saddest too, for it was both a beginning and an end in one.

It was too little, too late, and, in part due to that AMA ban, it's all gone.  So when you read about your 390s with 4-speeds, don't forget how they came about.  Don't limit your reading --- or your knowledge --- to an AMC world# alone.  You'll be better for it: so too, later, will AMC.   

#And don't hold fast to AMC fantasies.  Remember when AMC tried to push more loss-leader cars than it found buyers; remember how many times AMC nearly died under debt load; remember how many "real-car-guy" execs AMC didn't have (and remember how few "design-nuts" approved AMC production plans); remember how hard AMC tried to stand out ("best-built" "longest warranty" "only standard air-conditioning" and the "unique-est-looking" shapes American motor-ists had ever seen, yet still couldn't get voted "the cars everyone wanted to be seen -driving-"), and yes, do remember when the American Center was on the cover of what was - and always will be --- one of the finest brochures ever published by dear departed AMC.

The canary was singing and the dead were walking.  Not driving AMCs.
       
http://www.automfg.com/articles/wip/1205wip06.html

Speaking of AMC drivers or how an early '60s of the Big-3 lived in the late '60s (and later) at AMC, here's a piece of American Motors racing history for you to think about after you eat your big holiday banquet.

I'll write it as a "do-you-know-your-AMC-and-more" question to answer:

What formerly street-driven (for about 80,000 miles) de-stroked 7-year-old Big-3 car nearly beat a factory-backed AMC racer in a year that'll be counted among American Motors Corporation's "best" (if not in terms of full model line-up, certainly by measures of public presence, media notice, and sales success); who drove the AMC car, and who "helped" to see that the Big-3 car didn't run quite so close to the AMC car again?

Can you tell us the rest of that story?  Or are you too bored reading?

Or can you tell us a tale of how AMC is still in the mind of Chrysler?

You can if you're not bored by reading numbers like 3.88, 2.5 and 4.0.

http://tinyurl.com/c6vft

Finally, Season's Greetings to all; to specific readers -not- receiving personalized e-cards (you should know who you are; you should also know that I just wasted my greeting card-sending time on typing), a holiday "hello."  To
those with kids (or to those who become kids at Christmas), I also send some video games.  Be the elephant in the convertible; shake snow, trim things, and make merry music.  Rejoice and share your fortune of a wonderful life.

http://www.powerpres.com/xmas.html